HM Treasury : Annual Report and Accounts 2011-12, Twenty-Seventh Report of Session 2012-13, Report, Together with Formal Minutes, Oral and Written Evidence

The Treasury acts as both the finance ministry and economic ministry but it appears to neglect its role as finance ministry.

Its own accounts are impenetrable and there are many instances of poor decision making by departments, which the Treasury could and should have prevented.

While staff turnover fell in 2011-12, it is still very high.

Furthermore, the Treasury remains committed to cutting its headcount by a third and there are still very few women at senior levels.

The support provided to banks in the last crisis helped prevent the banking system from collapse.

The Treasury has successfully withdrawn nearly all of the taxpayer guarantees to banks but the taxpayer still owns some GBP66 billion of shares in RBS and Lloyds, a sum which is yet to be recovered.

The Treasury has not convinced that it understands either the risks it has taken on by indemnifying the Bank of England against losses on Quantitative Easing or the expected economic benefits.

Some GBP375 billion has so far been injected into the economy as an 'experiment' but the Department could not explain what the effect has been on the whole economy or on different parts of society. The National Loans Guarantee Scheme achieved just 15 per cent of its intended take-up and has now been superseded by a more generous Bank of England scheme.

The Treasury needs to be clear what it wants this Bank of England scheme to achieve, and how it intends to monitor it.