The Carrier strike u-turn will cost the taxpayer at least £74 million. When this programme got the green light in 2007, we were supposed to get two aircraft carriers, available from 2016 and 2018, at a cost to the taxpayer of £3.65 billion. We are now on course to spend £5.5 billion and have no aircraft carrier capability for nearly a decade. The MOD rushed into a decision in the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review. Just 18 months later they were forced to admit they had got it wrong and revert to the original choice of aircraft. At the time of the SDSR the Department believed the cost of converting the carriers for the new aircraft would be between £500 million and £800 million. By May 2012 it had realised that the true cost would be as a high as £2 billion. Officials also made basic errors such as forgetting to include the costs of VAT and inflation. There are still concerns now. According to current plans, the early warning radar system essential for protecting the carrier will not be available for operation until 2022, two years after the first carrier and aircraft are delivered and initially operated. And the MOD does not yet have the funding to replace the shipping needed to support the new carrier. To avoid making the same mistakes again the MOD needs to start planning now for the next SDSR in 2015, including making sure that this time it has the right information on which to base decisions

Although officially 'dismantled', the National Programme for IT in the NHS continues in the form of separate component programmes which are still racking up big costs. The original contracts with CSC totalled £3.1 billion for the setting up of the Lorenzo care records system in trusts in the North, Midlands and East. Despite the contractor's weak performance, the Department of Health is itself in a weak position in its attempts to renegotiate the contracts. It couldn't meet the contractual obligation to make enough trusts available to take the system. We still don't know what the full cost of the National Programme will be. The Department's latest estimate of £9.8 billion leaves out the future costs of Lorenzo or the potential large future costs arising from the Department's termination of Fujitsu's contract for care records systems in the South of England. Parliament needs to be kept informed not only of what additional costs are being incurred, but also of exactly what has been delivered so far. The Department estimates £3.7 billion of benefits to March 2012, just half of the costs incurred. There is still a long way to go before government departments can honestly say that they have learned and properly applied the lessons from previous contracting. Given the Department's track record with the National Programme, it is very hard to believe that the paperless NHS towards which the Department is working has much chance of being achieved by the target date of 2018

Universal Credit is the DWP's single biggest programme and enjoys cross-party support, yet its implementation has been extraordinarily poor. The failure to develop a comprehensive plan has led to extensive delay and the waste of a yet to be determined amount of public money. £425 million has been spent so far on the programme. It is likely that much of this, including at least £140 million worth of IT assets, will now have to be written off. Lack of day-to-day control meant early warning signs were missed, with senior managers becoming aware of problems only through ad hoc reviews. Pressure to deliver a programme of this magnitude within such an ambitious timescale created a fortress culture where only good news was reported and problems were denied. There has been a shocking absence of control over suppliers, with the Department failing to implement the most basic procedures for monitoring and authorising expenditure. The pilot programme is not a proper pilot. Its scope is limited and does not deal with the key issues that Universal Credit must address: the volume of claims; their complexity; change in claimants' circumstances; and the need for claimants to meet conditions for continuing entitlement to benefit. The programme will not hit its current target of enrolling 184,000 claimants by April 2014. The Department will have to speed up the later stages of the programme if it is to meet the 2017 completion date but that will pose new risks. Meeting any specific timetable from now on is less important than delivering the programme successfully

Nearly one fifth of consultant posts in emergency departments were either vacant or filled by locums in 2012. Neither the Department nor NHS England have a clear strategy to tackle the shortage of A&E consultants and there is too much reliance on temporary staff to fill gaps. The Committee raised the possibility of paying consultants more to work at struggling hospitals. Greater use in A&E of consultants from other departments could also be made, or mandate that all trainee consultants spend time in A&E, or make A&E positions more attractive through improved terms and conditions. The slow introduction of round-the-clock consultant cover in hospitals - which will not be in place before the end of 2016-17 - is also having a negative impact. More people die as a result of being admitted at the weekend when fewer consultants are in A&E. Changing this relies on the British Medical Association and NHS Employers negotiating a more flexible consultants' contract, and neither the Department nor NHS England has direct control over the timescale or details of these negotiations. Hospitals, GPs and community health services all have a role to play in reducing emergency admissions - but financial incentives to make this happen are not in place. While hospitals get no money if patients are readmitted within 30 days, there are no financial incentives for community and social care services to reduce emergency admissions. Both the Department of Health and NHS England struggled to explain to us who is ultimately accountable for the efficient delivery of local A&E services

The Whole of Government Accounts for 2011-12 presents the combined financial activities of some 3,000 organisations. It provides vital data on which Government needs to act. Key issues have been identified, such as the £19.4 billion liability for clinical negligence claims. But it is frustrating to see other issues seemingly ignored in long-term policy making and spending decisions. In one year, the public sector was defrauded of over £20 billion and the tax gap rose to £35 billion. The financial liabilities for dealing with nuclear waste also keep growing. There is room for improvement in the document itself and how it is used. Users find it hard to understand, for example, why the Government debt and deficit highlighted in the WGA differ from those reported in the ONS's National Accounts. Also, by changing definitions in its commentary published alongside the WGA, the Treasury makes it difficult to track changes over time. The Treasury's introduction in the commentary of a new concept of so-called 'direct' expenditure leaves out key costs such as the interest paid on the National Debt. The publicly owned and controlled bodies - such as Network Rail and the taxpayer owned banks - are still being excluded, in defiance of normal accounting rules. The usefulness of the WGA is also being limited by the length of time it takes to produce the document and by poor quality data from some of the bodies. The accounts have again been qualified over the completeness, timeliness and accuracy of the information supplied for schools and academies

Telephone services are a vital part of government support, accounting for 43% of all customer contacts. But departments are continuing to make extensive use of higher rate phone numbers for customer telephone lines despite the fact that many people are put off calling as a result. The most vulnerable callers, on the lowest incomes, face some of the highest charges. Costs to callers are even higher because the caller has to endure long waiting times and poor customer service. In the face of this evidence we welcome the Cabinet Office's acknowledgement that it was "inappropriate" for vulnerable citizens to pay a substantial charge to access public services and its commitment to establish best practice in this field and ensure it is followed across government

The Department for Transport has yet to present a convincing strategic case for High Speed 2. It has not yet demonstrated that this is the best way to spend £50 billion on rail investment in these constrained times, and that the improved connectivity will promote growth in the regions rather than sucking even more activity into London. The pattern so far has been for costs to spiral - from more than £16 billion to £21 billion plus for phase one - and the estimated benefits to dwindle. The Department has been making huge spending decisions on the basis of fragile numbers, out-of-date data and assumptions which do not reflect real life, such as assuming business travellers do not work on trains using modern technology. The Department has ambitious and unrealistic, plans for passing the Bill for High Speed 2. The timetable is much tighter than for either High Speed 1 or Crossrail, despite the fact High Speed 2 is a much larger programme. Not allowing enough time for preparation undermines projects from the start. A rushed approach contributed to the failure of the InterCity West Coast franchise award. The Department has increased its High Speed rail team, but getting the right mix of skills is challenging and the Department lacks the commercial skills necessary to protect taxpayers' interest on a programme of this size