pounds 14.6m wasted by fraud and incompetence

MORE THAN pounds 14.6m of taxpayers' money has been wasted through incompetence and alleged fraud at vocational training agencies, according to a National Audit Office report published yesterday.

The funds constitute "overpayments" by the Department of Education and Employment to Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs) for courses, largely for the unemployed.

The news comes at a time when the Government is investigating allegations of "serious irregularities" at the organisations which provide the training on behalf of TECs. In one case it was claimed that a provider was paid pounds 4.5m by 22 TECs for trainees who were ineligible for training or who were awarded National Vocational Qualifications despite being incompetent. Other trainees could not be traced or were "non-existent". In another inquiry officials were investigating allegedly spurious claims by a training company which had received pounds 3.3m from 11 TECs.

The report by the Comptroller and Auditor General estimates that the value of overpayments to TECs increased by pounds 6m last year to pounds 14.6m.

The report pointed out that the Public Accounts Committee had declared that the pounds 8.6m of "estimated errors" in 1995-96 was unacceptable and that the Government should do all it could to reduce it.

The report acknowledges that inquiries into 65 out of 85 cases of alleged irregularities had been completed and that the department had recovered pounds 1,386,000 from TECs. In the 20 remaining cases, which the department is pursuing "with vigour", the alleged irregularities could be of the order of pounds 10.3m, the report says.

The document acknowledges that the Government had taken significant steps aimed at improving financial controls at TECs. A spokesman for the national TEC council pointed out that it was training- providers and sometimes the bodies awarding certificates which were being accused of deception, but not TECs themselves. He said that the cases of alleged fraud only concerned 0.5 per cent of the 500,000 trainees processed each year.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Employment said that the pounds 14.6m in overpayment only constituted 1.2 per cent of the total training budget. She emphasised that the figure referred to 1996-97 and that therefore blame could not be laid at the door of the present administration. "The new government has made it clear that it is taking a robust attitude to the issue."

Children are working for as little as 33p an hour and for up to 29 hours a week, while many are getting hurt and working illegally, according to a survey published today.

The findings were uncovered in a study by the Low Pay Unit of more than 1,000 schoolchildren in the North-east of England.

The Unit is backing a backbench Parliamentary Bill promoted by Labour MP Chris Pond, a former Low Pay Unit director, which is being debated at second reading in the Commons on Friday.

The survey found that 25 per cent were under the legal working age of 13; some 44 per cent had suffered injury at work in the last year; one in 10 injuries was serious enough to need treatment; the average working week was eight hours, but one in seven worked more than 12 hours a week - the limit proposed in Mr Pond's Bill.

It also revealed that one girl worked in a cafe for 29 hours a week and that a a 14-year-old working in a butcher's who was cut by a knife

Previous research suggests that up to two million school-age children in the UK have some form of employment, and that three-quarters work illegally. Low Pay Unit director Bharti Patel said Mr Pond's Employment of Children Bill paved the way for the first national legislation on the issue since 1933.

"It will increase protection for children by limiting working hours to 12 a week during term time, bringing us into line with the rest of Europe."