The Daily Telgraph reported;
Labour overruled civil servants' objections to final spending plans
Civil servants lodged a series of objections to spending plans by ministers, including Lord Mandelson, in the final months of the Labour government, it has been disclosed.
By Christopher Hope, Whitehall Editor
Published: 10:26PM BST 18 May 2010Official figures showed that mandarins were objecting to decisions made by ministers at a rate of nearly one a month as Labour headed for defeat in the election.
[...]
Figures disclosed by the Treasury last night showed that ministers overruled civil servants on spending plans on at least four occasions since the start of 2010.
Advice from officials was ignored on a further nine occasions in 2009. This compared with just five occasions in the previous three years. Three quarters of these objections were on the grounds of value for money.
Lord Mandelson's spending decisions were challenged on five occasions in 2009, including a loan to a quango in the West Midlands and £10 million for a sports complex in Leeds.
Other objections over value for money included the £300 million car scrappage scheme and support for dairy farmers.
[...]
This smells of political corruption. Some of the spending may well have been for "political pork barrel" attempts to bribe the lectorate in marginal consituences etc.
However, given what we know of MPs' expenses , cash for questions, loans for peerages, non-domiciled tax staus of political party funders, lucrative company directorships, perks for rich foreign businessmen , the massive financial incompetence regarding large Government contracts, and other such scandals, we strongly suspect that there will have been various levels of personal corruption involved in at least some of these Labour ministerial spending decisions.
We will be watching closely, to see which Labour politicans, policial appartchiks, special advisors, spin doctors and any senior Whitehall civil servants, who magically get recruited by lobby firms or by companies who directly denefited from those hurried and waseful multi-billion pound spending decisions.
If you know of any such instances of unethical or corrupt activities, you should "name and shame" the individuals and companies involved, in the wider public interest or simply just for revenege.
Unril the Conservatives / Liberal Democrat coalition government actually fulfills its vague promise to amend the notorious UK libel laws to protect free speech, then potential "whistleblowers" with proof of such corrupt activities, should read:
Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers etc.
http://ht4w.co.uk
Technical Hints and Tips for protecting the anonymity of sources for Whistleblowers, Investigative Journalists, Campaign Activists and Political Bloggers etc.
