Thursday, March 04, 2010

NAO drugs report - No framework to evaluate value for money. Again.


"Without an evaluative framework for the Strategy as a whole, the NAO is not able to conclude positively on value for money."

No evaluative framework. This is a pitiful point to have reached, two years after the 2008 strategy was supposedly reviewed for efficacy, its success trumpeted repeatedly.

Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office, in an extraordinary understatement said: "So overall performance measurement across the range of programmes needs to be put in place."

To add insult to injury, this report only covers specific initiatives to “tackle problem drug use”. It hasn’t even looked at policing costs, (which, according to the value for money study that Transform tore out of the clutches of the Home Office under FOI, constitutes the far larger expenditure) – £2 billion a year – and is subject to even less value for money scrutiny.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The stupidity and waste of money and lives never ceases to amaze me!

I should be used to it by now after 45 years on this planet...but I am the forever optimist...one day there may be some sanity about drugs and their uses...until then, same old, same old....

Rory said...

as a former employee of the NAO the report is not totally surprising. The NAO is not allowed to comment on policy per se, or give value judgements on whether a policy is a good idea. For example, if the report suggested treatment over incarceration - cheaper though it would be - the NAO would argue this ventures into policy recommendation, which it will not come close to doing.