Tuesday, October 11, 2022
Festival of Brexit to be probed
The Independent reports that the government’s so-called “festival of Brexit” will be probed amid concerns that £120 million of taxpayers’ cash was “frittered away” on a project that brought “so little in return”.
They say that MPs in a cross-party parliamentary committee have approached the National Audit Office (NAO) to ask it to look into how the project was managed and whether political pressures kept it going:
The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) committee had found that the number of visitors to the event – called ‘Unboxed: Creativity in the UK’ – was just 0.36 per cent of early targets.
Then, last month, the committee asked the NAO to “help get to the bottom” of the “irresponsible use of public money”.
Organisers of the festival had an initial “stretch target” of 66 million visitors, almost as much as the UK’s 69m population. But just 238,000 people visited the festival, The House magazine reported in August.
Conservative MP Julian Knight, chairman of the DCMS committee, said: “That such an exorbitant amount of public cash has been spent on a so-called celebration of creativity that has barely failed to register in the public consciousness raises serious red flags about how the project has been managed from conception through to delivery.
“The NAO’s investigation will bring welcome and thorough scrutiny and help get to the bottom of how so much taxpayer money could be frittered away for so little return.”
Mr Knight said the festival’s design and execution “has been an unadulterated shambles”, adding: “The paltry numbers attracted to the festival – despite such a hefty investment – highlight just what an excessive waste of money the whole project has been.”
Nice to see that money did grow on trees for Boris Johnson's government after all.
They say that MPs in a cross-party parliamentary committee have approached the National Audit Office (NAO) to ask it to look into how the project was managed and whether political pressures kept it going:
The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) committee had found that the number of visitors to the event – called ‘Unboxed: Creativity in the UK’ – was just 0.36 per cent of early targets.
Then, last month, the committee asked the NAO to “help get to the bottom” of the “irresponsible use of public money”.
Organisers of the festival had an initial “stretch target” of 66 million visitors, almost as much as the UK’s 69m population. But just 238,000 people visited the festival, The House magazine reported in August.
Conservative MP Julian Knight, chairman of the DCMS committee, said: “That such an exorbitant amount of public cash has been spent on a so-called celebration of creativity that has barely failed to register in the public consciousness raises serious red flags about how the project has been managed from conception through to delivery.
“The NAO’s investigation will bring welcome and thorough scrutiny and help get to the bottom of how so much taxpayer money could be frittered away for so little return.”
Mr Knight said the festival’s design and execution “has been an unadulterated shambles”, adding: “The paltry numbers attracted to the festival – despite such a hefty investment – highlight just what an excessive waste of money the whole project has been.”
Nice to see that money did grow on trees for Boris Johnson's government after all.
