The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has failed to file spending receipts totalling nearly £11bn, according to a report by the public spending analyst firm Tussell. The department, which oversees a £13bn annual budget for prisons, probation and courts in England and Wales, has not published any supplier receipts since May 2023, leaving it more than two years behind the industry standard of a two-month publication window.
Tussell calculated the missing receipts by extrapolating from the most recent 12-month period for which data is available (June 2022 to May 2023), when the MoJ filed £5bn in receipts. Multiplying that monthly average by 26 months of non-publication yielded an estimated £10.8bn. The figure includes all MoJ arm’s-length bodies except Cafcass and the Legal Services Board, which are more up to date.
The MoJ is the worst-performing government department on this measure. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero is 13 months behind, with an estimated £3.7bn in missing receipts, followed by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, which is 10 months behind on £880m. Tom Brake, director of transparency organisation Unlock Democracy, said the delays “damage the government’s ability to control its expenditure”.
A MoJ spokesperson insisted that all spending had been accounted for, stating: “We need to review a substantial amount of data to ensure we do not release anything that could cause any risk, particularly to individuals. All departmental spend is accounted for in our annual accounts.” The department received a 1.8% real-term spending increase in June and plans to spend £4.7bn creating 14,000 additional prison places by 2031, of which about 2,500 have already been built since July 2024.
