Spending reviews carried out by Government Departments were strongly criticised yesterday by the Comptroller and Auditor General. In a study of reviews by Departments during 1997-2000, Mr John Purcell said less than a quarter of those assessed achieved a sound professional standard.

Better systems for reviewing exenditure should be developed, he said, noting that only 62 of the 118 examinations planned were carried out. A further 21 were in progress.

Mr Purcell said a review scheme initiated by the Departments provided "limited" reassurance that taxpayers' money was "being spent to some purpose and in a well-directed manner". He added that central guidance and impact reviews were essential to its success.

He said: "Only three of the 13 reports assessed achieved a sound professional standard across all the main elements of the expenditure review. Two of the 13 reports did not reach a sound professional standard on any of the main criteria." Mr Purcell also said only three of the reports included specific and clear consideration of policy objectives.

The reports were reviewed by readers employed by the London School of Economics. Of these assessments, Mr Purcell noted: "Individual review reports frequently met only part of the Expenditure Review Initiative brief, and in some cases made little effort to address the brief.

"Most problems arose where review teams did not address the strong emphasis in the guidelines upon clearly specifying objectives. Nor did they then bring systematic evidence to bear upon assessing the performance being achieved in the area investigated, usually because the existing information base was poor and formal performance indicators were mostly absent and underdeveloped."

He added: "The process of producing these documents clearly did direct some useful attention to many policy areas not regularly or well analysed before."

At most, some 37 per cent of Government expenditure was reviewed in the period. This represented a "reasonable" effort from a standing start.

The report said: "In most reports, the objectives could be discerned in a rather latent way, with broad statements of policy goals often being mentioned in passing and with a general lack of precise targets. In some cases, it appeared that those involved in carrying out the reviews were so close to and familiar with the long-lived programme activities that the programme assumed a 'taken-for-granted' status."