HM Treasury admits: we don’t know how much money we’re spending

Following the revelation about Treasury minister Angela Eagle’s less than magnificent economic forecasting ability, I’ve been reading through some of her other contributions in Hansard.

Amongst them is this gem, in response to a question from Conservative MP Philip Hammond:

Q.  To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how much his Department and its agencies spent on branding and marketing activity in 2007-08.
A. The information requested is not readily available and could be supplied only at disproportionate cost.

It makes you wonder what sort of internal budgetary controls the Treasury – yes, the Treasury of all departments – have when they can’t even answer a simple question like how much they spent on marketing last year.