Labour blasted over £780m changes bill

In a highly critical report, the National Audit Office (NAO) said it was impossible to demonstrate that the changes made since the 2005 General Election offered value for money – a situation it branded "unsatisfactory".

It said most were rushed through on the orders of the prime minister of the day – Tony Blair or Gordon Brown – without a clear explanation of what they were supposed to achieve and leaving no time for proper planning.

There was no requirement to show that the reorganisations were "sensible" and they may simply have been "unnecessary".

The NAO said central government bodies had proved "very poor" at identifying the costs of reorganisation and were "weak" when it came to securing the hoped for benefits of change.

In all, it said that there had been more than 90 reorganisations of central government departments and their associated "arm's length" agencies between May 2005 and June 2009.

Of the 51 reorganisations examined by the NAO during that period, it put the cost at 780m – an average of 15m for each reorganisation and the equivalent of almost 200m a year.

Edward Leigh, the chairman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, said that it was hard to believe the changes actually served the interests of the public.