THE Public Accounts Committee has decided not to review Health and Social Services’ childcare subsidy.

The department asked the committee to look into the issue after it was criticised for spending around £100,000 a year since 2001 reserving places at a private nursery.

It paid a further £65,000 annually for the 23 staff who actually used the service.

A spokesman for the PAC said: ‘We have written to HSSD explaining that our workload is already planned out for 2010 and that we have limited resources.

‘So on this occasion we have offered them two alternative routes to carry out an investigation on this subject – those are an internal audit and the Scrutiny Committee,’ he said.

The subsidy was stopped as part of £6m.-worth of budget cuts announced by HSSD.

In the last States meeting former board member Deputy Mike Hadley (pictured) asked Health minister Hunter Adam why it had been introduced, calling it ‘an extraordinary waste of money’.

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