The National Audit Office has failed the accounts of the Treasury, the Ministry of Defence, Revenue and Customs, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Home office after identifying errors relating to unauthorised spending and lack of control checks. The Treasury's accounts were in question after officials spent £24bn more than it was allowed to under parliamentary spending limits for the potential losses from the money used to bail out the banks on the brink of collapse. The NAO estimated that an error amounting to £140m was found in the accounts of the MoD after examining a sample of payments from the department which indicated that 14.7% of transactions contained an error that could not be substantiated. In particular it was the MOD's Joint Personnel Administration payroll system that was criticised by the NAO, which also came under fire in its 2007/8 report of the department. The audit office pointed out in the previous year's report that there were limited checks in place to detect errors which had obviously not been tackled. There is even a suspicion that fraud had been committed under the JPA system as expenses claims can be made by service personnel without further checks being made. Amyas Morse, head of the National Audit Office said: 'At this time of high operational demand, it is more important than ever for the Ministry of Defence to have accurate records of where its assets are, and how much stock it has. It must also have a military pay process which is fit for purpose'. She added: 'Although the Ministry of Defence has made some improvements to its payroll and HR systems over the past year, I consider that there are important issues which have not been fully addressed and further significant changes are required'.