SHOOTING the messenger is a common activity when scandals are brought to light.

The Audit Commission's report on Cleveland Police's budget black hole of £7.3m is another case in point.

The force's financial position is described as "difficult" but the commission goes on to say that it has been "considerably exaggerated" in the way it has been reported by the media.

The deficit, says the Government watchdog, is not the result of any misappropriation of cash or "major breakdown of systems of internal control".

That is hard to square with the discovery that 61 posts were approved in the past year without funding being identified. Or with the fact that out of 113 workers who received essential car user allowance, 100 of them did not qualify. Or with the revelation that overtime requests were "institutionalised" and rarely challenged.

It all added up to several million pounds of public money being unaccounted for, no matter how the figures are calculated.

If that does not represent a major breakdown of systems of internal control, we shudder to think how bad mismanagement has to be before the Audit Commission really bares its teeth.

In our view, it is not a considerable exaggeration to suggest that the whole thing stinks.