We should bear in mind that 6.5 million visitors enjoyed their time at the Dome

Culture Department spokesman

It opened up for the first time the risk of voted money rather than National Lottery money being for the Dome project in Greenwich, south London, according to the report.

The committee said: "In our view, the indemnity was outside the normal course of business and exposed the public purse to expenditure of such a nature and size that Parliament should have been notified."

But the Culture Department and the Treasury did not report their actions to Parliament as they considered an indemnity was already in place, it was claimed.

The report added: "If that is so, we find it surprising that no reference to such an existing indemnity was made in the letter which the department sent to the (NMEC) directors."

Key findings

Among the other key findings of the report were:

• The organisational arrangements for the Dome project were elaborate and complex and "gave rise to confusion and disagreement".

• The internal structure of NMEC was not ideally suited to the task.

• Not until "late in the day" did NMEC, the Culture Department and the Millennium Commission face up to the financial problems of the project.

• In approving the Dome target of 12 million admission-paying visitors, the Millennium Commissioners went against the advice of their own staff who recommended planning on the basis of eight million.

• Many more commercial opportunities could have been exploited if the marketing arrangements had been properly planned and managed.

• Delays in fitting out the Dome meant few opportunities for trial running and NMEC lacked senior staff with experience of running a large visitor attraction.

• The effectiveness of marketing was constrained by uncertainty about the Dome's contents.

• The company's forecast for sponsorship income was too ambitious and there was no clear plan of how the parties would respond to a shortfall in income.

• NMEC failed to establish a "sufficiently robust regime of financial management", with its finance team overstretched for most of 2000.