Recommendation 9

The Departments told us that in the longer-term they were interested in comparing outcomes from the schemes in the UK with other countries, as many other developed countries ran similar schemes but designed them in slightly different ways. For example, the Departments explained that they would like to look at whether they should have been more prepared to tolerate error and fraud by accepting self-certification of claims as some countries did. But the Departments told us that they had no way of comparing outcomes, yet as other countries had not published details about their schemes such as evaluations or measurements of error and fraud. They also told us the absence of published material did not mean that other countries did not have insights, but that they were not currently accessible and they could not guarantee that they would have been able to undertake international comparisons by the time of the final evaluations in 2023.13 The Departments’ data to assess need and verify claims