Recommendation 25

We were concerned that the Department should have identified these lessons when it supported businesses in the 2008 Financial Crisis. In 2010, the NAO’s report on the Department’s support to business during a recession concluded that the “impact [of the Department’s response to the financial crisis] could have been improved by thinking through how it might respond at an earlier stage”.65 We asked the Department whether more preparation could have been done for a situation such as the pandemic, and why there had not appeared to be the degree of forward planning or contingency planning that would have proved useful. The Department explained it was able to apply some contingency plans from its preparation for a no-deal exit from the European Union. However, neither the Department nor the Bank foresaw the desperate situation that the economy found itself in as a result of the pandemic, and they maintained that it was not something government would have planned for.66 The Bank, however, recognised that it would have been in a better starting position for delivering loans if it had invested in data management and IT infrastructure earlier.67 The Department acknowledged that ‘corporate memory’ was a challenge, and we welcome the Department’s planned evaluation of the Scheme to draw lessons learnt. However, neither the Department nor the Bank provided any plans on how it intends to share the lessons-learned across government.68