Recommendation 15

As part of our previous examination of the cost tracker in May 2021, we concluded that government’s ability to achieve value for money was compromised during the pandemic by poor quality impact assessments and Accounting Officer assessments.33 To address this, we recommended that HM Treasury should review major COVID-related spending decisions to identify cases where decisions made had resulted in poor value for money. We recommended that it should report its findings to us by the end of 2021, and use the lessons learnt to produce guidance to minimise the risk of this happening in future.34 HM Treasury shared a copy of its response to our recommendations with us ahead of our evidence session. In its response, HM Treasury disagreed with our recommendation. While HM Treasury agreed that lessons learnt from the pandemic should inform its future approach to similar situations, it asserted that maintaining a proper distinction of roles between Accounting Officers, HM Treasury and the NAO was the best way to do this.35