Recommendation 16

We therefore asked HM Treasury what it was doing to identify and address some of the issues raised by our and the NAO’s work examining the response to the pandemic, for example around the trade-offs between acting at speed and ensuring value-for- money.36 HM Treasury said that, although it had disagreed with our recommendation, it agreed that it should review major COVID-related spending decisions and “consider very carefully value for money”.37 It told us that it did not intend to carry out a full formal audit of all COVIDrelated expenditure and then reach a value-for-money judgement on all programmes. However, when we asked whether there was a process for assessing previous spending decisions and learning from them, it told us that ahead of new funding decisions, for example on NHS Test and Trace and the vaccines programme, it reviewed and learned lessons from departments’ previous spending.38