Recommendation 9

We asked whether any cash analysis was done in 2012 as to whether the proposed scheme would save any money—it was assumed by the Department that it might. The Department confirmed that there is no accurate basis for estimating the amount of savings that would give a number that that the Department would be confident in, but given the level of take-up in the scheme, any savings would be considerably lower than the original £100 million estimate. The £100 million was clearly a large overestimate of what happened in practice, because the take-up was considerably lower.10 8 Qq 8–9; C&AG’s Report, para 21 9 Qq 18–20 10 Qq 18, 29–31 The pharmacy early payment and salary advance schemes in the NHS 11 2 Contractor risk assessment and evaluation Conflicts of interest