Recommendation 7

Government has not yet identified the lessons it will take from its accreditation of Greensill or from its COVID-19 business support schemes. Our work over the last 18 months has shown that the scale and nature of the COVID-19 pandemic and the government response are unprecedented in recent history and there is much that government can learn to improve both its ability to respond to emergencies and its business-as-usual service delivery. The Bank’s accreditation of Greensill has highlighted wider lessons about Government’s response to the pandemic, including the need to balance delivering at speed with managing risk, which we have previously reported on. The Bank intends to evaluate its COVID-19 business support schemes to determine whether there are lessons it can learn. It accepts that discussions with international counterparts that have been delivering similar schemes, such as development banks, would be a fruitful theme. The Treasury and the Department similarly intend to review the results of the various inquiries on Greensill’s interaction with Government before drawing any conclusions. However, Government is yet to set out its plans for identifying and applying the lessons in order Lessons from Greensill Capital: accreditation to business support schemes 9 to prevent another situation like Greensill from occurring and improve its ability to respond to future emergencies and economic shocks. We are concerned that if Government does not swiftly formalise this lessons-learned exercise, or conduct it soon enough, it risks losing institutional memory and the necessary lessons will not be learned. Recommendation: The Treasury, the Department and the Bank should jointly work to identify the lessons that need to be learned from its COVID-19 business support schemes and Greensill’s accreditation in particular. By July 2022 they should publish a full lessons-learned report on these schemes, outlining how each lesson will be implemented. This will enable it to be bette