Recommendation 9

The Cabinet Office recognises that other challenges government faces, such as the response to Covid-19, will also require cross-government working, working at pace, or working in new ways.18 The Cabinet Office feels that it has learnt a lot from EU Exit and put it into a practice via a process of continuous improvement, which has allowed it to apply lessons “every week and every month”.19 The Cabinet Office gave examples of how this was working operationally, such as in getting businesses to apply for Economic Operators Registration and Identification (EORI) numbers, and when considering how to redistribute the responsibilities of the Department for Exiting the EU.20 The Cabinet Office confirmed that it has no plans to conduct a formal review of the preparations to set out what it can learn for the future.21 Instead, it is relying on the National Audit Office’s 8 Q 19; C&AG’s Report, para 19 9 Qq 19, 57–58; C&AG’s Report, para 25 10 Q 20 11 Qq 19–20; C&AG’s Report, para 23 12 Qq 80–81; C&AG’s Report, para 28 13 Q 19 14 Q 4; C&AG’s Report, para 21 15 Qq 4, 20, 44, 6 16 Q 45 17 Q 19, 110 18 Q 48 19 Qq 36, 38 20 Q 39 21 Q 37 Whitehall preparations for EU Exit 11 work to identify lessons. The Cabinet Office described a process of comparing the National Audit Office’s recommendations to current practice in the key areas of decision-making, innovation, information-sharing and considerable possible future scenarios. The Cabinet Office highlighted some specific actions which had been taken as a result, including expedited processes in the Treasury which have been used to provide additional funding for the border, sharing assumptions for the reasonable worst-case scenario for disruption at the short Channel crossings, and developing plans for the structures and resource flows needed to cope with the combination of EU Exit, Covid-19 and other external factors.22 We recognise the value of taking action quickly via continuous improvement activity and are pleased that the Cabine