Recommendation 5

Both programmes succeeded in part due to cross-government working and the expertise of key individuals involved. It is clear that both programmes were successful in part due to the involvement of different government departments that were best placed to carry out specific functions, and the involvement of people with the right skills—something that is not always the case with the programmes we report on. For example, the Department for Health & Social Care was able to secure orders relatively quickly at a reasonable cost due to a significant effort from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Trade in China, which had a better knowledge of the local market. Similarly, Cabinet Office used the Ministry of Defence’s Cost and Assurance Analysis Service to ensure that suppliers’ costs were reasonable. Cabinet Office also drew on external expertise where required. The government was fortunate that its Chief Commercial Officer, who led the ventilator challenge, had a background in running engineering and product development companies and was therefore well placed to develop and initiate the programme. The ‘technical design authority’, put in place to support decision making as part of the ventilator challenge, drew on the expertise of NHS clinicians, the Medical and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and PA consulting (acting as a programme manager) in addition to other government departments including the Department for Business Energy & Industrial Strategy and the Ministry of Defence. Recommendation: The Cabinet Office should set out, as part of its Treasury Minute response, what lessons it has learnt from these programmes for how government will, in future, ensure that it identifies the skills it needs, where these skills are, and how it will get them in place quickly when a rapid response is required.