Recommendation 2

The Department has a weak and unconvincing justification for not publishing any information on the process it followed, which does not vindicate its lack of transparency. The Department says that it did not reveal the detail behind its selection of towns so as not to raise local expectations about an unsuccessful town’s likelihood of success in the forthcoming competitive round, and so as not to distort local behaviour to enhance their likelihood of success, despite at that stage not yet having decided which towns would be eligible for the competitive round or how it would be conducted. The Department’s lack of transparency fuelled accusations of political bias in the selection process, and potentially is also a risk to the Civil Service’s reputation for impartiality. The Department exacerbated concerns by misrepresenting the National Audit Office’s report in statements to the press which said that the report concluded the selection process had been ‘robust’; when the report includes no such statement. Now the NAO has published the underlying information used by the Department’s officials to score towns, aspects of it are particularly interesting and we are pleased the Department has agreed to write to us with more detail on how the Department calculated the town-level scores, in particular around the risks from a no-deal Brexit. Recommendation: To avoid accusations that government is selecting towns for political reasons, the Department should be upfront and transparent about how it reaches funding decisions as the Towns Fund progresses, particularly the planned competitive round. The principle of openness and transparency should extend across the whole of government when it is selecting some local areas, but not others, to benefit from taxpayers’ money. 6 Selecting towns for the Towns Fund