Recommendation 12

The National Audit Office’s (NAO) report on evaluating government spending highlighted that much of government’s activity is either not evaluated robustly or not evaluated at all, despite the government’s commitment to evidence-based decision-making.22 In addition, there 17 C&AG’s Report, para 3.26-3.27 18 C&AG’s Report, para 3.27-3.29 19 C&AG’s Report, para 3.26 20 C&AG’s Report, Figure 6 21 C&AG’s Report, para 1.7 22 C&AG’s Report, Evaluating government spending, Session 2021–22, HC 860, December 2021, p 15 10 have been no assessments of the merits of private financing models relative to public procurement. Attempts have been made to remedy this issue, such as in 2021 when the government set up the Evaluation Task Force to support best practice in public policy evaluation across its departments. The following year, the Task Force published the evaluation strategies setting out how departments would undertake and learn from evaluation activity.23