Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 10
10
Accepted
Cabinet Office recognises functional savings measurement lacks consistency and comprehensiveness across different functions
Conclusion
The Cabinet Office told us that while it thought that the reported savings figures were “pretty robust”, it recognised that the figures could be more comprehensive and more consistent in the measurement of savings. The Cabinet Office recognised the need for consistent methodologies for calculating the savings achieved by functions, but asserted that these did not need to be identical because “the ways in which we actually achieve the savings across the different functions are genuinely different”. When asked which functions were making the most efficiencies, the Cabinet Office told us that the functions provided a lot of value, but that while some of that could be best described by savings, this was not the case for all functions, such as Security.16 12 Q 4; C&AG’s Report para 10, 12, 1.9–1.10, 2.3 13 Q 4 14 Q 68 ; C&AG’s Report para 3.14 15 C&AG’s Report paras 12–15, 2.3, 2.7–2.12 16 Qq 2, 6, 41 Cabinet Office functional savings 11 2 Completeness of the functional savings reported Capturing the performance of the functions
Government Response Summary
The government agrees with the conclusion and states that the Government Efficiency Framework (GEF) will be adopted by departments and functions by December 2025 to ensure consistency in measuring and reporting efficiency savings.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
3.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: by December 2025 3.2 The functions’ respective methodologies for measuring and reporting efficiency savings reflect the diversity of functional activity undertaken in their respective areas. These methods range from release of cash (commercial), efficiencies baselined against projected scenarios (communications), fraud prevention, detection and recovery (counter fraud) to cash collected over business as usual (debt). 3.3 The GEF will drive consistency in the way that government departments measure and report efficiencies. The GEF sets out what efficiency is, how it should be categorised, and best practice in gathering high quality information to measure and report efficiencies. 3.4 The Cabinet Office and HMT are working closely together as the GEF is adopted by departments and functions. 3.5 Through the adoption of the GEF, all efficiencies will be required to be reconcilable to departmental budgets and as such will avoid double counting of efficiencies by requiring common and comparable baselines.