Recommendation 10

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