Recommendation 14

We noted that the NAO report stated that it was important that the Cabinet Office had a tighter definition of what a saving is, and that this needed to be consistently applied and have the same methodology and baseline. In its July 2023 report on the savings achieved, the Cabinet Office noted that the savings reported related to central government functional teams – the parts of functions which sit in the centre of government, rather than within 17 Qq 2, 4, 8, 28; C&AG’s Report paras 4, 6–7, 1.6–1.7, 1.9–1.10, 2.2 18 Qq 2, 39 19 C&AG’s Report, paras 10, 1.8–1.10, 2.4, 2.9 12 Cabinet Office functional savings departments. But in its technical notes to the report, it stated that around £1 billion of the Counter-Fraud savings were delivered by department-led activities supported by the central function, leading to inconsistency in what savings are included in the £4.4 billion figure.20