Speeches by Hall.

“One of the issues I hear about is that a lot of the information is very siloed at the moment—it is based in the Department and not cross-departmental. Is that going to be changed down the line? It would obviously cut down a lot of time, for instance.”

“With a culture change this significant, having that wraparound support is going to be absolutely critical.”

“And if things are not quite going the way that had been planned, I guess you also have that financial support—that knowledge—to say, “Let’s sit down again and look at how things can be done a little bit differently and tweak them.” Is that how you are actively doing it? Rather than coming up with a plan and then disapp…”

“Yes.”

“In terms of helping to persuade Departments to provide support, how do you foresee that happening?”

“Is setting productivity targets, for instance, something that you foresee that support doing, focusing people’s minds? Also, this is a big culture change for Departments. Having that financial expertise, do you foresee that being a challenge—a barrier—or is it possible? It is a big thing to change.”

“Me again. I want to look at the finance role. We have already established that the finance role is incredibly important in supporting Departments and ensuring that they take the issues that we have discussed today seriously. Andrew, my question to you is: what support do those delivering services within Departments nee…”

“That is what needs to be monitored. I fear that that has not been monitored in the past, or not as closely as it could have been, and that is why we are at this point.”

“Will it be monitored quite closely?”

“Sorry to interrupt—it is great that the information is going to be disseminated, but lots of information is disseminated. Where is the accountability? How do we know that people are actively listening and acting on this?”

“Again, it comes down to support of the Departments. You have mentioned the work going on with the legacy systems, but will there be a hands-on level of support for all the Departments going through these processes? Will you ask them, “Have you considered this area or this area?” and provide that support?”

“A lot of the transformation work and efficiencies are around AI. We will not be able to do any of that while we have legacy systems in place that are not giving us the good data we need to move forwards.”

“Given that not everyone has experience in this area, do you think that people understand where there are issues and where there could be wastage? For instance, we talk about legacy systems at a lot of our hearings. To me, it feels a bit of a mire—a bit of a jungle. There seems to be a lack of ownership, and people do n…”

“I guess it comes down to ownership—to who is responsible for driving this forwards—and monitoring. You mentioned best practice and benchmarking on an annual basis, but would it not be better to do it at an active management level, working alongside and supporting Departments as much as possible? A lot of Departments do…”

“Tim and Farhad, how likely is it to affect you?”

“You are confident that that sharing will happen. I know that sometimes there are issues with sharing best practice.”

“We are not talking small figures here. The figure I just quoted was £223 million.”

“I suppose this is where improved monitoring come in.”

“James, how will the Treasury help Government bodies manage the persistent deficits and surpluses more proactively in the future? You said you are aware of these things.”

“What does “actively manage” mean?”