Tag: Cabinet Office

The press release issued by the Cabinet Office on 10 August 2022.

As part of intensive work across Government, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Kit Malthouse today gathered ministers to accelerate work on tackling winter pressures.

The meeting saw ministers update on how they are mitigating the challenges people may face this winter.

Those assembled, who will meet regularly to discuss progress, included ministers and officials from HM Treasury, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department of Work and Pensions, the Department for Transport, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and the Department for Education. Senior officials, including the Chief Medical Officer, also attended.

Ministers discussed the rising cost of living, energy prices, NHS pressures and industrial action, as well as the comprehensive work being undertaken to mitigate their impact.

Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Kit Malthouse tasked departments with a range of priority actions to take forward to ensure smooth preparations for winter and report back on their progress.

Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Kit Malthouse said:

“The winter is always a challenge, but a particular difficulty this year is the number of problems coming together at the same time.

People are already feeling the squeeze of rising energy and fuel costs, and we are continuing to work on boosting our energy security to mitigate these. We also have the wider global inflation problem, which is further adding to the cost of living pressures. Our NHS is also still recovering from Covid-19 but is going into a winter where there may again be a rise of cases but also the usual seasonal flu.

My job is to test, challenge, and coordinate work across government, working with ministers and officials, as well as our partners and industry, to make sure we have a real grip of the issues and that they’re all addressed at the same time, making sure we protect people as much as possible from the challenges this winter will bring.”

The government has already taken a number of steps to mitigate the impact of the global spike in energy prices on the most vulnerable, these include allocating £37 billion of help for households including the £400 discount on energy bills this winter, and £1,200 of direct support to help with the cost of living.

Elsewhere, the Department of Health and Social Care and the UK Health Security Agency are further developing their plans for health resilience at pace, including to boost the NHS and Adult Social Care workforce ahead of winter – this includes a new DHSC taskforce for international recruitment.

The Department of Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy is also continuing to strengthen its contingency plans for winter energy security. Equinor and Centrica recently signed a major agreement to shore up Britain’s gas supply over the next three winters – adding around one billion cubic metres of gas per year to our supply.

The press release issued by the Cabinet Office on 2 August 2022.

Projects being funded include new approaches to tackling drug misuse in prisons and preventing violence against women and girls

The Evaluation Accelerator Fund will help test and evaluate new policies through intelligent data-driven insights

Fund run by the Evaluation Task Force forms part of a wider push from Ministers for officials to drive efficiencies in new ways

More than £12 million of funding has been awarded to teams tackling deep-rooted issues, such as drug misuse in prisons, violence against women and homelessness.

The funding, run by the Evaluation Task Force (ETF), is the latest demonstration of the government’s drive to ramp up the use of data as ministers work with officials to come up with innovative approaches to tackle age-old issues.

The 16 projects awarded money via the Evaluation Accelerator Fund will test and develop new data-driven approaches to policy-making and evaluation.

Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Kit Malthouse said:

“We must constantly agitate and innovate to improve public services, always eager to try smart solutions to complex, deep-rooted problems across our nation.”

Whether it’s tackling drug misuse in prisons or finding new ways to confront violence against women and girls, this £12 million investment will help explore and develop those solutions so we can improve the lives of people in all of society.

The Evaluation Task Force invited bids from teams across Whitehall and the What Works Network, asking people to pitch new and innovative ideas for testing and evaluating the impact of new policies or innovative approaches to delivering public services. The bids were focused on addressing the Prime Minister’s six core missions: Levelling Up, Net Zero, Education, Health, Justice and Jobs.

The bids also needed to demonstrate how they would provide robust evidence of financial or efficiency savings, tying in with the wider push within the government to ensure taxpayers are receiving the best possible value for their money.

One successful bid, which has received £933k from the Accelerator Fund, will see wastewater in prisons monitored and tested for illegal substances, making it easier for prison staff to identify who is holding supply and reduce drug abuse in jails. Another funded programme is run by the Centre for Homelessness Impact which received more than £200k to assess the effectiveness of a one-off payment to 18-year-olds leaving care on homelessness, employment and their involvement in criminal activity.

Around £1.7m also went towards work being undertaken by the College of Policing to identify promising interventions aimed at tackling violence against women and girls. Possible options include forensic tagging of perpetrators of crime in the Night Time Economy and the use of domestic abuse courts.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Simon Clarke said:

“Making the most of innovative ideas is one of the best ways we can continue to drive efficiency in the public sector, so it’s great to see funding going towards creative solutions to such important issues.”

Alongside cracking down on fraud and cutting the Government’s property bill, a focus on evidence-led policy will help us ensure that we are making the most of taxpayers’ hard-earned money.

The money has been awarded by the Evaluation Task Force, a joint Cabinet Office and HM Treasury unit, which was set up as part of a commitment in the Declaration on Government Reform to embed gold standard evaluation in government.

ETF is an efficiency-focused unit whose work regularly demonstrates value for taxpayers. The team are currently working with the Department for Work and Pensions to support their evaluation of labour market interventions including Kickstart and Restart. Evaluations of similar initiatives in the past have delivered returns of more than £3 for every £1 invested.

Up to this point, the Task Force has worked on 162 programmes with a value of £47.9bn. If a relentless focus on evaluation across the whole of government drives only a 1% efficiency, the ETF would already have saved around £480million through its work advising departments’ spending.

To find further information on the successful projects, please refer to the Evaluation Accelerator Fund page on GOV.UK.