Ms Niamh Callaghan:

The switch model is useful in terms of what it can model. I would refer to the working family payment and the national childcare scheme. However, in the last budget there were announcements around a new funding stream for childcare, which is obviously not captured within the model. Considerable work, separate from the switch model, is done on social impact analysis, which examines different schemes in terms of gender breakdown, regional breakdown and age breakdown. Individual schemes are analysed using other methodologies. Switch can only take account of tax on certain expenditure measures but we spend a great deal of money on many other different services, which are delivered in a different way, and we need to find better ways to capture that. The social impact assessment and the spending reviews we undertake in the Department and across the Civil Service are also a key input into trying to answer some of these questions.