HM Treasury has, over the last few months, started to identify items of spending that are COVID-related, and designate them as such.9 It described how for some areas of expenditure it is straightforward to do so, for example, the business support grant schemes. For other areas, it is not possible to categorise expenditure as COVID-driven or not, for example, spending in the NHS – it is possible to identify the net increase in spend, but not how much of that is driven by COVID-19. Similarly, for universal credit spending, the number and amount of universal credit claims is known, but individual claims are not categorised as resulting from the impact of COVID-19 or otherwise.10 Completeness of departmental data