We asked the Department how it balances trade-offs when making decisions about support, and how it makes this explicit. Officials told us that it assesses interventions using HM Treasury’s five principles. Proposals are then put to Ministers who make decisions based on advice from the Department and their own understanding of what the trade-offs should be. HM Treasury told us it would want to look at the best range of evidence in making an overall assessment, and that it would vary from policy to policy. In the case of the forthcoming Industrial Strategy, the principal objective is growth, but it also has other objectives, including net zero, security, resilience and regional impact. The Treasury said it would expect the forthcoming Industrial Strategy document to say more about the methodology, and how the government made such trade-offs.36