HM Treasury told us that joint bids at Spending Reviews was another way it had tried to encourage departments to pool resources and work together to generate benefits. It told us that at Spending Review 2021 it had identified departments that were most involved in cross-cutting shared outcomes and made clear it was expecting a joint-bid from them. It was disappointed that only 28 joint-bids were submitted in the last Spending Review despite its issuing guidance and training over 1,000 finance and policy officials on developing joint-bids. The joint-bids included the beating crime plan and the illegal drug strategy. HM Treasury recognised that more needs to be done to support and encourage joint-bids in the next Spending Review. It told us that Managing Public Money now sets out the benefits of submitting joint-bids, but acknowledged it needed to do more to communicate these benefits and support departments in submitting joint-bids.35 Evaluating cross-government working