Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, with reference to the internal review by Geoff Mulgan published on 21 August 2014 on NESTA support for the Big Society Network, under what criteria it was decided to make a request to NESTA to support (a) the Big Society Network and (b) other similar projects.

Whilst NESTA's internal review highlights that Lord Wei, among others, made a request suggesting that they consider various initiatives, no formal instruction from Government was made. NESTA’s internal review is also clear that this was not an instruction from the Government. Lord Wei was not a Government Minister.

We constantly keep procedures and policies under review. In this instance, NESTA’s internal review did not highlight anything of relevance in this regard.

Lord Wei did not request that that NESTA fund any organisations and, therefore, there is no such correspondence.