a The Department's plans for cost reduction during the spending review period were based on a pragmatic bottom-up examination of spending to identify options within identified constraints. The Department should continue its work to take a more holistic view of the whole Department and how it might deliver its objectives at a lower cost, considering issues such as the balance between:
• investment and maintaining transport infrastructure; and
• different modes of transport.
b For the first three years of the spending review period, the Department could only seek savings from Network Rail by negotiation, even though it accounted for £10.7 billion of the Department's budgets. In its response to the McNulty review, the Department should seek:
• more transparency over Network Rail's costs and outputs; and
• more flexible mechanisms for returning savings to the Department within a five year funding period.