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Public Sector: IT Projects

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Lucas for securing this debate. He referred to three matters which struck a chord with me straight away: the need to strengthen the Civil Service, the need for greater openness, and the fact that the gateway reviews should be held in public. I accept all those points as I hope the Minister will when he responds. At the end of the day, whatever projects are selected, the Minister overseeing them must take responsibility for their delivery. Ministers must be accountable. In relation to Defra, my own topic, we in this House know that the noble Lord, Lord Bach, to his cost, was the one who took the fall. In the other House, the then Secretary of State, Margaret Beckett, whose idea it was to move to the new system, was not sacked but promoted to Foreign Secretary. That is not a satisfactory situation. In a Written Answer to my noble friend Lord Northesk, the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, stated that, "““public sector annual IT expenditure was £12.4 billion for 2005-06””.—[Official Report, 5/6/07; col. WA 188.]" Annual running costs on operational systems and processes are £1.6 billion. I should be grateful if the Minister would confirm that. I have a number of questions about the efficacyof this level of expenditure. First, how many of the systems developed within that expenditure are working successfully and how many required remedial work between being signed on and signed off?How many of the systems developed within that expenditure are doing the work they were intended to do to a 98 per cent level of accuracy? I am not so involved with complaints about the DWP, but I receive the CAB monthly bulletin and from time to time have to pass queries to the right quarters. Therefore, I am aware that the data surrounding child and working family tax credits, both of which were developed relatively recently, are subject to arbitrary change that is often put down to ““computer error””. Can the Minister clarify whether that is the case or whether changes were introduced to the original specification? Enormous changes have taken place in Defra. The move away from food subsidies to the single farm payment constitutes the biggest challenge and change that the farming community has experienced in recent years. Therefore, it is not surprising that I have submitted a bevy of Written and Oral Questions, some of which I draw to the Minister’s attention. Back in January I asked: "““Who was responsible for drawing up and agreeing the specifications against which contractors, whether internal or external, worked to set up the information technology systems used for the single farm payments by the Rural Payments Agency””." The Answer was: "““The original specification was intended to replace the software supporting the CAP schemes at that time and new elements such as a rural land register and integrated customer register””.—[Official Report, 23/1/07; col. WA 231.]" It became clear that all was not well. The RPA established a CAP reform implementation project, which included representatives of the Defra policy team negotiating the regulatory changes. That in turn led to major changes to the specification for that IT work, which was already under way. The changes involved additional tenders to extract data from legacy systems so that they could be used to inform customers about their historical claims and support the migration of the data into the Accenture-built systems. How many changes were made from the original specifications? In December 2006, I asked how many permanent staff were involved in setting up and running the IT system. The answer was 184. The RPA had contracted Accenture to develop its IT systems, required under the change programme. That covers development support and ongoing maintenance for the system. The total cost of the contract was expected to be £55.4 million over seven years. Did that include the consultants who were also involved? The noble Lord, Lord Livsey of Talgarth, asked a Question in October 2006 on the RPA. Later, I asked the Minister whether he accepted the findings of the National Audit Office that there were no checks, matrices or proper management in the arrangements for bringing in the single farm payment. I gavehim some examples. The Accenture contract was estimated in November 2003 as being worth£27.5 million, but it turned out by March 2006 to be worth £50 million. The land register contract was estimated at £6.8 million but eventually turnedout to be £16 million. The customer communications contract, originally estimated in 2003 at £1.2 million, turned out to be £9.8 million. That is not satisfactory. When the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, responded to my question, he started by saying: "““My Lords, this is not a happy tale””.—[Official Report, 30/10/06; col. 8.]" Clearly it is not. I moved on to look at the IT consultancy that Natural England is using. It was asked to producea communications strategy, and it went out to consultation, which cost a mere £69,000, not a lot of money. However, have the information that it came up with and the findings that it recommended been adopted, or has £69,000 been wasted? I had a reply to a Question about the project Enabling IT system, which was awarded in the financial year 2004-05 in respect of some £850 million. I asked how much of that was spent from 2004-05 to 2006-07. The answer was that in 2004-05 some £28.26 million was spent; in 2005-06 some £111.12 million was spent and in 2006-07 some £147.56 million was spent. The note at the end of the Answer from the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said: "““The outturn costs have been higher than the initial estimated yearly costs due to the increased demand for IBM services by projects in delivering Defra’s strategic objectives””.—[Official Report, 13/6/07; col. WA 257.]" That is not a happy tale, and I wonder whether other departments have struggled equally with the minutiae that have made these systems not work as they should have done. Finally, when there is failure in a department, why are bonuses then paid to its employees? How many of those involved in the Rural Payments Agency were beneficiaries of bonuses for the years in which that department failed? It is a tale of incompetence, andI am only sorry to have to reflect it again this afternoon.