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Public Sector: IT Projects

My Lords, the House is immensely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for initiating the debate. It has been wide-ranging, covering particular examples of public spending in different sectors and departments. In drawing a conclusion on these Benches, I shall not attempt to touch on all that has been said. The debate has had a number of important themes. The first was taken up by the noble Lord, Lord Birt, who pointed out the important role now played by information technology in the provision of public services and the benefits already felt in areas such as benefits payment, healthcare provision, to which I will return, and, as my noble friend Lady Harris said, protecting the public. There are other areas which have not been mentioned where the public and government interact in ways that would not have been possible without this huge expansion, such as obtaining a driving licence and even seeking advice on the suitability of overseas holidays. The growth of this business of government has resulted in institutional changes within the Government themselves. A Cabinet Minister, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, chairs a Cabinet sub-committee, and new offices have been established to oversee this work. I raise en passant the question whether Parliament itself has reorganised its operations adequately to maintain a continuing review of this work so as to enable us to consider in a balanced and deliberate way what needs to be done. It has to be said that some of the general principles enunciated in this debate seem somewhat contradictory. For example, the point that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, made in his opening speech about the danger of placing undue emphasis on centralisation counters, to some extent, the view of the Office of Government Commerce, which has been talking about cross-departmental co-ordination and, "““encouraging public sector organisations to work together in order to act as a better co-ordinated and joined-up client””." I do not doubt that there is much to be said on both sides of that argument, but it illustrates the difficulty of attempting to cover such a subject in one short debate. The basis of the present strategy appears to be the November 2005 paper Transformational Government: Enabled by Technology, which espouses an objective to which no one could take exception: that the policy should be devised around the needs of the citizen not the provider. But what follows from that is much less clear. It is certain that we will have to see new systems introduced from time to time and that there will be a need to redesign business processes and for a marriage of new and older IT systems. Each of these raises different problems, and they are not easy. We have been advised by the Public Accounts Committee that 120 mission-critical or high-risk IT programmes and projects are in train across United Kingdom central civil government at this time, each of which no doubt merits close consideration. The noble Lord, Lord Birt, helpfully pointed to the need to focus on the delivery of IT-enabled business change and said that it was a major challenge. It undoubtedly is, and not just for central government, but, because of public expenditure considerations, that is what we are focusing on. The expenditure involved is simply enormous: it appears to be running at £14 billion per annum. That calls for a response from Parliament on a continuing, considered basis and possibly even a restructuring of our own committees to do justice to our scrutiny requirements. The possibility of different views on what is happening was well illustrated by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Warner, about expenditure in the National Health Service. He seemed particularly anxious, perhaps from a partisan point of view, to emphasise that his own record in these matterswas beyond criticism and that the Conservative Opposition had got into the trenches on this issue. That is to oversimplify the actuality. The Public Accounts Committee recently produced a balanced report on NHS spending and, as the noble Earl, Lord Howe, pointed out, drew attention to the fact that there was no firm implementation date for the electronic patient records programme. At present, it appears to be two years behind schedule. The report made it clear also that the department has not kepta detailed record of overall expenditure on the programme and that the estimates of total cost have ranged from £6.2 billion to £20 billion. With the greatest respect to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, I do not think that partisanship is appropriate in looking at these facts. I am trying to confine my remarks to enable the Minister to reply to the full spread of the issues raised. Reference was made to stability within departments, particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. We have noticed the departure of Richard Granger this week. There will be speculation about why he has gone after five years, when the programme is so far from complete. We have noticed also the departure of James Hall from the national programme for IT in the National Health Service and his being parachuted into the Home Office to take over the Identity and Passport Service, which is a strange translation. The loss of three key suppliers, Accenture, IDX and ComMedica, is also worthy of comment and examination. In a debate of this kind, we do best to look at the structure of future consideration of these questions. I am bound to say that I do not believe it is black and white. I have no doubt of the great value flowing to the public from IT, but the levels of expenditure are so massive and the risk of the public purse being drained of taxpayers’ money so clear that transparency, which the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, called for, is important in making sure not only that we obtain value for money in short-term contracts but also that the whole process is better understood by those employed to work it.