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Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

In my sad experience, people in the upper echelons of the civil service, and to an extent in local government, and politicians who are elected to those various organisations, tend to have a less than complete appreciation of the potential and detail of the world of ICT. In such an environment, in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king. The ““king”” who is often chosen to be a consultant or to be directly responsible for a complex large-scale project can disappoint in many ways, because people do not know what they are looking for. They grasp at straws. They are susceptible to the blandishments of the snake-oil salesmen who populate the large-scale software package market. That is a pity. The hon. Gentleman’s own Government were equally guilty of that before 1997, and during the past 10 years we have shown that we are not immune to the same problems.