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Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Indeed so. I accept that entirely. There are other areas to focus on, the first of which I have touched on. When people define what they are doing, the project management must be robust in resisting change. To permit constant adjustment in a major project builds risk every time that it happens, and I see that mistake repeated endlessly in such systems and process change projects. The final point I want to make is that change management is a skill, and when we appoint people to lead programmes of major change, we must be aware of the challenges and the tasks that they face. I cannot believe that enough thought was given to the capabilities of the individuals who were asked to lead this project when they were appointed. These are not trivial tasks of normal, ongoing senior management; they require a level of human leadership, technology awareness and project management that very few people have, and those mistakes were innate to the project right from the beginning.