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Public Accounts

I shall steer away from those rip tides, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I hope that the Exchequer Secretary will think about that issue, because I know that other Members, including the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams), are concerned about it. I shall make one other point before concluding. The Public Accounts Committee's 20th report on the national programme for IT stated on page viii:"““We are concerned in particular that iSOFT's flagship software product, 'Lorenzo'—on which three fifths of the Programme depends—is not yet available despite statements by the company in its 2005 Annual report that the product was available from early 2004.””" The software company said that the product would be available, but still it was not. Paragraph 33 of the Treasury response stated:"““The Lorenzo product is expected to be available during 2008.””" I will not dwell on the issue, because I am a bit bored with making well-researched and informed speeches on the national programme for IT in the health service, only for Ministers to say things that are manifest nonsense. I shall not encourage the Exchequer Secretary to say something that is probably not true; all I ask is that she, or one of her colleagues, will come to the House to inform us when the Lorenzo product becomes available. I do not think that paragraph 33 is true; time will tell us that. I said that I would refer only to paragraph 33, but I should also refer to recommendation 4, one of the most important of our report. It stated:"““In view of the slippage in the deployment of local systems, the Department should also commission an urgent independent review of the performance of Local Service Providers against their contractual obligations.””" The purpose of that recommendation was to help the Treasury and central Government in their battle against computer contractors. Such an independent review would show that the local service providers had failed in respect of a whole panoply of contractual obligations into which they had entered, and make it much easier to unravel the contracts without huge cost to the taxpayer.