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Public Accounts

That is a very important point with which I agree entirely. It is very frustrating. This morning, the National Audit Office report on the new computer system for offender management was published. That is another disastrous project. In answer to the right hon. Gentleman's question, we can help. I went out of my way on Monday in our Committee to congratulate Mrs. Lesley Strathie, who worked her way up from the bottom of the civil service and ran the Jobcentre Plus projects that we have helped to launch into the stratosphere. She is now chief executive of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs—an absolutely top job in Government. I think it is still the case that, with the exception of Mrs. Strathie—I may be wrong—there are no other permanent secretaries who have actually run projects. There is no great mystery about this. We should reward public servants for delivering projects on time and on budget. Regarding this disastrous thing that we looked at with the NAO this morning—there have been other such projects—nobody has ever been sacked; nobody's career, so far as we know, has ever been harmed. We have to reward civil servants who perform properly—yes, even with bonuses—and we have to be prepared to move sideways or even dismiss from their posts civil servants who do not deliver because, ultimately, the public suffer. In that regard, the intervention made by the right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig) was a very important one.