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Mrs. Angela Browning (Tiverton and Honiton): I thank the right hon. Lady for making her statement available to me earlier today.
As the right hon. Lady will know, the Government inherited a clear target: in the public sector, including Government Departments, the criteria for 2000 compliance were to be met by December 1998. It is worrying, therefore, that in June 1999 we should still be receiving reports of instances in which Government and public agencies have yet to comply with those criteria--although I accept that the right hon. Lady's report was upbeat in comparison with some of her previous reports.
I am glad that the right hon. Lady has now decided to report on a monthly rather than a quarterly basis, as we have now entered the last six months of the year, but how will that be dealt with? When the House is sitting, will the right hon. Lady continue to report from the Dispatch Box? How will the matter be handled over the long summer recess? When the House reconvenes in October, we shall be close to the target date.
Will the right hon. Lady comment on some of the concerns that she herself identified? Will she in particular respond to the concern about the Inland Revenue and National Insurance Contributions Office? There is already concern about the failure of NIRS2--the national insurance recording system--which is causing much distress to many people, particularly those who are seeking to draw their state retirement pension. Has she been able to identify how that might be compounded if that Department does not meet its target, or to make the necessary arrangements? Those who wish to claim disability benefits for the first time, often as a result of injury and accident, will be particularly distressed if that facility is under pressure.
The statement referred to the Ministry of Defence. It recognised that, despite the huge demands of the war in Kosovo, the MOD has made progress, but, in December 1998, the MOD put out a press release about RAF aircraft being mission capable. It said that the RAF would be compliant in that regard by 31 May this year. Was that target met? The right hon. Lady has expressed concern about some areas in the MOD. How will those be affected by its new commitments in respect of the continuing presence of British forces in Kosovo and the Balkans generally?
The right hon. Lady will be aware that, in the fourth report, Britain was first in the league of European countries that were already undertaking compliance preparations for 2000, but that, by the fifth report, Britain had slipped to eighth. Is she able to tell the House that the position has been restored and that the progress that she has mentioned in her statement means that we are back at the top of the league, above our competitors and partners elsewhere in the world?
The right hon. Lady mentioned that she hoped that staff in Government Departments would be retained by those Departments to see their work through, but what
flexibility is there in those Departments? If a particular Department needs more assistance to meet its target date, will there be some transfer of key staff to help it to do so?
I ask one additional thing--and it is relevant. The document entitled "The Millennium Bug: Facts Not Fiction", which has been distributed to every household, is easy to read and is designed to help to answer questions from consumers about domestic matters relating to the millennium bug. It gives an Action 2000 website for further information for the public. It also gives a telephone number, a helpline.
Is the right hon. Lady aware that, when members of the public telephone that helpline--0845 601 2000--there is no one to answer the telephone? The line simply refers them to the website address that is already printed in the document. Clearly, many people, particularly elderly people who are worried about a hospital operation, for example, or people who are worried about whether they should travel on an aircraft, want to talk to someone about what is happening. If they do not have access to a website, the helpline will be pretty ineffective.
Mrs. Beckett:
First, I welcome the hon. Lady to her new responsibilities; I am sure that she is particularly delighted with them in respect of the millennium bug. May I take this opportunity to offer her and the new Front-Bench team a briefing on much of the detail of millennium bug matters, which I hope will be helpful to her, and which we are happy to give to all hon. Members?
The hon. Lady said that we inherited a compliance target of December 1998. That is true, but--with no disrespect to her, because she is new to these responsibilities--a target was about all that we did inherit. We inherited a rather small organisation with a very small budget of £500,000 and the job of raising awareness, but not much else.
One feature of this particular delightful issue is that, as time goes by, everyone realises that the problems caused by millennium compliance are more complex than had been anticipated. I am pleased to see that the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Atkinson) is nodding, as he is very familiar with the issues.
The problems, therefore, are taking longer to deal with than had been anticipated. Moreover, people who had not shown sufficient foresight are finding that the problems are costing more to deal with than they had thought. Therefore, although we certainly hoped to meet the December 1998 target, we are doing much more than people anticipated would have to be done when the original targets were set.
I confirm that I shall come to the Dispatch Box to make the quarterly statement, unless we receive strong representations to the effect that no one wants to hear anything more about the issue. Over the summer recess, we plan to make information available, perhaps in the Library and on the internet. However, if the hon. Lady or other Opposition Members have other views on how best to make information available to Members, perhaps in a circular, I should be more than happy to listen and perhaps to take them on board.
The concern that has, quite rightly, been expressed about the Inland Revenue relates to a number of specific systems with later delivery dates. However, the majority of remedial work being done for the Revenue has
been completed, and much of what has been fixed is already running live. Much work has been done in addressing those issues.
NIRS2 was built to be 2000 compliant, and the work that is still being done is to test interfaces with other systems. The testing that has been done to date has not revealed significant problems, and we hope that that will continue to be the case.
Ministry of Defence front-line units are expected to be compliant by late summer, and much more work has been done in addressing compliance issues--in both the RAF and in the other services--than it was feared had been done. I believe that the hon. Lady's concerns on those issues have been dealt with.
The hon. Lady also asked about the United Kingdom's place in league table reports. I am not up to speed with the latest report--there may not yet be an updated one--but I fear that they are pretty meaningless. In many cases, international--not United Kingdom--league tables are based on what is said by those who are responsible for the matter in a particular country, and, frankly, the less they know about millennium bug problems, the more likely they are to say that they have no difficulties and the higher up in the league table they go. Therefore, such information is not terribly useful, and I cannot enlighten her on the latest results.
We are endeavouring to ensure that any problems are dealt with by using Government staff resources. Until now, we have not found it necessary to transfer people to deal with outstanding problems, and we hope and intend that it will not be necessary to do so.
The booklet helpline is intended principally to allow people to order more copies of the booklet. However, the hon. Lady has made the important point that the booklet may lead people to conclude that wider information is available. We shall give some thought to the matter. Nevertheless, I thank her for her welcoming the booklet itself.
Mr. Brian White (Milton Keynes, North-East):
I congratulate the Government on the very encouraging progress made on the issue by most Departments. Nevertheless, I was worried by one comment made by the Leader of the House--about some systems being completed by 30 September 1999. The fact is that 9 September 1999 is a critical date, as it will be used by many systems to designate the end of a file. I am concerned that the issue has not been fully addressed, and hope that the next report will tell us the extent to which it has been.
Two other points were not dealt with in the report. First--I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Defence are here--the rusting ex-Soviet Arctic fleet had non-compliant software. It is still a major danger. Now that the war in Kosovo is over, can we renew our efforts to exchange information with the Russians to try to ensure that it is not a danger by the end of this year? Lastly, just-in-time systems are a particular problem for third-world countries. In a global economy, we are only as good as the weakest link. How has our support for third-world countries been going?
Mrs. Beckett:
I thank my hon. Friend, who takes a great interest in these matters. Thought has been given to
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