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Millennium Compliance
1.8 pm
The President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mrs. Margaret Beckett): I am announcing today the results of the October monthly review of progress in tackling the millennium bug across government. The completed questionnaires will all be placed in the Libraries of the House and published on the internet as usual. The report follows those that Members have received in writing from my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office and myself during the recess. I will also be reporting on preparedness across the national infrastructure, including key services delivered by the wider public sector. I have also informed the House of information published during the recess, in answer to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble).
I am pleased to report that very good progress has been made by Government Departments and agencies in tackling the bug since I last reported on the Floor of the House. The latest returns show that work on more than 99 per cent. of business-critical systems has now been completed. That means that systems have been fixed, tested and successfully put back into operation. However, work on a few business-critical systems still remainsto be completed. Three organisations report some completion dates in November and December: the Ministry of Defence, the Office for National Statistics and the Planning Inspectorate.
The Ministry of Defence's very large and complex programme is close to completion. Ninety-eight per cent. of critical systems have been made compliant and all front-line systems are ready. Robust and comprehensive continuity plans have been developed and tested.
The Office for National Statistics has experienced a delay in the roll-out of new compliant registration software to register offices in England and Wales. The roll-out in England is due to finish by the end of this month, except for register offices in one county--Hampshire--which has requested a delay until November to fit in with its operational plans. The roll-out is not scheduled to finish until mid-November in Wales, but in all these cases, robust and tested business continuity plans are already in place.
The planning inspectorate has completed 90 per cent. of work on its business-critical systems and is on target to finish in November. Since autumn of last year we have been placing greater emphasis on the importance of business continuity plans and millennium operating regimes, which are essential safeguards against the impact of unforeseen bug failures and the other pressures of the millennium holiday period. The vast majority of Departments and agencies already have tested business continuity plans and millennium operating regimes in place. Ministerial colleagues have given me their personal assurances that all Departments and agencies will meet the deadline of the end of October for putting into place and testing the plans and millennium operating regimes.
As I foresaw in my September letter to Members, arrangements have been put in place so that the Government and the key infrastructure providers can share information over the millennium about how things are going and how any problems that emerge are being handled. Yesterday my right hon. Friend the Home
Secretary and I announced the arrangements for the Government millennium centre, which will handle the flow of information over the critical period.
Exercise Herald, which took place on 26 October, tested how the information flows will work. This Cabinet Office-led exercise involved Government Departments and their agencies, Action 2000, the utilities, the Central Office of Information, the Government offices, and representatives of the media. A full analysis of the success of the exercise is not yet available, but preliminary indications are that a further exercise on a similar scale is unlikely to be required.
Independent assessments of the readiness of key parts of the national infrastructure have been undertaken as part of Action 2000's national infrastructure assessment programme. This programme has also included an assessment of business continuity plans and millennium operating regimes. The results of the latest assessments were announced at the national infrastructure forum on 21 October and are being published in a series of newspaper adverts in the national press.
I am pleased to report that almost all sectors of the national infrastructure have been rated as 100 per cent. "blue". That means that the independent assessors have not identified any risk of material disruption and that the public can expect a normal service. This includes key utilities services such as electricity, telecommunications, water and gas.
A number of essential and important services are delivered by the public sector. They, too, have been independently assessed as part of Action 2000's NIF programme. The benefit payments process has been blue since July. I am pleased to confirm that police services, fire brigades and NHS organisations are now all 100 per cent. blue. There has also been considerable progress in tackling the bug in local government. Local authorities in England, Scotland, and Wales are now 100 per cent. blue.
Financial institutions have been assessed as 98 per cent. blue. Seven medium-impact financial institutions are rated amber, but are expected to be blue by 12 November. Elsewhere, very few elements of amber remain, but further assessment work is under way in these sectors and all are expected to be 100 per cent. blue by the end of October.
No matter how much testing has been done, the possibility of failures occurring still remains. To address any remaining or unforeseen risks, and in line with best practice in the private sector, we have adopted a belt-and-braces approach to the issue, emphasising the need for all service providers to put proper and robust business continuity plans in place so that they can continue to deliver essential services, come what may.
There has been a vast amount of work in the UK to prepare for the millennium bug. We have subjected essential service providers to a rigorous programme of independent assessments--a process which gives us one of the most, if not the most, comprehensive and objective pictures of national readiness in the world. However, we have less information about other countries, so we cannot be confident that the rest of the world will be ready. We will therefore continue to prepare for potential disruption and make contingency plans to minimise any impact.
The Government will continue to lead by example and to be open and transparent on this issue. I will report further progress to the House in November and December. The United Kingdom remains one of the world leaders in tackling the millennium bug.
Mrs. Angela Browning (Tiverton and Honiton):
I am most grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving me an advance copy of today's statement, and for the briefing with officials that she enabled me to hold earlier this month.
I welcome the fact that, in the latest report, blue status has been awarded in many private and public sector organisations. I am grateful for that information. We can all share the right hon. Lady's relief at that progress. However, some concerns remain, especially in the public sector.
When the right hon. Lady makes statements on this subject, she places in the Library some rather large tomes of detailed data. She will be encouraged to know that I have ploughed through the documents that were placed in the Library in September, although I have not had a chance to consult those for October, which she is placing in the Library today. My questions are thus based on the information available to me.
I noticed that the contingency plans for many parts of government--the business continuity plans--have yet to be tested. If alternative arrangements have been set up, it is imperative that they have at least been tested. I hope that the right hon. Lady will give us some updated information on progress on testing. In her statement, she announced the establishment of the Government millennium centre, which will be Cabinet Office led and will be the Government's hub for dealing with any problems that might arise. However, in the section on the Cabinet Office in the September report, I note that the business continuity plan for the Government's secure intranet has not yet been tested. If the internal intranet is to be at the hub of the Government's dissemination of information, it is important that it should be tested. I should be grateful for some updated information on that point.
In her statement to the House on 17 June, the right hon. Lady announced 30 September 1999 as the target date for NHS contingency plans. Will she confirm that that target was met, and that the systems and contingency plans for the NHS have been satisfactorily tested?
There is continuing concern about the testing of contingency plans in many parts of the public sector--for example, the Passport Agency. The right hon. Lady will know why I choose that example. That agency does not have a good track record, so the fact that it has yet to report the completion and testing of the work is worrying. Will she confirm that the Passport Agency completed its business continuity plan by the end of September and that the October report, which she is placing in the Library today, shows that the plan has been tested?
Even more important are those plans with a target date of the end of November and the end of December. The right hon. Lady nods--I am grateful for that acknowledgement that the matter is now of extremely grave concern, because of the time constraints. On 9 September 1998, when she made her quarterly statement on the subject, she stated:
I appreciate the fact that things such as nuclear weapons systems are not involved; I am referring to the MOD's overall capability. None the less, that Department is very important and we are looking to the right hon. Lady to advise us today as to what action she is taking to ensure that it not only completes its work by the end of December but puts its systems through the required testing in advance of that date.
"I am concerned that there has been some slippage: the completion dates of a small number of plans have moved by a quarter, mostly from December 1998 to March 1999. I am particularly concerned that a number of the target dates are close to the end of 1999."
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I share the concerns that the right hon. Lady expressed a year ago--especially those about the overall capability of the Ministry of Defence to complete its work on time and, in particular, for that work to be tested. She stated that she was satisfied that critical systems--especially front-line systems--had met their targets. However, there seems to have been no overall improvement in the completion of work in the MOD to a target of the end of November or December--according to the graph in the right hon. Lady's documents in the Library, the MOD does not appear to have made any progress during the past year. If the work is to be completed by the end of December, it is self-evident that the test will not be made before the millennium--the millennium itself will be the test for the MOD. That is a matter of extreme concern.
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