Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
Monday 15 March 2004
Mr Leigh Lewis CB, Mr Vince Gaskell, Mr Bernard Herdan,
and Mr Paul Pindar
Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon. Welcome
to the Committee of Public Accounts where today we are looking
at the Criminal Records Bureau: Delivering Safer Recruitment?
We are joined by Mr Leigh Lewis, who is Permanent Secretary at
the Home Office, Mr Vince Gaskell, who is Chief Executive of the
Criminal Records Bureau, Mr Bernard Herdan, who is the former
Chief Executive of the Passport and Records Agency (which incorporated
the Criminal Records Bureau and the UK Passport Service until
the two were split up on 1 September 2003), and Mr Paul Pindar,
who is Chief Executive of Capita Group plc. You are all very welcome.
Thank you for agreeing to speak to the Committee this afternoon.
May I just ask you one housekeeping matter first, Mr Lewis. It
is very important that any supplementary memoranda are received
in good time. Why did you only send us this latest supplementary
memorandum on 9 March and why did you not copy it to the National
Audit Office? They received their copy from the Committee Clerk.
Why so late?
Mr Lewis: May I apologise for
both of those omissions, Mr Chairman. We wanted to try and have
the latest information in front of the Committee and that meant
waiting for the latest February figures that we wanted to send
you. Not sending it directly to the National Audit Office was
simply an omission for which I apologise.
Q2 Chairman: Thank you. Mr Herdan, why
did you not question the business assumptions that assumed that
80% would use this service by ringing up and in fact there were
bulk applications by post? Was not this a fairly basic error?
Mr Herdan: We did do research
back in May 2000 to establish our potential customers' attitudes
to the service and the feedback we got at that point was that
the telephone service which we were seeking to encourage to facilitate
was going to be well received. In the voluntary sector about three-quarters
of the people we spoke to said it would be fine and in the education
sector the telephone was said to be the preferred channel. We
were encouraged in our view that we could pursue the Modernising
Government Agenda which had been set at that time for percentages
of electronic transmissions through government services. We believed
it would be feasible to launch the service rather like the insurance
and telephone banking world where most of the transactions would
be done through the phone. We believed our customers would accept
that. It was much closer to the launch date that we found out
through extensive consultation that there were a large number
of them that would not accept that.
Q3 Chairman: In fact, most people—obviously
we are dealing with employment here—were submitting bulk
applications by post and the system crashed.
Mr Herdan: That was how it turned
out.
Q4 Chairman: And you reckon that was
not foreseeable?
Mr Herdan: In retrospect, it would
have been better to have done more research earlier and I acknowledge
the fault there. It is also the case that we were seeking to change
behaviour because the paper application route is known to be expensive
and troublesome in terms of levels of error and likely to cause
a lot of ping-pong between customers and the organisation. So
we were seeking to change the whole of the new service rather
than go down the traditional routes, but in the end I became convinced
that that was going to fail and we were going to get a large number
of people feeling they could not access the service. In the end
my priority was the protection of children and the protection
of the vulnerable. I had to make that service successful.
Q5 Chairman: Is it not a fairly basic
omission in a project of this complexity to forget to do a pilot
study?
Mr Herdan: We did always plan
to do a pilot within the acceptance test phase but it was going
to be of fairly limited duration. We were going to put a raft
of dummy applications through the test programme, but as the development
programme got delayed, as sometimes happened, things got squeezed
and it was around July 2001, whilst taking stock and also going
through the Gateway Review process, that we recognised it would
be better to let the launch date slip, to take more time and put
a pilot phase in. So we basically added more time and it was at
that stage we could see the development programme was going to
produce something which was deficient in one way or another. So
we thought it was important to stop and do a pilot phase and make
sure things were okay.
Q6 Chairman: Mr Pindar and Mr Herdan,
why did it take a crisis to make you work together properly?
Mr Herdan: I would like to say
that it did not take a crisis to make us work together properly.
We were committed from the outset to working closely with whoever
we chose as a partner. We, the Agency, took premises in Liverpool
which the partner could move into so we would be co-located. We
formed a partnership executive where we would work together to
deal with any issues between us. Mr Pindar and I used to meet
bilaterally every four to six weeks with any high level issues
we could clear out of the way. Capita were involved, for example,
in joint roadshows with staff, management conferences, annual
retreats and so on. We were working together pretty well. We had
made the determination that we would treat this as a partnership,
although as the NAO Report quite rightly says, when we got into
some stormy water soon after the launch we began concentrating
on our own areas and that is where some discontinuity in the production
flows was commented on in the NAO Report. We have recovered from
that now. We had a Joint Improvement Plan we put together and
I would say that we have worked very well as a partnership ever
since then.
Mr Pindar: I have to say, Mr Chairman,
I agree very much with Bernard Herdan's summary. I think we worked
well during the process of implementation. At the point when we
went live and the situation was not as we had foreseen inevitably
there was a degree of tension around at that point. As soon as
we realised we had a major issue to deal with the teams came together
very well. Hopefully one of the things that you will take out
of this is the fact that as soon as we realised that there was
a difficulty that had to be overcome we worked very hard and everyone
put their shoulders to the wheel in terms of putting it right.
Also, as Bernard Herdan has said, subsequent to that time we have
had an excellent relationship which hopefully is shown out in
the figures which are now coming from the Agency.
Q7 Chairman: Thank you. Mr Gaskell, could
you look at figure 14 on page 34 which deals with service targets
and reducing the scope of the service. Is your improved performance
not just a result of relaxing your service targets?
Mr Gaskell: No, Mr Chairman, it
is rather more fundamental than that because even if we were to
compare it against the previous targets, which were to do 90%
of Standard Disclosures in one week and 90% of Enhanced Disclosures
in three weeks, our performance on a comparable basis is significantly
different and better than that. For example, if you will just
indulge me for a minute, just looking at February's figures alone,
we would have achieved 57% of Standard Disclosures in one week
and 84% of Enhanced Disclosures in three weeks, which is a remarkable
step change from September 2002 when it was 6% and 31% respectively.
So I think there is something rather more fundamental in terms
of improvement that has happened since then.
Q8 Chairman: Will you please look at
your supplementary memorandum and the third page where you will
see the title "Performance against public service standards
for 2003-04" and you will see a line there saying, "Registration
of Registered Bodies". Do you see that? Why is that 36.6
figure so low?
Mr Gaskell: There are a couple
of reasons for that. I am not going to attempt to defend a figure
that is clearly well below our performance target. That figure
does still include, unlike the current targets for Enhanced and
Standard Disclosures, time out with a customer. We have significant
problems in getting applications in for registration in good order.
At least half of them we have to return because of inaccuracies
or because the thing that is meant to be associated with it has
not come in and to some extent we are still clearing out some
of the aged ones in that category that we have had a purge on
in the last three months to try and clear, but unfortunately in
clearing out those it further drags down performance.
Q9 Chairman: Will you please look at
paragraph 4.5 on page 25 which deals with issuing basic disclosures.
Will you be able to cope with this in capacity terms?
Mr Gaskell: Yes, I believe I would.
If you would like me to elaborate on that I will because since
Christmas we have been running at about 54,000 applications a
week and coping well with those within our service standard. There
were peak periods last year. There was a short period around the
time of the summer fee increase where we hit well over 70,000
applications per week. On that basis I am confident that the performance
of both Capita and ourselves and indeed the IT system at present
is capable of supporting us.
Q10 Chairman: Would your system have
caught Ian Huntley?
Mr Gaskell: The issues that the
Ian Huntley case throws up are these and they are well documented
already. We are heavily dependent on the information provided
to us by local police forces. The differences in this case are
this: as part of the application process an applicant must, and
ought to, reflect on there any name that they have used in the
past. They are also meant to reveal as part of their five-year
address history, the addresses they have previously lived at and
as a matter of routine what we would do is, first of all, check
the Police National Computer for both of the names provided and
he made no secret of his two names. We would also have sent out
automatic notifications through to both the Cambridgeshire police
and to the Humberside police if an Enhanced Disclosure has been
applied for. If it had been a Standard Disclosure we would have
been interrogating the Police National Computer ourselves.
Mr Field: Was that yes or no, Chairman?
Q11 Chairman: Mr Field, I think we need
to develop that, if you wish. I am not entirely sure after that
answer either, but I think other members can come back to that.
Mr Lewis, I have come to the end of my questioning now and summing
up. Given the problems that this Bureau has clearly suffered from,
are you satisfied that the public and particularly vulnerable
people are getting the protection that they need from this Bureau?
Mr Lewis: I am satisfied that
the Bureau is now operating much more effectively than it was
in its early weeks and months. I am satisfied that overall it
is now delivering a much more effective service than the previous
arrangements before it was created. I am not at all satisfied
that the standard of service which it provided in its early weeks
or months was satisfactory.
Q12 Chairman: We now know that it was
a very poor launch. Obviously ministers came to officials, quite
rightly, it is a policy point, and said they wanted to have more
protection for the vulnerable. We now know there was not a proper
pilot study. We know all the problems that existed. Did none of
your officials warn ministers that perhaps it should have been
rolled out more slowly, there should have been more care, more
consultation and that proper contractual relationships should
have been built up with Capita? With the benefit of the hindsight,
do you recognise that perhaps this would have been a useful warning
to have given to ministers?
Mr Lewis: With the benefit of
hindsight, I think there are certainly things which we should
have done differently and they include that we should have deferred
the launch date again and allowed more time for a final round
of tests. That was not done. There were, inevitably, discussions
going on in the run up to the actual launch in March 2002 and
amongst the steps that were properly taken then was a final Office
of Government Commerce Gateway 4A Review and that review actually
found that it would have been, in their judgment, more harmful
rather than less to have deferred the launch date again and that
was a decision which those who were charged with launching the
Service took at the time. With the benefit of hindsight, that
was the wrong decision. We should have deferred the launch again
and we would then have launched it better and more effectively
and not, I believe, run into a number of the problems that we
did.
Chairman: Thank you very much.
Q13 Mr Bacon: Mr Lewis, can I start where
the Chairman left off. On page 39, Appendix 2, the second bullet
down, it says, "With the wisdom of hindsight, the Bureau
should have delayed operational launch when the pilot testing
proved inconclusive." From what you have just said, you would
regard it as a pretty good principle that pilot testing should
be reasonably conclusive before you go ahead with something.
Mr Lewis: Yes, I would.
Q14 Mr Bacon: Does that require a lot
of hindsight or is it just sheer common sense?
Mr Lewis: I think it is a principle
which stands and which is of pretty near general application.
Q15 Mr Bacon: The second part of the
sentence says, "However, there was advice and various pressures
to go live and this was endorsed by the Office of Government Commerce
Gateway 4A Review." Could you say what the advice in that
sentence was? The advice to go live, what was that? Where is this
advice to go live from?
Mr Lewis: The advice was the advice
of all of those who were at that time charged with launching the
service.
Q16 Mr Bacon: Who? Are we talking about
people in Capita or professionals?
Mr Lewis: I am talking about both.
The view at that point, both of the CRB, the Chief Executive of
Capita, of our consultants, PA Consulting and of the OGC was that
we could, and should, go live.
Q17 Mr Bacon: The various pressures,
that just refers to ministers saying get on with it, does it not?
Mr Lewis: Yes. I do not want to
give any impression that there was some kind of huge pressure
from ministers.
Q18 Mr Bacon: But that is what it is
referring to, pressures from ministers.
Mr Lewis: There was a general
pressure, of course, because this was an announcement and a commitment
that had been made that it should be established as soon as possible,
but there was no pressure from ministers to proceed before it
was safe to do so.
Q19 Mr Bacon: That is a great relief.
Mr Herdan, you are in charge of the Passport Agency, is that right?
Mr Herdan: Yes.
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