Mr.
Hunt: No. That is why I mentioned the limits of commercial
confidentiality. However, given that the particular supplier that I
mentioned has been involved in so many IT failures, I seek comfort from
the Minister that the Government have absorbed the lessons of those
mistakes. I
am sure that the Minister would agree with my final point, which is
that when such mistakes happen the question is not just one of value
for money for the taxpayer. When the systems go wrong, there is an
enormous human cost as well. In the case of the CSA, there is a backlog
of more than 500,000 families, many in poverty, who are not getting the
support to which they were entitled. The new employment and support
allowance aims to get 1 million people back into work who would
otherwise have been trapped on benefits, and probably in poverty. For
the sake of those people, I look forward to hearing how the Minister
has learned from the issues that have arisen during the last nine
years.
The
Chairman: Thank you for your reasonable presentation. The
questions were fair, I
felt. 4.49
pm Greg
Mulholland (Leeds, North-West) (LD): I shall be brief, not
least because at the conclusion of the sitting I shall be joining the
hon. Member for Bradford, North for drinks with my Select Committee
colleagues. I thank the Minister for his expression of appreciation to
the Committee—I was very pleased to play a small part in the
inquiry. I am sure
that the Minister will understand why there is a certain amount of
nervousness about this whole process, and that he would be the first to
acknowledge it. The simple fact is that the Committee’s
conclusion can be summarised as: “Oh, all right then.”
The conclusion
said: “The jury
is still out on the use of the Section 82
procedure” and I think
that that will remain the
case. I was very
pleased to join some of my Select Committee colleagues on a very
productive trip to New Zealand last week. Most notable was seeing an IT
system that appeared to be working extremely well. Perhaps we saw only
the best of it, but it seemed to be delivering in the very areas that
we are discussing here. We hope that that will be the case for the
system that the Government propose.
I have three questions to put
to the Minister. First, why is this being done? Is the power being used
for the legitimate reasons set out, or is it a matter of Government
timing? The Work and Pensions Committee report states:
“On this occasion,
therefore, Section 82 is being used solely to meet a Government timing
commitment, rather than as a measure to enable additional work to be
done to maximise the chance of the project’s
success.”
Clearly, there is an issue as to why we
are going through this process now. We would like reassurance on
that. Secondly, on
finance, are the figures credible? Can we be confident that they will
be accurate? Is there a danger that finances will spiral out of
control? Thirdly,
also on finance, is the spending on IT coming from the overall pathways
to work budget? We are concerned that that money is there to help get
people get back to work. The Committee has seen the success of the
pathways to work pilot schemes, and we would like some reassurance that
the money for the section 82 procedure is not from the same overall
budget and therefore will not impact on getting people back to
work.
The
Chairman: In the absence of anyone else rising to their
feet, I call the Minister.
4.52
pm
The
Minister for Employment and Welfare Reform (Mr. Jim
Murphy): Thank you, Mr. Hancock. In the hour
and 10 minutes that I have
available— [Interruption.] I think it would
take me longer to respond to all the points raised by the hon. Member
for South-West Surrey (Mr. Hunt). If I do not respond to
every detail, I hope that the Committee will allow me to follow matters
up in correspondence with hon. Members, including the hon. Gentleman.
[Interruption.] I note from sedentary interventions that my hon.
Friends wish me to take that course of action. I do not know whether
that is a general point or whether it is to do with the fact that
drinks with the Work and Pensions Committee start shortly.
The hon. Member for Leeds,
North-West (Greg Mulholland) raised some specific points. Our
deliberations are about achieving a timetable so that we can deliver a
robust system on time, to fit in with the ambition of the Welfare
Reform Bill. We want to provide the support essential to enable the
ambitions of that Bill to be achieved. A cross-party consensus
has belatedly developed on the Bill, which will ensure that 1
million people are supported in getting off incapacity benefit
over a decade. That is why we are using section 82.
The hon. Gentleman colloquially
spoke of costs spiralling out of control. We are today seeking
authority for a maximum spend of £31.25 million. That is the
limit of our requests to the Committee and to Parliament. On the wider
point of budgets, the money will come out of the DWP budget, but we are
confident that we will put in place the necessary funding to enable the
successful roll-out of pathways and to achieve our wider welfare reform
ambitions, as we have made clear in Standing Committees and
elsewhere. The hon.
Member for South-West Surrey raised a catalogue of points, so maybe I
should send him my notes. However, that would be impolite, so I shall
respond quickly. He said that it is important to learn the lessons of
past failings, both in terms of policy and on IT. As we know—I
put this to him gently—the failure of policy in previous years
and decades was that many folk were simply abandoned; left to a life on
benefit with no support and no pathways. We know that once someone has
been on incapacity benefit for
one year, they stay on it for an average of nine years. That is an
important lesson to learn and we will do so.
We will also learn
the lesson that it is a thing of the past that the employment
statistics are implicitly or explicitly massaged. Formerly, people were
placed on incapacity benefit who should not have been.
It is important for us to learn
from the experiences of other IT projects. It is not fashionable to say
so, but most public sector IT projects are a success. That is not a
complacent statement, it is a statement of fact. The Public Accounts
Committee recently held hearings into successful IT projects, which is
a relatively new experience for a Select Committee. However, it is a
fact that most public sector IT systems and investments are successful,
as in the private sector. Failings are not the preserve of either the
public or the private sector. Ways in which we are seeking to address
the all too many failings that there have been include the
transformational Government strategy that the Cabinet Office published
earlier this year and our efforts to ensure that there is a career in
the public sector for those with IT skills, so that people do not have
to leave the public service in order to enhance their IT career. It is
not a one-way street down which people in the public sector are leaving
for enhanced opportunities in the private sector. Indeed, we have in
the DWP recruited IT management capability through external
recruitment. The hon.
Gentleman mentioned the intricate nature of the ESA and the section 82
requests that we are discussing. He makes the point for us. It is an
intricate system and we have to get it right. That is why we need to
provide investment now—we want to enable the timetable to hit
our ambition of 2008.
It is correct to say that the
NAO figures were changed. The calculations were based on assumptions,
businesses processes, in August 2006. The difference was of a quarter
of 1 percentage point. I am certain that we said at that time that the
figures were going to change. We stated on page 5, paragraph 12, of the
report, that they would change, and they did.
With regard to the CSA, the
general feeling is that there should be a plague on both our houses. I
hope that the hon. Gentleman would acknowledge that, although important
work is now being done by the Secretary of State to improve and
entirely restructure the way in which support is provided to parents
with care and their children. We will see that support being provided
much more quickly and much more fairly, and that will have a real
impact on child
poverty On the points
that were made about accountability, we have said that we will in
future try to build in more time so that there is greater opportunity
for formal input from the NAO, the Select Committee and elsewhere on
requests under section 82. It is important to note that we have agreed
to update departmental guidance to give more time in future, as well as
providing bi-monthly updates to the Select Committee.
Contracting has been
mentioned. We are going to contract but it would not be sensible to say
now with whom, when and for how much. We will take a staged approach,
committing money only for relatively short periods at a time. Having
said that, Mr. Hancock, if you or any member of the
Committee feel that I have not done justice to the questions that have
been posed, I will of course enter into correspondence.
Finally, let me thank all hon.
Members, my hon. Friends in particular, the NAO and the Select
Committee for the way in which they have examined the detail of our
proposals and suggested concrete improvements, on which I hope that
they feel we have
acted.
Mr.
Hunt: Very briefly, I am grateful to the Minister for
agreeing that any points that he has not covered he will address in
correspondence. If he is willing to take from Hansard a copy of
my speech and ask his officials to draft a reply that responds in more
detail to some of my points, that will be helpful.
I am pleased to hear him say
that his Government are trying to do something to improve the IT career
structure in the public sector. Taking party politics right out of the
equation, the crucial failing in IT contracts has been in the skills to
manage them. That is not the Minister’s direct responsibility.
Indeed, the most important managers in the Department will focus on the
Minister, so it is necessary for it to have a team of officials who are
highly skilled in managing large, outsourced IT contracts. When the
Minister responds in writing, would he address the question of whether
the Department is taking steps to ensure the early involvement of users
in the specification and testing processes? By users, I mean not
customers of the ESA but people who will operate the IT system on
behalf of
customers, because a huge number of changes always takes place at the
user acceptance testing point. I am grateful to the Minister for his
comments. We do not seek to press the matter to a vote, but I should be
grateful if he would respond in writing to the more detailed points
that I have made. Mr.
Murphy: It is a fair point about the general issue of IT
capability in the public services, although that is improving and the
transformational Government strategy contains detailed proposals on it.
The difficulty about writing is that the definition of a suitable
answer is in the ear of the listener and the poser of the question.
Rather than my second guessing which of the hon. Gentleman’s
questions I think I have not quite answered, it would be helpful, if he
feels that there are gaps in some of my responses, for him to raise
them in correspondence. Then I will, of course, respond.
The Chairman: We are in
the pantomime season, but I am sure that the Minister said—his
colleagues might say “Oh no he did not”, but I am sure
that he did—that he would willingly respond to any points that
were raised. It is a fair question, and the hon. Gentlemen need to work
out between them how it will happen.
Question put and agreed
to. Resolved,
That the Committee has
considered the Report by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
under Section 82 of the Welfare Reform and Pensions Act 1999.
Committee rose at one minute
past Five
o’clock.
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