Examination of Witnesses (Questions 420-439)
MR SEAN
SHINE, MR
PETER HOLMES
AND MR
ANDY NAISH
22 MAY 2006
Q420 David Taylor: Were any of the
three of you directly involved in any part of the negotiations,
specifications, discussions or are you telling us today what you
have had reported to you?
Mr Holmes: I was involved in those
discussions.
Q421 David Taylor: In a detailed
way.
Mr Holmes: Yes.
Q422 David Taylor: You are the very
last person to say that you do not recall very much happening
in the way of CAP reform.
Mr Holmes: I was involved in those
discussions, yes.
David Taylor: There was a set of assumptions
made that the new systems would be simpler and assumptions were
made about when decisions would be made, about complexity and
over a period of time those assumptions either turned out to be
correct or incorrect.
Q423 Mr Drew: Just a very quick point,
clearly you must have done all your calculations of how you were
going to write this system based on the historic model of payments.
Mr Holmes: Correct.
Q424 Mr Drew: Did you look at all
at any ways in which you could adapt that, you could enhance that,
given that it was fairly widely known that it was looking to change
its approach to payments?
Mr Holmes: We were asked to develop
a system based on the existing schemes and to provide a degree
of flexibility to cope with subsequent on-going changes.
Q425 Mr Drew: As IT specialists did
you see that as a challenge? Did you see that as optimistic? Foolhardy?
Here you have a system that is working; it is a system that needs
to be improved, that is why you were brought in to organise the
change. Then you start hearing noises whenever that basically
the payment system is to be radically altered. How did you see
that? If you go for an interview for a new job someone might say,
"How do you think you might take this job on?" and that
sort of discussion. Did that not take place at all?
Mr Holmes: No, it is far from
ideal. There is a lot of best practice out there which says in
an ideal world you would not want to undertake that amount of
change in the middle of such a large and complex programme.
Q426 Lynne Jones: You said that you
were told that the reforms would make life simpler for you. Lord
Bach told us that the impact of reform would not be significant
in the overall IT solution. That is what you thought the situation
was.
Mr Holmes: That is what we probably
thought the situation was in the middle of 2003.
Q427 Lynne Jones: At what point did
you discover that the CAP reform was going to be significant and
life was going to be more complicated and not simpler?
Mr Holmes: That began to emerge
for us I would guess in late 2003/early 2004.
Q428 Lynne Jones: That quote I have
just given from Lord Bach was given to us this year when he was
still optimistic about payments being made. Why do you think the
minister still thought that the impact of reform would not be
significant in the overall IT solution?
Mr Holmes: I am sorry, I cannot
comment on that.
Q429 Lynne Jones: You do not think
that would have been a correct statement at that time.
Mr Holmes: The impact of the reform
in terms of what impact did it have on our work, it had a big
impact on our work. It had a big impact on our work but what it
would mean ultimately when the new system was implemented was
that it would have a different impact on different people at different
points in time.
Q430 Lynne Jones: When government
was in discussion about what way the single payments would be
made and whether it would be historic or area based or the dynamic
hybrid that eventually took place, were you consulted in any way?
Did you have any input into whether the system that they chose
would have any significant impact for the computer system that
was being developed?
Mr Holmes: No.
Q431 Lynne Jones: So you basically
were just told at the end the process that this is what we are
going to implement and we have to re-negotiate a contract on that
basis.
Mr Holmes: There had been some
assumptions made during the second half of 2003; those assumptions
subsequently turned out to be incorrect in terms of which scheme
was opted for and the impact upon us.
Q432 Lynne Jones: When you were actually
told what the new method was going to be did you have any input
then? Did you issue any warnings that the complexity of that might
lead to problems in actually making payments in the timeframe
necessary?
Mr Holmes: Not at that stage.
When we were first told to be honest we probably did not fully
understand the complexities of the policy and its impact on the
timescale.
Q433 Lynne Jones: Whose fault was
that? Was that your fault for not grasping the problems or was
it the fault of the way in which you were told the information?
Mr Holmes: As with all these things,
the devil is in the detail and it is fine to make a policy announcement
but there is an awful lot of detail that goes into it.
Q434 Lynne Jones: Are you saying
then that policies were decided without a proper understanding
of the detail and the significance for the need to actually make
payment to farmers?
Mr Holmes: No, I am not saying
that because we were not involved in . . .
Q435 Lynne Jones: It sounds like
you are.
Mr Holmes: We fully understood
what was meant and in fact we are on record as saying in our early
submission that it was late 2004 before all the details of the
new policy and its implications on the system were fully defined.
Q436 Chairman: Can we be absolutely
clear here? During 2003 when the negotiations to finalise what
became the new single payment scheme were going on with the Council
of Ministers in Brussels, are you telling us straightforwardly
that nobody from the RPA had any conversations with Accenture
about the IT implications for what might emerge?
Mr Holmes: I would not say categorically
that nobody in the RPA had any conversations; we were not involved
in any working sessions or detail sessions or understanding around
the policy options.
Q437 Chairman: Nobody from the RPA
or Defra talked to you about the deliverability of an alternative
scheme such as the one we have now.
Mr Holmes: I am not aware that
anybody did.
Q438 Chairman: Who actually was in
charge day to day with Accenture's dealings with the RPA? Who
did Accenture report to in the RPA?
Mr Holmes: Day to day in those
days probably...
Q439 Chairman: Not probably; you
must know the answer. I am trying to establish some facts as to
what the organisational structure was within which you operated.
In other words, who fed you information and who, in the opposite
direction, did you feed information to?
Mr Shine: Formally, as you know,
in our submission we talked about the governance arrangements.
In effect we reported to the Programme Board. There was one official
within RPA with whom we had more day to day contact with, that
was Simon Vry. About your question around the policy changes,
as we have said, the changes themselves did not become finalised
in detail until towards the end of 2004 so as we went through
2004 we were aware of the policy to shift to a land-base was coming
but the details had not yet been finalised. At the same time we
were continuing to build other components of the system as we
have outlined in our submission and we were delivering those.
In a sense the view was to wait until the details are finalised
before we begin to look at specifying that and then pick up the
detail. As I think many of you will be well aware, there is no
point too early in the process beginning to do detailed specification.
Really we needed to wait for the specification to be done so that
we could then begin to assess the impact of the system and then
assess the way in which we would manage the components of the
system in order to get delivery.
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