Examination of Witness (Questions 1260-1279)
MR JOHNSTON
MCNEILL
15 JANUARY 2007
Q1260 David Taylor: "Tough but
do-able".
Mr McNeill: Absolutely.
Q1261 David Taylor: Do-able meaning
a non-zero prospect of it happening. It could be vanishingly small
but it is do-able.
Mr McNeill: There was obviously
concern on the part of the RPA Executive Board that as we increased
complexity so we increased risk, that was the doubt. The question
was, "As we now stand with our understanding of this, is
this do-able?" and the answer round that table unanimously
was, "This is do-able". On that basis I did not discount
it as an SRO saying, "This is not possible".
David Taylor: I am surprised he lasted
five years.
Q1262 Lynne Jones: I understand that
Simon Vry was the officer who had most contact with Accenture.
What contact did Alan McDermott have with Accenture? Was his role
not to brief you on what was going on with Accenture?
Mr McNeill: It was from a technical
point of view. Simon Vry is not an IT technical expert. Simon
Vry was a programme director, again within the PRINCE methodology,
or a Managing Successful Programmes Methodology (MSP), the OGC
framework in which we worked. Simon was a programme director and
he was also responsible for the management of the contract between
Accenture and the RPA in terms of contract management and, indeed,
would have been behind the notice that was served at the latter
stage of the process for breach of contract. Alan was responsible
for the IT technical issues, the design authority etc,
he was heavily involved in that, understanding what Accenture
was putting forward, assessing whether he felt that was the right
solution, et cetera, assessing testing regimes and that
sort of thing. Technical issues would have been within Alan's
expertise.
Q1263 Chairman: Can I just ask this
question. We have got the benefit of hindsight. What was it that
these experienced, well-paid experts missed? What we now know
with the benefit of hindsight is that when it came to delivering
the system did not. What we know is that there were all kinds
of continuing delays that were being built up. I just find it
difficult to understand what it was that they missed. With the
benefit of hindsight, what did they miss that did not enable them
to say, "Ooh, that looks a bit nasty at the end of the pipeline,
this thing is not going to do what it is supposed to do"?
What gave them this fundamental belief that it was still do-able
right up until the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute?
Mr McNeill: I can assure you in
my current position I have pondered this at length and I am certainly
of the view that it was our ignorance of the consequences of taking
a task-based approach to a claims-based system. For example, we
could not even prioritise larger value claims. If we had wanted
to hit the target—I am not suggesting politically it would
have been acceptable—if we could have had a claims-based
process we could have hit all the biggest claims instead of the
smallest ones, as opposed to a large percentage of the smaller
ones that the system selected.
Q1264 Lynne Jones: That is not the
consequence of a task-based system, that is a consequence of an
IT system that cannot do what you need to do with a task-based
system.
Mr McNeill: Yes. I accept the
point. If we could, and that was the intention, certainly plans
were afoot in my time there, we needed to move this back to where
we could get it to a claims-based process. What we did not understand,
and I think it was a lack of experience of working with it, was
the consequence of the task-based system, the fact that clearing
tasks produced new tasks so you ended up with this horrendous
situation of people working double-shifts, working away trying
to clear things up, fixes going in, and yet you ran a process,
and I think—
Q1265 Chairman: Your reports are
unbelievably optimistic. You can see the statistics. As I say,
one report shows 440,000 and two months later we are up to 720,000.
To my lay reading that says mounting problems. The other side
of the point is this: when we went to Germany and talked to them
about what they did, the penny had dropped with these guys that
because they had got lots and lots of little claims they had to
have a de minimis, they had to have some cut-off to keep
out the tiny claims and some way of dealing with the priority
issues. They spotted that and they had four different IT systems
with 18 or 19 different länder, so 18 or 19 RPAs,
four different systems, but they did two things, one they had
de minimis and, two, they had interim payments, and they
got it right.
Mr McNeill: I cannot speak about
the German system.
Q1266 Chairman: Did you not go and
talk to them?
Mr McNeill: We went to talk to
and had feedback from a grouping of paying agencies about what
others were doing but, of course, some were not implementing in
2005, they were implementing in 2006.
Q1267 Chairman: Can I just ask about
who was running the show because according to the NAO they said
on the basis of what you told them that where CAPRI was concerned
you felt that the Board had come to supersede your role as the
responsible officer for the project. Did you ever feel that Mr
Lebrecht was running the show and was trying to dominate what
was going on and push you into the background?
Mr McNeill: No, I did not feel
that at all. I had a very good professional working relationship
with Andy Lebrecht, he was the SRO for SPS Policy delivery. Within
this methodology of SROs we had two and that is not usual. He
was the SRO for SPS policy and I was the SRO for SPS implementation.
Q1268 Chairman: Was there a conflict
at all between these two processes?
Mr McNeill: The only tension was
when we were pressing Defra policy colleagues for when we would
get decisions to enable us to push on and build this new SPS system
and when we would get the policy clarification we sought. The
Countryside Landowners' Association (CLA) make the point, and
I think it is a fair one, that once the Defra SPS policy was decided
certainly my experience was we found it difficult to get the speed
of response that we wanted from the policymakers.
Q1269 Chairman: Can I just be clear
about this because the language you are using rings true to the
type of language that was being discussed when we investigated
the disposal of refrigerators. There was a great argument within
Defra about whether it was the gases in the fridge system or the
polyurethane in the fridge door that was actually covered by the
new directive. Let me just be entirely clear: in terms of interpreting
in the British context, or the English context to be absolutely
accurate, the policy which the Council of Ministers had agreed,
were the delays within Defra in translating into the English environment
the policy decisions which had been agreed by the Council of Ministers?
Mr McNeill: For us, in terms of
the SPS policy issues, the devil is in the detail so we were interested
in the minutiae in some respects of the policy. Once the
policymakers had taken the decision, the Council of Ministers
had interpreted it, developed it, et cetera, my only point
is we ended up, as the CLA have mentioned, with a relatively small
number of experienced people from the Defra policy side who could
work with us in making sure we got the proper interpretation for
implementation of SPS 2005.
Q1270 Chairman: Let us be absolutely
clear. Are you suggesting that Defra's interpretation, translation,
from Council of Ministers' decision to English application was
a slow process?
Mr McNeill: Well, it took over
a year.
Q1271 Chairman: It took over a year.
Mr McNeill: Yes, from when we
expected the decision from the end of 2003 it was the end of 2004[22].
Whether that is slow or not, I cannot comment. It is a complex
issue.
Q1272 Chairman: That was why I phrased
my question in the way that I did. Our time is drawing to a conclusion
and I want to return to the area of accountability. Let me see
if I can sum up what you have told us because I am sure we could
probably spend another hour looking at lots of detail but let
us come back to where I think we are. You have described to us
that Defra was, if you like, a knowing and well-informed customer
of the RPA, it knew what it wanted, it told you what it was expecting
from you and it decided the timetable. You sent back up the line
all the messages about the system, the risks, in every aspect
you kept your principal customer fully informed of everything
that was happening, and that dealt with the technicalities, the
resourcing, the timing. In other words, from the Defra ministerial
team to the Defra senior management, if I have understood you
correctly, they should have been left in no doubt as to exactly
what was happening, why it was happening, what was not happening
and what the risks were, they were a knowledgeable, well-informed
customer. Is that a fair summary?
Mr McNeill: I think that is a
fair summary, yes.
Q1273 Chairman: Right. The only person
who is excepted and has had to deal with the element of accountability
on this is you and yet we have just agreed that all of the other
people in Defra, ministers and senior officials, were exceedingly
well-informed from the information which your Agency provided
and, therefore, had a good factual basis upon which to make any
decision and all the decisions that they had to make in deciding
to move to the Single Payment Scheme. The message I am getting
is that there is an element of shared responsibility in terms
of the decision making process, but in terms of accountability
you are the person who has had to pay the price of losing their
job. Is that fair?
Mr McNeill: If I could just pause
for one moment and go back to your question earlier about my response
and my suggestion in discussions with OGC. The fact of the matter
was papers were put to CAPRI, I jointly chaired it with Andy Lebrecht
of Defra, so every other meeting I was chairing it, I was the
joint chair, then it went to ERG where I was a member but chaired
by Sir Brian Bender, and decisions were taken there and then in
many cases it went to Defra ministers. If I was an arm's length
agency where I was the Accounting Officer and senior responsible
owner I would not expect that level of contribution from the Department,
I do not think. I could expect an oversight, a board every quarter
or whatever. We were having these meetings almost weekly with
DG's and the Permanent Secretary and decisions were being taken
on a regular basis by CAPRI/REG. Papers were being escalated to
Ministers. This was noted by the OGC who also noted this was a
discussion I had with them and it did not come from me. Where
they expressed concern to me at the time, that Bob Assirati, who
was the Deputy Chief Executive of the OGC[23]
at that time, headed up, I think I am right in saying, pretty
much every one of those OGC reviews of the RPA change programme
and SPS preparations and that was why we held them in some esteem.
The report of the team that Bob put forward made the point that
there should have been one owner, and I do not disagree with that.
If you want to hold somebody responsible you let them get on with
it and you supervise it. We also had people like Karen Jordan,
appointed by Brian Bender, now Chair of the Cabinet Office Audit
Committee, seriously experienced in project management, in audit
and systems testing, et cetera, who was involved extremely
hands-on. Only by looking at some papers recently can you see
how often Karen was inputting into what should be done to make
this right, et cetera. She was a Defra appointment and
a very expreienced person almost in a non-executive role looking
at it. My only point is this: we had two SROs and we had that
whole chain so, yes, I share your concerns that I seem to be in
the frame for it and I am the one who has had to carry the can.
Q1274 Chairman: With this shared ownership
of the management, you have just mentioned about the Executive
Review Group being chaired by Sir Brian Bender, the CAPRI Board
was jointly chaired by you and Andy Lebrecht.
Mr McNeill: As a director-general
of Defra.
Q1275 Chairman: When it came to the
key decisions being made there was an element of joint ownership.
Mr McNeill: At CAPRI where I joint
chaired and at Executive Review Group where I was a member of
the Board. I did not disagree with the decisions that were being
made but it was almost by committee when you look at the governance
arrangements.
Q1276 Chairman: But if that is the
case then all of the partners, you could argue, should accept
some degree of the responsibilities for what did not happen as
much as what did happen. If Karen whatsername was that good you
are left asking why some of the things were not spotted. I suppose
I am looking to see whether you feel that others also have a degree
of responsibility that they should accept for what has occurred
because they were part of the decision making process and they
were as well-informed as you were about what was happening or
what was not happening, what the timetables were, what the resourcing
issues were, what the practicalities were. They had some degree
of responsibility for the decision making process.
Mr McNeill: Chairman, from where
I sit there is no doubt in my mind that we kept the Department
fully informed. OGC reports to me as RPA Chief Executive were
circulated untouched. Those are for the chief executive but they
were always shared. I am unaware of any piece of information that
was ever withheld from the Department, therefore I can understand
your point of view.
Q1277 Lynne Jones: The OGC recommendation
of one person being put in charge, presumably if that had been
you and you had the last word and you could have overridden all
these other people, would you have done things differently?
Mr McNeill: No, Chairman. I made
the point that I do not necessarily disagree. I was looking at
this as a system and I was left in the situation as SRO where
there were all these other committees taking these decisions.
Q1278 Lynne Jones: So the fact that
you were not in charge, although at the time you think you would
not made anything different, did you feel you were lulled into
some kind of complacency because all these other people were sharing
the responsibility?
Mr McNeill: I can assure you that
complacency was something that we did not feel at that time. I
had a team that was working round the clock and I was heavily
engaged.
Q1279 Lynne Jones: You were working
round the clock but you were just working on a treadmill that
was not getting anywhere.
Mr McNeill: Well, it did get to
the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute, unfortunately. Had the
payments gone—
22 Note by witness: "before SPS policy
was approaching finalisation". Back
23
Correction from OGC: Programme Engagement Director. Back
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