Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
MR DAVE
HARTNETT CB AND
MR NICK
LODGE
17 DECEMBER 2007
Q20 Chairman: This is the email of
13 March. Would you confirm—and I do not need to have a
name—that this email on 13 March, which is from "blanked
out" Benefits and Credits, sent 13 March 2007 at 15.23 to
"blanked out", was sent by a senior executive officer
or somebody of an equivalent rank in HMRC?
Mr Hartnett: I believe it was
sent by a senior officer, which is what we call them now.
Q21 Chairman: Would that be equivalent
to senior executive officer in the rest of the Civil Service?
Mr Hartnett: Yes.
Q22 Chairman: And this was copied
to Mr Jordan, was it?
Mr Hartnett: I believe so.
Q23 Chairman: And Mr Jordan has a
rank, am I right in saying, of Assistant Secretary?
Mr Hartnett: Mr Jordan is at the
lowest level of the Senior Civil Service. It would have been called
Assistant Secretary in the past.
Q24 Chairman: It says here—and
this was written by a senior executive officer or the equivalent:
"I must stress that we must make use of data we hold and
not overburden the business by asking them to run additional data
scans that may incur a cost to the Department." So presumably
that senior executive officer was saying to the National Audit
Office at that stage that it was too expensive to strip away the
personal details; is that right?
Mr Hartnett: No, I do not think
that is what is going on.
Q25 Chairman: All right, so what
is he saying?
Mr Hartnett: I think what is happening
here, if you look at the earlier slightly longer email, one of
the issues for the National Audit Office was the size of the data
and they wanted the data compressed. These emails are but three
emails in a picture to be examined by Mr Poynter. I believe that
the senior executive officer thought that in order to meet the
NAO request they would have to go and get a new download of data
from Benton Park View where the mainframe is, and I think one
of the issues Mr Poynter has to address here is what was going
on. Was this about paying money to get a different cut of the
data when the whole data was available in the secure area in Waterview
Park and could be accessed there by the NAO, because there is
no suggestion in these emails that this data was to be taken away?
Q26 Chairman: Do we yet have any
understanding of what it would have cost to strip away this information
to provide the NAO with what they wanted?
Mr Hartnett: I do not have a precise
understanding but I have been told that a download from the mainframe
would have cost around £15,000, but, Chairman, the information
was there on-site where the auditor was that day.
Q27 Chairman: Do you think that this
senior executive officer did not realise this at the time?
Mr Hartnett: I think the senior
executive officer knew the data was there and that is why there
was a reluctance to spend money, but I must stress that this is
a surmise based on three emails. There are many more emails to
be looked at and Mr Poynter will, I am sure, be addressing this.
Q28 Chairman: How could you have
a situation where a junior manager decides not to extract sensitive
data without being authorised? Surely a manager should seek authorisation
before he or she comes to such a decision?
Mr Hartnett: I think the junior
manager here could well have thought that the information was
fully available in Waterview Park on the secure system. The auditor
was there as well. The auditor seemed to be concerned about the
size of the data and getting compression of that data, and if
that analysis is right—and only Mr Poynter can tell us—I
think this junior officer was acting responsibly.
Q29 Chairman: Does the National Audit
Office want to comment on this?
Sir John Bourn: As Mr Hartnett
says, these are issues which are being followed up and we shall
hear more from Mr Poynter about them. As Mr Hartnett says, he
has a hypothesis here. He claims no more from it than that, and
I think the best thing is to wait until we have more specific
information provided by Mr Poynter.
Q30 Chairman: You said that the process
owner was not available at the time. Was he out of the building
or something?
Mr Hartnett: The process owner,
I believe, was in a management meeting in London at the time.
Q31 Chairman: So who actually authorised
release of the disks then?
Mr Hartnett: I do not think there
was an authorisation and that is one of the breaches of our procedures
that has taken place here.
Q32 Chairman: So why did these junior
officials who released the data not follow the departmental procedures?
Mr Hartnett: Chairman, I do not
know the answer to that but I know that the Information Commissioner,
the IPPC, Mr Poynter and the police are either going to interview
these officials or have already done so. I do not know the outcome
of that but, as I said earlier, our own enquiries ceased.
Q33 Chairman: To get this absolutely
right just one last time, are you saying that the senior executive
officer who sent this email on 13 March may have thought that
the information was much more readily available on-site for the
NAO and they should have consulted you on-site? Is that what you
are saying to us?
Mr Hartnett: I am in no doubt
that that junior manager knew the data was available on-site.
Were I able to ask a question, the question I would want to ask
is why did you not provide a stripped down version of the data?
Was it because you knew that the full data was available and the
auditor was on-site? As Sir John says, that is a hypothesis and
it has to be tested.
Q34 Chairman: We did request that
you bring along Mr Jordan and you refused, did you not, so I mean—
Mr Hartnett: No, that is not right,
Chairman. There were discussions with your Clerk and we had heard
that Mr Jordan might be asked to appear as a witness and then
we were told that he was not to be summonsed as a witness.
Q35 Chairman: Right. We were told
he was on holiday and would not be able to come.
Mr Hartnett: I am very sorry,
Chairman, if I persist unreasonably. We were told to ask him to
cancel his holiday originally, which we were prepared to do, and
then we got a message that he was not needed. I am really sorry
if there is any confusion here.
Q36 Chairman: Because it might have
been helpful to have the person who was actually doing all this.
Mr Hartnett: I think there would
have been a difficulty, if I may say so though, because Mr Jordan
is clearly central to a number of enquiries and our general rule
is that where someone is central to enquiries he would not be
offered as a witness.
Q37 Chairman: Let me ask you a general
question. You are in a very privileged position—which I
think is what people would want us to ask as well—in terms
of dealing with people's personal details. Do you think that there
was a sufficient culture of protecting personal information at
the heart of your organisation or do you think that there was
perhaps a culture where cost considerations might have been more
important?
Mr Hartnett: Chairman, I have
thought about this a lot. I joined the old Inland Revenue more
than 30 years ago. I have a recollection of taking an oath orally
about protecting the confidentiality of people's data. I did ask
just recently about what the modern version of this is, and when
people join us, on their very first day, they are told about protecting
the confidentiality of people's data and the need to take care.
When you switch on a computer in Revenue & Customs, you are
warned about the care you need to take with data. I think there
was a dreadful mistake here and it has had a potentially huge
impact, but the people in Revenue & Customs recognise the
importance of the privileged position which, as you say, they
are in, having access to people's data.
Q38 Chairman: Lastly do you think
your matrix structure led to any weak accountability?
Mr Hartnett: I think our matrix
structure was very important when Revenue & Customs was formed.
It enabled the organisation to bind together, bringing two very
different organisations together, with different cultures, different
histories and different backgrounds, but it has caused difficulties
with accountability, which is why I have announced that we are
changing that approach at board level.
Chairman: Thank you Mr Hartnett. Keith
Hill?
Q39 Keith Hill: Mr Hartnett, could
you describe the procedure HMRC has set up with the NAO for passing
data to them?
Mr Hartnett: Yes, the general
procedure is that we have protocols with the NAO for the passage
of data, like other public sector and indeed private sector organisations.
We respect the right of our auditor—indeed he has a statutory
right—to access any data they reasonably need for their
audit, so we have these protocols and we expect to use them, and
I know the NAO expect to use them too.
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