Schedule 3
Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill
5:45 pm
Danny Alexander (Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Work & Pensions; Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, Liberal Democrat)
I beg to move amendment No. 58, in schedule 3, page 61, line 31, leave out paragraph 51.
This is a probing amendment. Paragraph 51 inserts a new section, 50A, which states:
“Any decision falling to be made under or by virtue of this Act by the Commission may be made, not only by a person authorised to exercise the Commission’s decision-making function, but also by a computer for whose operation such a person is responsible.”
I shall be interested to hear from the Minister whether it is a standard insertion in Acts that apply where computers may have a role in the administration of facilities. I make no apologies for repeating a point that was made earlier: the failure of computers to operate properly is one of the principal reasons why the CSA has such a bad reputation for making the wrong decisions in the wrong way at the wrong time and coming up with the wrong answer. The Minister admitted as much this morning when he referred to the internal audit of the CSA’s computer system, which he said had found 506 problems, which is not a small number, of which 219 have been fixed, leaving 287 remaining. He was frank about the problem, for which I commend him.
I assume that the Minister thinks that the problems will be fixed and that by the time CMEC comes into existence its computer system will be up and running and carrying out its functions. If it is not, the clause seems rather a sweeping measure, as it provides that a decision made by computer is to be regarded as a decision of the Secretary of State, or, in future, of the commission. The fact that it is a standard provision should in no way be taken to undermine my concerns about the idea, because unless the Minister can offer reassurances that the IT problems will be sorted out, the concept behind the proposal will not engender public confidence or the confidence of Members of Parliament in the operation of the new system.
The amendment provides a good opportunity for the Minister to say a little about the IT systems that CMEC intends to use, how the Government intend it to operate those systems and in what respect it will be different from how the CSA operated its IT systems, which the Minister admitted were beset by problems from the start.
The Government seem to have rejected the idea of a completely new IT system, so the proposed insertion in the schedule provides new responsibilities for those computers, if only legally, in name. The Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but at the same time it seems that CMEC will take over the legacy computer system of the CSA, albeit, one hopes, with the remaining 287 faults corrected. No doubt a number of new IT releases will be brought in to allow the new formula and the new rules set out in the Bill and in the regulations to be applied.
The report by the Work and Pensions Committee referred to the Child Support Agency’s record of serial IT failures and made the point that there is no evidence that a new system will be any more effective than the last two. The National Audit Office report on IT projects, “Delivering successful IT-enabled business change”, which I am sure is familiar to every member of the Committee, highlighted the complexities of the technical problems encountered when joining new and old systems in a variety of settings.
In responding to this brief debate, perhaps the Minister will explain his strategy for CMEC’s computer system. If it is a final decision, will he say why he has decided that the legacy computer system will be improved rather than having a new system? If that is the case, how does he intend to address the issues that were highlighted by the National Audit Office about the problems that exist in transitions between IT systems when patches and new releases have to be put in place? I would guess that in part the failure of that process in the past has been the cause of many of the problems that our constituents have experienced with the CSA. If a similar process is to be entered into again, what steps will the Minister take to ensure that it does not result in the same lack of effectiveness, lack of competence and extreme frustration and anger on the part of users of the system?