New Clause 13
Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill
Public Bill Committees, 16 October 2007, 4:15 pm
Andrew Selous (Shadow Minister, Work & Pensions; South West Bedfordshire, Conservative)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
This brings us back to the thorny subject of the computer systems that will support CMEC, which we have touched on several times during our discussions. New clause 13 would help the computer systems to make a success of the new commission. It is worth reminding the Committee that the Public Accounts Committee’s 37th report for the 2006-07 Session said that
“the Department did not maintain the capability to be an intelligent customer”
in outsourcing most of its IT capability to EDS. Having a single senior departmental official responsible for overseeing the implementation of the computer system is an issue that Committee members have raised repeatedly with departmental officials who have come before the Committee.
It is not as though we have not been here before, not only in this Department but across Government. After some brief research this morning, I came up with the following list of Government IT projects in which things have gone wrong—the Inland Revenue tax credit system, the passport office, the Ministry of Defence asset tracking software, national insurance recording, the central veterinary laboratory database for BSE, the Libra project for magistrates courts, the national probation service’s information strategy, the Criminal Records Bureau, the National Air Traffic Services system and the national programme for information technology in the NHS, as well as the moving of the GCHQ computer system.
That is a brief list. Thankfully, not all of them were at the Department for Work and Pensions, but it is worth putting on record that the recent history of Government—of both parties, it is fair to say—has not been glorious. The new clause is a small, practical proposal to ensure that there is one individual who will see the contract all the way through. In the civil service, as elsewhere, it is not unusual for people to be moved after a time, perhaps because of other opportunities that fit their career path, but with public sector contracts of this size and importance, there is a valid case for one person earning stars on the career path by seeing the project through. I hope that the Minister will look favourably on the new clause.