| Report by the Secretary of State for Social Security under Section 82 of the Welfare Reform and Pensions Act 1999
|
|
Mr. Steve Webb (Northavon): I start where the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) left off, and join in expressing thanks to the Select Committee. In particular, I thank its Chairman, my hon. Friend the Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire, who, when the rest of us were caught up in other aspects of the Welfare Reform and Pensions Bill, spotted that a clause that he and the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee wanted to have debated on the Floor of the House was being—shall we say—taken through without that debate, because of the timetable. Both hon. Gentlemen met the then Minister of State, the hon. Member for East Ham (Mr. Timms), to express their disquiet, and that is, partly, why we are here today. They were right not to be happy with the procedure, and subsequent events proved how far-sighted they were. The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar referred to the first such event—the extraordinary fact of the Government's losing 90 per cent. of the money for which they were asking. ``Losing'' is perhaps not the right word, but the Government certainly changed their mind about 90 per cent. of that money. The first report says that the letter of 3 December, which the Select Committee chose not to publish, for reasons of confidentiality, referred to a figure of £60 million. Remarkably, within five or six weeks, officials said, on being questioned, that they were requesting £6 million, not £60 million. We get the impression that the Department is treating the process in a cavalier fashion, initially referring to £60 million in a letter to a Select Committee and then, a few weeks later, not alerting the Select Committee until the oral evidence was given that it wanted only £6 million. That is an alarming way to treat a Select Committee, and indeed the House. There seems to be some confusion in the documents that we have about the point at which liabilities will accrue, which I hope that the Minister can clear up. Paragraph 12 of the first report says:
On 23 February the Secretary of State appeared to confirm that. In his letter, which is an appendix to the second report, he said:
What seems to have been said up to that point is that the law will go through by the summer—it is hard to see that it will not do so—and work on the part of the system that depends on the legislation going through will not start until the autumn. Therefore, in outturn, there would have been no need for the money to be approved prior to the Bill receiving Royal Assent, because the work on it will start only after the Bill has gone through the House. However, the Secretary of State's report says something slightly different. Paragraph 13 says:
The same paragraph concludes:
It is hard to see how all those statements can be reconciled. I hope that the Minister will tell us how they can be reconciled and, in particular, when she expects the contract to be signed. Does she expect it to be signed in early 2000, in which case liabilities will start to accrue then, well before Royal Assent, or does she expect it to be signed in September? I hope that she will respond. Angela Eagle: That is not right. Mr. Webb: The Minister may say that, but paragraph 13 of the Secretary of State's report says:
The Minister is still shaking her head. The Chairman: Order. The hon. Gentleman should carry on. Whether the Minister shakes her head or not is irrelevant. She will reply later. Mr. Webb: I look forward to hearing how she reconciles those two statements. The second point that I want to raise relates to the implementation of the reforms on which we are approving the advance spending of money. Again, there seems to have been a shift between the Secretary of State's report and the Select Committee report, which was published only eight or nine weeks ago. On 19 January this year, the first report of the Social Security Committee said in paragraph 15:
At that point the Select Committee was under the impression that the new system that we are talking about today would be up and running by late 2001. However, by the time the Secretary of State's report is published eight or nine weeks later, suddenly we are talking about April 2002. In eight weeks, the time scale seems to have slipped by five months, which even by Department of Social Security standards is pretty drastic. We certainly do not want the new regime to come in before the computer systems are ready to support it, but we want people who come to our surgeries to know when it will come in. People say to me now: ``We've heard this new system is coming in. When will my child maintenance be affected by it?'' or ``When will I get to keep £10 on the disregard?'' The Department has already changed its tune by five months in eight weeks. Will the Minister say definitively why there has already been a six-month slippage, will she confirm that April 2002 is definitely the point when the new arrangements will come in and can we tell our constituents that with confidence, given the Department's fluid notion of what ``soon'' and ``very soon'' mean? As my hon. Friend the Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire and his colleagues on the Select Committee have approved the revised version of the report, I would not wish to overturn their recommendation, but they have concerns about how the process was undertaken, as do I. There are also specific concerns about how the situation has changed between the different reports, which does not suggest competent handling of the issue. I hope that the Minister will respond to all those points.
4.59 pmAngela Eagle: I shall answer the questions that I have been asked as far as I can, but I shall also try to give a flavour of what has been going on in the Department in relation to the changed process. The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar asked first about the new IT system having to be operational. We have said that it is nigh on impossible to introduce the new system on top of the old one. Let me give a flavour of the difficulties that we face with the old IT system and also deal with the Tottenham Court road point, if I may call it that. The system on which we do Child Support Agency work is in fact two systems. It was developed in the 1970s and was 20 years old when it was procured in the early 1990s. In terms of its IT architecture, it is one of the oldest legacy systems. It is difficult, time-consuming and risky to incorporate changes in these old mainframe computers, because one has to put into the computer's coding the changes that the software on a personal computer would now organise. To do that, one needs highly-skilled people who have been trained in very old computer languages, which are increasingly becoming obsolete. The hon. Gentleman will remember that we had a discussion on that when we were debating the Child Support, Pensions and Social Security Bill. They system was designed in the 1970s for child support collection in Florida. It was bought off the shelf—not a shelf in Tottenham Court road but a shelf in Florida. It was brought in at the last minute to ensure that the child support system would be up and running when the Government of the time said it would be. There are some lessons here for those who complain about delays. The pressure to introduce something—anything—by the set date often leads to such mistakes being made. The computer does not recognise national insurance numbers because it was not designed for United Kingdom work, and national insurance numbers do not exist in Florida. Therefore, it cannot identify anyone in our system. No one who is identified by a national insurance number can be identified: there is no read-across from that system to any of our other systems. The system did not have a debt management function, which means that we now have two systems—the child support computer system and a separate debt management system for the accounts. The system does not produce personalised accounts. Therefore, Mr. Bloggs cannot obtain an account that will tell him whether he is in arrears, how much he has paid or when the payments were passed over to the parent with care; nor can the parent with care obtain an account that says whether his payments are up to date or whether there are arrears. Those facilities simply are not available. That makes it difficult even to do the basic work. Mr. Pickles: I am embarrassed to stop the Minister, because she is doing such a marvellous job. The next time I cannot boot up my computer, she is the first person I shall call. She is doing such a marvellous job at answering a question that I did not ask her that I wonder whether she can answer the question that I did ask. It relates to paragraph (h) on page iv in the first report, which says:
That is the question that I asked. I was not asking the Minister to shove something on to the old system. I was saying: ``Supposing the things that she's got that she likes very much don't work too well, we won't start until they work.'' Angela Eagle: I was coming on to that. This is the equipment that we have to work with now. If the new system was delayed or did not work, we would have nothing else with which to introduce the new system. The old system is very inflexible and highly risky to change; it does not deliver any management or work flow information; it has no usable, interactive presence on our staff's desk; no telephony services come with it—nothing. It is difficult to see how we could use what we have. I am told that it would be technically possible to use the old computer system to deliver the new system, but it would be in a primitive and inadequate way.
|
| |
| ©Parliamentary copyright 2000 | Prepared 5 April 2000 |
