Lord Mitchell
Member of the House of Lords · Labour · United Kingdom
“In those days, no one quite understood the long-term dangers of radiation, and protection was rudimentary. For him, it was fatal. In 1998, he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia, which he knew was terminal. He told me, in his usual blunt way, “I know how this story ends and it is not pretty.”
“My Lords, on 9 October 2000, my parents-in-law, Jack and Ruth Lowy, committed joint suicide. He was dying and she had decided to accompany him on this last journey. Jack was born in Bratislava in what was then Czechoslovakia. The family were Jewish and following the events in Munich in 1938, they fled to Philadelphia.”
“My wife in particular sensed that they would carry out their wishes. After all, they were both intelligent people who had carefully thought this through. There was no one to support Jack and no one on hand to help Ruth in what must have been hell for her.”
“I cannot be certain about my mother-in-law’s motivation to join him, but they both knew that his own suicide at home could well run the risk of her being charged with committing a crime as an accomplice. What I do know is that had this Bill been law, she probably would have chosen life.”
“I always felt that the issue of antisemitism on campus did not emanate solely from the students. It also came from the laissez-faire attitude of the faculty.”
“We kept the brief tight, with no references to the Middle East; we judged that there was nothing we could do or say that could make any difference. Where we could definitely make a difference was through reference to our common UK experiences and our heritage. I think we made progress.”
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“The amendment is a very useful contribution by the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins. It was suggested by her and it deals with an area which, frankly, I had not anticipated. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Monson, surely chocolates containing alcohol are covered by paragraph (a) of the amendment which states, “classified as a foodstuff”. I would think that his delicious chocolates are probably covered as a foodstuff. I am also pleased that the 0.5 per cent mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord McColl, is a threshold requirement. On Question, amendment agreed to.”
“I would like to feel that that same drum is also being beaten for the benefits of the European consumer, because the European consumer in the data area deserves a fair deal.”
“Noble Lords will know that for young people today social online networking is a key aspect of their lives. They do it all the time and the phone is a key area for that. Those same people use their phones on holiday in Europe, and I am sure that they use them with gay abandon until they come home and look at their bills. The roaming charges are key, and where Apple have gone Nokia and BlackBerry will follow, as will all phone manufacturers. I am trying to convey to your Lordships that the growth in the future will be in data, and data are totally and completely unrestricted and not subjected to the rules that were agreed in 2006. We are delighted that the Minister bangs the drum for European business and may he continue to do so for a long time.”
“The real growth is not just in texts but in downloading of data, to which I shall turn a minute. She said that national regulators are unable to address those issues unilaterally. Noble Lords may not know but the cost of downloading a megabyte of data is €7. On my computer I can download a megabyte of data in two seconds. Were that on a mobile phone, that would cost €7 and mobile phone connections through 3G will go at similar speeds. That is an example of highway robbery and a total rip-off by the operators. I want to talk about what data are. I am the proud possessor of a device called an iPhone, produced by Apple. It happens to be a phone but it is an awful lot more. It has e-mail, internet browser, share prices, YouTube, maps, on which you can find your location, and now movie downloads and music downloads.”
“First, SMS texting came to the mobile phone operators like manna from heaven. They did not know it was going to occur; they did not know there was a market; and suddenly that market is huge. One only has to look at children standing at a bus stop, or wherever, to see that they are all texting each other all day long. It has become an amazing method of social communication. As much as some of us may detest it, as a parent there is nothing better than that welcome bleep-bleep to tell you that your child has got home or is safe. It is amazingly reassuring. Commissioner Reding addressed a conference in Barcelona on 11 February this year and talked about data costs and how they need to be reduced. She drew attention to the fact that data costs, even for texting, are 20 times more outside the home country than within it. That is quite amazing.”
“I could not help but laugh as when that happened the mobile phone operators told everyone on their phones how wonderful they were that they were reducing the price, concealing the fact that they had done it through gritted teeth. That is marketing for you. Commissioner Viviane Reding has done a phenomenal job. She is to be lauded for what she has done. She pushed very hard and it was a great victory. The main point of my speech does not concern voice usage on mobile phones, as I believe that battle has been won and in Europe voice usage is probably saturated. Most people have a mobile phone and there is not much more market in which to sell mobile phones. Also, people will not use mobile phones more for voice because they use them as they use them. The big growth area at which all the operators are looking is data.”
“I am normally good at judging what prices will be but that bill made me speechless. Therefore, I have a vested interest in this report. In March 2007, Sub-Committee B published a superb report entitled Mobile Phone Charges in the EU: Curbing the Excesses . It mentioned the size of roaming charges in the EU being €5.4 billion, which by any measure for the network operators was a nice little earner. No wonder they fought so hard to ensure that nothing was done to curb that success. However, Europe had a phenomenal result, which I am sure was helped by what we were doing and in the summer of 2006 mobile phone roaming charges were reduced by at least 70 per cent.”
“That may be due to the fact that the dollar has been plummeting and the euro has been going up but, looking back over 60 years since World War II, it would be as well for us all to reflect on what an amazing achievement it has been to get to that point. What I have to say concerns one area which always interests me—that is, mobile phones and roaming charges. I was brought up with a jolt some time ago when, having sold my company, the first thing that I had to do was get a mobile phone because previously it had been paid for by the company. I never thought about the bill as someone else had always paid it. I paid the normal tariff on my phone and, after the first month of using it when I had been travelling, I had an enormous bill, most of which related to calls that I had made on the Continent.”
“My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Freeman, for bringing this report to our attention. As always, he has chaired the committee with tremendous clarity and has brought us an outstanding report. I also thank the staff, who have done such a magnificent job. With regard to the title, The Single Market: Wallflower or Dancing Partner ? , I have to say that, whatever attributes I may have as a human being, dancing is not one of them; in the ballroom, I am afraid I am on the side of the wallflower. My noble friend Lord Haskel made various points about the European Union, and there is something else that we must celebrate today. I heard on the radio that as of this morning the gross national product of the European Union has exceeded that of the United States.”
“Those of us who are associated with bodies that, in the public mind and common perception, are negative, condemnatory and judgmental institutions find it very difficult to persuade others that there might be proper and objective grounds for some of the restrictions and that the desire to rein back the licence is reasonable. I commend the Bill on behalf of my noble friend. I thank the House for giving me the delusion that I am a Front-Bench spokesman and I hope that the Bill will be warmly endorsed—with the caveats that I have described. Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—( Lord Griffiths of Burry Port .)”
“How do we create an ethos within which people recognise the choices available to them and choose sensibly? How do we avoid the repression of the culture I grew up in, which was so condemnatory of anything that purported to carry pleasurable connotations? How do we avoid the obvious negative aspects of that without just moving into a free-for-all ethos in which it seems that anything goes? In a post modern culture where we make up our own ethics as we go along, nothing can be supposed to be bad. How do we avoid those two extremes? It is a Scylla and Charybdis situation.”
“So there may well be a partial and immediate benefit to be gained from the Bill—I certainly want it to happen—but we should not imagine or delude ourselves that it will solve the problem once and for all. A similar thing has happened in the area of smoking, where health warnings abound. It is one of the ironies of life to see people clutching a packet of cigarettes that has a health warning which is visible to those looking at the smoker; whether it is visible to the smoker is another matter altogether. When one realises the recidivism and the dependency that are built into some of these pleasures, we should never imagine that what we are considering today will once and for all deal with the problem. How do we effect a change of culture?”
“I do not think the debate will involve noble Lords putting forward an opposing point of view. The reason I felt drawn to the debate is largely that I want us to remind ourselves that we should not imagine that by putting such a Bill on the statute book we will cure or solve the problem we are envisaging. In other areas of life in recent times, we can see where similar animadversions have been brought to bear on our social mores and have brought short-term benefits. For example, the safe sex campaign made a great impact when it was launched with all the advertising that went with it—some of it negative advertising showing the danger of HIV/AIDS—but more recent reports have shown that unsafe sex and sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise again.”
“My wife and I have watched with personal interest my daughter’s stance on those pleasures as she began, with her husband, to think of starting a family. With great pride we can say that her readiness and her ability to give up both habits have raised her considerably in our already rather aggrandised view of her qualities. As she is to give birth to her first child, our first grandchild, in Cambodia, I think that the misspelling of my title on the Order Paper suggests some kind of Freudian slip on someone’s part, but I am very grateful for the great care and attention that has been given to making me feel very much at home. Who can be against the proposal at the heart of the Bill? No one, I would have thought. It is sensible to give the right kind of warning and to display that warning in the proper place—visibly—to make its own point.”
“The disclaimer is that I speak, of course, as a Methodist—but a Methodist with a very nice wine cellar. In case there might be some misapprehension, I am proud of my church’s teaching on questions of social importance across the generations, but life is too short to go without the pleasures of life and we must find a proper way of enjoying them and, at the same time, safeguarding the vulnerable and the weak. I believe that the Bill makes one such proposal along those lines. The expression of interest is that our daughter will, within three or four weeks’ time, produce her first child. Our daughter loved the social life, which involved the consumption of alcohol and the smoking of cigarettes, prior to her pregnancy.”
“My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Mitchell, and with the permission of the House, I rise to speak at this point in the debate and to move that the Bill be now read a second time. Some have greatness thrust upon them. I am glad that the Bill is of such a length that I could read it properly and prepare myself in a way that allows me to speak first on this issue. I was drawn to it as a subject when I believed that its field of application would be more widely drawn than has turned out to be the case. However, even this discrete area of proposed legislation allows me to consider the points that would have been perhaps more germane had there been a wider field of reference. I begin with both a disclaimer and an expression of interest.”
“I end by saying to my noble friend the Minister, “The time for talking is over; let’s see some action”.”
“What about the babies who in the mean time are being born with FASD and FAS, disorders that are totally preventable? It is simply not good enough for us to allow this confusion to continue. At Second Reading of the previous Bill in your Lordships’ House, the Minister, my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, concluded his wind-up speech by saying, “if talks became protracted and it looked as if there would not be a successful outcome, noble Lords would be absolutely right to come back and say to the Government, ‘The time for talking is over; let’s see some action’”.—[ Official Report , 20/4/07; col. 479.] Well, here we are, nine months later. The voluntary code is less than certain and, when and if it comes into effect, it is clear that adherence will be less than 100 per cent.”
“I see confusion when the Government say, “Avoid all alcohol when pregnant”, but some commentators in the media say, “Drink sensibly”. I see confusion when, in October 2007, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence produced guidelines that stated that pregnant women can consume 1.5 units of alcohol per day after the first three months of pregnancy, whereas the BMA says, “Avoid all alcohol”. I see confusion when the Portman Group, the industry’s mouthpiece on social responsibility, says that it is holding back from labelling due to the uncertainties about the dangers of drinking when pregnant. If all the experts are confused, how about the young woman going out on a Friday night to enjoy herself? What is she supposed to make of it?”
“We told them what they had to do, as did legislators in most other countries, and they did it. Surely the same should apply to this form of labelling. I fail to understand why the alcoholic beverage industry, which is compelled by law to include labelling of the type that we are suggesting in other countries, is kicking up such a fuss. I simply do not understand the logic that says that one consignment of Johnnie Walker Black Label whisky bound for New York has a label while the next consignment of an identical bottle of whisky bound for London does not. I see confusion everywhere. I see confusion on what constitutes a unit. How big is the glass and how potent is the brew? Also, as I have asked, what is a unit?”
“In France, labelling is compulsory. In South Africa, the Government plan to have compulsory labelling. In Finland, labelling is compulsory, as it is in Sweden on all products containing more than 2.25 per cent alcohol. Many other countries are moving in that direction. I remain sceptical about a voluntary code for labelling. I am no fan of self-regulation. I know that it is the preferred route of the Department of Health and I know that the industry, to its credit, is moving in that direction. But I simply do not believe that it is good enough; those who choose to ignore it will be able to do so. When we introduced labelling on tobacco products, we did not ask the tobacco manufacturers to volunteer to a labelling code, perhaps because we knew what the answer would be.”
“It received massive publicity and, as a result, many more women have become aware of the issue and the dangers. But memories fade fast. Then, in June 2007, the British Medical Association’s board of science published a report entitled, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder —A G uide for Healthcare Professionals . It made many recommendations but recommended in particular that women who are pregnant, or who are considering a pregnancy, should be advised not to consume any alcohol and that consistent and clear advice be given to healthcare professionals and the general public regarding the sensible drinking message and the risks of alcohol consumption during pregnancy. There have been significant developments in other countries. In the United States, labelling has been compulsory since the passing of the Alcoholic Beverage Labeling Act in 1988.”
“If 14 units per week is the limit, what harm is 16? While we are at it, let us go for a round 20. Sometimes I have a vision of endless meetings at the Department of Health discussing the importance of units. I bet that officials get very worked up on the subject. Everything they do is reduced to the number of units. But I wonder just how many people in the King of Prussia on a Friday night have a clue what a unit is. When I have asked my friends, I have received blank stares. Since the Bill was previously introduced, there have been many developments. First, the Department of Health published its position that women who are pregnant or thinking of becoming pregnant should avoid all alcohol. “Avoid” is the key word. That was good news.”
“Many women believe that some alcohol consumption while pregnant is fine. Some say that a few units now and then are harmless. The medical profession itself sends out mixed messages. We measure alcohol consumption in units, as if members of the public have any idea what a unit is. Is it a glass of wine? Well, what is a glass of wine? Today a large glass of wine in a pub or bar can be as much as one-quarter of a litre. Moreover, are we talking about the kind of wine with which we are familiar, which has an alcohol content of 12 per cent, or is it some newer concoction that reaches 15 per cent? How about alcopops? How many units are there in a Bacardi Breezer? I must admit that I have no clue. I suspect that it is only human, when we use the number of units as a guide, to regard such advice with scepticism.”
“That seems a pretty open and shut case, yet there are many who are against labelling, who say that it is one more instance of the nanny state interfering in our ancient liberties. They fail to appreciate that what is planned to be mandatory is labelling, not not drinking while pregnant. If a woman chooses to drink in these circumstances, that is her choice. I believe passionately that we as a Parliament have the duty to inform the public of the risks and how they might affect an unborn baby. Sadly, many women today are confused about the quantity that they can drink while pregnant. Sometimes the messages that are sent out by the authorities and the media are conflicting. This Bill seeks to remedy this confusion. It is not about more nannying; it is about more information.”
“The Bill would make it compulsory for all containers of alcohol-related beverages to have a label printed on them with the wording, “Avoid alcohol if pregnant or trying to conceive”. That wording was agreed to by the Department of Health last year and I have included it in this Bill to replace alternative wording in the previous Bill. It is an unambiguous statement allowing no scope for misinterpretation. Why is it important to put this message across so starkly? The evidence now is strong that mothers who drink at any stage of their pregnancy run the risk that their baby can be damaged. This damage can be slight or severe and in its worse form can cause terrible damage. What is undeniable is that it is preventable. If a mother refrains from drinking during pregnancy, foetal alcohol spectrum disorder will not happen.”
“Because the foetus has no functioning liver and because organ and neurological development proceeds throughout the pregnancy, extensive damage can be done to the unborn baby. FASD is the wider disorder affecting one in 100 babies. Sometimes its effect is mild; sometimes it is severe. Foetal alcohol syndrome is a severe disorder affecting one in 1,000 babies. Its effect is catastrophic. It causes brain damage and often organ malfunction resulting in a baby being born severely handicapped, mentally and sometimes physically. My Bill starts from the premise that we as a legislative assembly and the Government themselves have the duty to inform women, in particular young women, of the dangers of drinking any alcohol when pregnant.”
“One comment that I made last time seems to have found a wider audience: that if at the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing binge drinking were to be an official event, our country would walk away not only with the gold medal, but also with the silver and bronze. It is not much to be proud of. In London just 18 days ago, during the first hours of 2008, calls to the ambulance service on drink-related incidents rose 16 per cent over the same period in 2007 and by 30 per cent over 2006. The epidemic continues. This epidemic is not just a male problem; more and more young women seem to regard each weekend as an opportunity to go out on the lash. We do not need to look too far to see how true that is. Foetal alcohol spectrum disorder occurs when alcohol passes from the mother’s bloodstream into the bloodstream of the foetus.”
“Noble Lords will be delighted to hear that I am not going to repeat the speech that I gave at the previous Second Reading. The list of speakers today is relatively small, but noble Lords who are speaking have great expertise in this area and I am sure that all the issues will be addressed. What I will do is repeat in summary the background to the Bill, highlight how it differs from the previous one and go through the important developments that have taken place in the past year. Finally, I shall address the fair question of why am I introducing this Bill when the industry has already voluntarily agreed to a code to include labelling at the end of this year. We barely need reminding just how dire alcohol abuse is in our country.”
“My Lords, here was I thinking that I was 45 minutes early. I thank my noble friend Lord Griffiths for moving the Motion on Second Reading of this Bill and for the generosity of the House in allowing me to speak at this point. This Alcohol Labelling Bill is almost identical to the Bill that I introduced into your Lordships’ House last year. It differs in one respect only, which I will come to later. Last year’s Bill hit the buffers when an amendment was introduced by one noble Lord, which effectively killed it off; the usual channels told me that no time would be made available later in the parliamentary Session. This time around, I have reintroduced the Bill much earlier in the Session. Private Members’ Bills always have to battle against the constraints of parliamentary time both here and in the other place.”
“I will read all the speeches in Hansard with great interest. At the end of the day, this Bill is about whether one believes that a voluntary code will work 100 per cent. As the Minister said, I am somewhat sceptical that it will work 100 per cent. In the case of tobacco, it was mandatory. All that I will say in summary is that it was a good debate. On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.”
“My Lords, with the leave of the House and on behalf of my noble friend Lord Griffiths, who kindly moved the Second Reading on my behalf, I will now reply to the debate. I am very grateful to all noble Lords who participated in the debate. It was predictable beforehand and was true in reality that the quality was of the very highest order. I believe that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, did not speak, but no doubt she has a speech that she will let me read, which would be useful. I missed the contribution made by my noble friend Lord Griffiths. I heard only half of what the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, said. She has tremendous experience in the industry; I think she was chief executive of the Portman Group at some point. She really understands the industry perspective, so I am very grateful for her contribution.”
“My Lords, we must take some great satisfaction from the fact that prices have been reduced throughout Europe on mobile phone usage. Are there any plans to repeat those reductions with respect to data and SMS texting?”
“My Lords, I beg to introduce a Bill to make provision for the labelling of alcoholic beverages; and for connected purposes. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a first time. Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Bill read a first time, and ordered to be printed.”
“Apartheid is a very dangerous word; it has all sorts of meanings and it is absolutely untrue to say that of Israel.”
“My Lords, very slowly my speech has been salamied as other speakers have made similar points, but it gives me an opportunity to address the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge. The bit of her speech to which I take particular exception is her comment that Israel is an apartheid state. Perhaps we have all forgotten what an apartheid state was like. But, let me say just this about Israel: it has an Arab Minister in the Government and in the Cabinet. There is no ban on races mixing with each other. If you go to any hospital in Israel, you will see Arabs, Israelis and Druze whether they are being treated or whether they are doctors and nurses. In particular, the Weizmann Institute, of which I am the UK chairman, has Arabs and Arab professors who mix closely.”
“The West Bank is occupied by Israel, and maybe in Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah Party the Israelis have a partner for peace. Does he have the strength to deliver? I hope so. In Gaza, there is a Hamas mini-state. It will not recognise Israel, abide by previous agreements or renounce violence. Until such time as a Palestinian leader can negotiate and deliver a deal that will endure, it is clear that neither the British Government nor any other Government will be able to make that happen.”
“My Lords, as I said, it is a very emotive word. Perhaps I may say a few words on the nature of peace. After the 1967 and 1973 wars, Anwar Sadat, a man of vision and strength came to Jerusalem and met with another man of vision and strength, Menachem Begin. They signed a peace agreement. Israel withdrew from Sinai. Another man of vision, King Hussein of Jordan, signed a peace agreement with Yitzhak Rabin. It is beyond dispute that Israel wants peace and will withdraw from the remaining occupied territories to get it. But, as we know, between the Palestinians and the Israelis, there is nothing but the hostility of which we have spoken tonight. They came close to peace in 2000, but Arafat walked away. He was not a man of vision and strength. Today, we have a better situation.”
“asked Her Majesty’s Government: Whether they have any plans to change the regulations governing the tax status of non-domiciled residents in the United Kingdom.”
“My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer. Many of the super-rich permanently living in this country are classified as non-domiciled residents. That means that they pay no tax on income earned abroad. With careful tax planning, which they can easily afford, they end up paying little tax either abroad or in the UK. Does my noble friend think that fair? Secondly, can he give some indication of the loss to the Exchequer as a result of that concession?”
“My analysis is simple: make the project small, make the specifications tight, make the suppliers your friends, make the consultants redundant, and make the users want to use your project.”
“There should be a senior responsible owner on every project. In the private sector, IT is increasingly deemed to be too important to be left to the nerds. One cannot imagine Goldman Sachs having a chief information officer at a junior rank. Data are life and death to an investment bank, and too important to be relegated. It should be the same in government departments. Here is a suggestion. Why does not the whole public sector adopt a uniform delivery infrastructure? Why not make it all one utility, from which various departments can work? Finally, on the human side of IT, why don’t we market what is out there? The noble Lord, Lord Birt, talked about all the projects that are out there. I bet that most people in the street have no clue about what is going on. A little marketing would really help to make them aware of it.”
“Clearly, it judged that it was better to cut its losses than to continue losing money hand over fist dealing with the NHS. This is not a triumph of contract, but a total failure of the whole project. I am of the old school, but I really want my suppliers to make a reasonable profit when they deal with me. If they are happy, I am happy. If they are disgruntled, I will have problems. The Civil Service will never understand that, which is why it gets into so much trouble. An arrogance also pervades these big projects—a “we know best” frame of mind. If nothing else, it has proved beyond doubt that it does not know best. What can we do about it? First, civil servants need to be trained and educated about the nature of contracts and partnership. They should know that, in any project, we are all on the same side.”
“Managers should stand on their own feet and take responsibility for their own decisions, and not hide behind the skirts of overpaid time-wasters. The result of bad practice in government departments is that many IT companies also behave badly. The suppliers overplay their abilities. They over-promise what they cannot deliver, they underbid on costs, and they try to recapture revenues every time the specification is changed—and the specifications often change. They get themselves into a terrible mess. Let us imagine, if we can, the state of mind that Accenture must have been in, as my noble friend Lord Warner said, when it withdrew from the NHS project. It cost the company £220 million—an amazing figure—to get out of the contract.”
“They are used as a crutch, a prop, to support third-rate management. They give senior management an opportunity to abrogate responsibility that should not be abrogated. They are used by insecure and inept managers to cover their backsides, so that they can say when something goes wrong, “Ah well, the consultants recommended it”. It may seem obvious, but consultants, like lawyers and accountants, are all in it for fee income. Shortening the project by making it easy and simple is not in their remit. It is not how they are assessed at head office. Their incentive is to make every project as big and as complex as possible, and their hope is that it goes on generating fees for ever. I am not joking when I say that we would all be served if every consultant were fired tomorrow.”
“Those huge projects take ages to spec, ages to negotiate, ages to procure and ages to implement. Those who start the project are seldom there at the end. How many civil servants are still in post after three years? No one takes responsibility for the project from beginning to end. Then there is the whole area of consultants. A few years ago, I was consulting for Hewlett-Packard. A new CEO was appointed in the United States. His first act was to fire almost every consultant—including me, I am sad to say. That action resulted in a saving of nearly $1 billion a year. Did the company collapse without those paragons of wisdom present? Not a bit of it. Freed from those interfering busybodies, the company has gone from strength to strength. Consultants are the curse of business.”
“It is a mentality that says that the supplier is the bad guy who is out to rip us off, therefore we must use the power of the contract to protect ourselves. I have always had a simple mantra in business: sign the contract, stick it in the drawer and never look at it again. The day that you take it out of the drawer, you are in serious trouble. But, then, I come from the private sector, where we regard suppliers as partners. Our attitude is that there will always be problems, but we sort them out by sitting on the same side of the table, not glaring at each other across the room. Here is the truth about onerous penalties: they do not incentivise suppliers; they make them live in fear. Furthermore, no penalty, no matter how large, will ever compensate for a failed project. Then there is the problem with the departments’ personnel.”
“I should like to analyse why public sector IT projects have had such a dismal time and then make a few suggestions as to how they may be improved. First, there is a problem of scale. It seems to me that the public sector has always favoured the big-bang approach—introducing a fully completed project in one fell swoop. That is a very dangerous game. It is far better and much safer to make the project as small as possible, make sure all the bugs are ironed out and then roll it out slowly. Then there is what I would call the major problem: the public sector fixation with contracts and penalties. I am afraid that that is part of the Civil Service mentality. Somehow the Civil Service believes that, if you make the contract tight enough and the penalties onerous enough, everything will come good.”
“To bring departments from the Stone Age into the 21st century requires massive investment on new and mega-sized systems. That all costs money, lots of money. As they say, with £10 billion here and £10 billion there, pretty soon you are talking about serious money. Then there was an about-turn. In the late 1990s, all the IT companies became very focused on the public sector. That is where the money was. After the dotcom crash, when the private sector froze, the opportunity presented itself. The problem was that, unlike the private sector, the public sector was not equipped to handle such huge projects. It did not have the people, it did not have the culture and, in particular, it had to deal with snooping politicians who did not have a clue how to ask the right questions.”
“Rightly or wrongly, the general view is that Governments—this one or any other—are unable to control those large projects and as a result taxpayers’ money goes down the drain. The truth is that some projects go well and are unsung, but others go spectacularly wrong and grab the headlines. In my day, the government sector was a no-go area, light years behind the private sector. Less qualified people worked there. Decision processes went on for ever. Life was too short and the rewards uncertain. That has changed. Since this Government came to power, quite correctly in my view, the managerial emphasis has been on information. Without information, you simply cannot manage. Obtaining information is not easy, especially if you are starting with primitive systems.”