Defence Fire and Rescue Project: Capita

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Thursday 21st June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Answer. I have to admit to being little short of amazed by this award. Yesterday’s Daily Telegraph said:

“An assessment by financial analytics experts from Company Watch, which is used by the MOD, gave Capita a risk score of 10 out of 10. The higher the figure, the greater the perceived level of financial distress. Published on June 6, the report also measured Capita on a separate metric, a so-called health score, which plunged to just three out of 100”.


All in defence know the appalling mess Capita made of the Armed Forces recruitment programme, which has been saved only by the Armed Forces duplicating the work Capita should have done. Surely Her Majesty’s Government—of the party that is supposed to understand business—understand that the Capita business model is bid low, exploit the contract to its limit and cut costs remorselessly. How will Her Majesty’s Government ensure that the inevitable cost-cutting will not result in the death of members of the Armed Forces?

[The Earl of Courtown]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his questions. I obviously do not agree with him. I think this is basically a good thing for the Ministry of Defence, its budget and the taxpayer. The noble Lord mentioned a document that has been doing the rounds of the newspapers. The document in question was produced by the strategic supplier management team. The ratings on the SIB are taken from the Company Watch report and are provided for information purposes only. The SIB is not used in the formal assessment of the company’s financial health and is purely for background.

All competitive proposals were thoroughly analysed by subject-matter experts from within the defence and wider fire and rescue sectors. The recommendations were also subject to detailed scrutiny by the Ministry of Defence, Her Majesty’s Treasury and the Cabinet Office. The scrutiny extended for more than six weeks longer than it needed, to ensure that due diligence had been carried out.