IT Systems (Army Recruitment)

Lord Coaker Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on the performance of Ministry of Defence IT systems and the effect on Army recruitment.

[The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Philip Hammond)]

The Army entered into a partnering contract with Capita in March 2012 to manage the recruitment of regular and reserve soldiers. That is an Army-led initiative designed to free up military personnel from recruitment-related administrative tasks and to improve both the quantity and quality of Army recruits. It will play a key role as we transition the Army to the new Army 2020 structures.

I should make it clear to the House that the Army has not outsourced its recruitment; it remains in overall charge of recruitment and will continue to play a major role in attracting and mentoring recruits. Capita’s role is to manage the supporting processes by which a would-be recruit becomes an enlisted regular or a fully trained reservist.

As I have explained to the House previously, there have been initial difficulties with that recruiting process as we transition to the new recruiting arrangements with Capita. In particular, we have encountered difficulties with the IT systems supporting the application and enlistment process. The decision to use the legacy Atlas IT platform was deemed at the time to be the quickest and most cost-effective way of delivering the new recruitment programme. An option to revert to a Capita hosting solution was included in the contracts as a back-up solution.

I was made aware in the summer of last year that the Army was encountering problems with the integration of the Capita system into the Atlas platform. Since then we have put in place a number of workarounds and mitigation measures for the old IT platform to simplify the application process, and we have reintroduced military personnel to provide manual intervention to support the process.

Having visited the Army’s recruitment centre in Upavon on 30 October, it became clear to me that, despite the Army putting in place measures to mitigate those problems in the near term, further long-term action was needed to fix the situation. It was agreed in principle at that point that the Atlas system was not capable of timely delivery of the Capita-run programme and that we would need to take up the option of reverting to Capita building a new IT platform specifically to run its system, which will be ready early next year.

In the short term, we have already taken action to bring in a range of initiatives that will make it progressively easier and quicker for applicants, both regular and reserve, to enlist. As I informed the House in December, we have taken a number of actions, including: the introduction this month of a new front-end web application for Army recruitment; a simplified online application form; more streamlined medical clearance processes; greater mentoring of recruits by local reserve units through the application, enlistment and training process; and the reintroduction of reserve unit recruitment targets and the provision of recruitment resource to reserve unit commanding officers. With an improved Army recruitment website, streamlined medicals and an increase in the number of recruiting staff, recruits should see a much-improved experience by the end of this month.

As we move forward, we are looking at further ways of improving the management of the recruiting process in the intervening period before the introduction of the advanced IT system now being developed in partnership with Capita, which is expected to be deployed in February 2015. We have just launched a new recruitment drive for the Army, both regular and reserve, which will remind the House and the public that the Army is always recruiting and continues to offer exciting and rewarding careers in both the regular and reserve forces.

[Vernon Coaker]

I thank the Secretary of State for that statement.

In these first few weeks of 2014 there is no danger of auld acquaintance being forgot with this Secretary of State and Government. It may be a new year, but is it not the same old story of complacency, inefficiency and a lack of transparency at the Ministry of Defence? Here we go again. The Secretary of State has been forced to come to the House of Commons to try to explain catastrophic failures costing millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. This time it is an IT fiasco. It did not have to be like this.

Will the Secretary of State acknowledge that many in this House, myself included, warned that the Government were taking risks with Britain’s security by not fixing the reserve recruitment crisis before reducing numbers in the regular Army, and now we have the IT debacle? Does he accept that, just like the mess the Government made of privatising procurement, his entire armed forces reform programme is in danger of collapsing, too?

I asked the Defence Secretary specifically about the IT problems and Capita on the Floor of the House on 20 November 2013. Did he not say that everything was in hand? It is clear that the computer said no, but the Defence Secretary said, no problem.

Does the Defence Secretary remember telling the House on 4 November 2013 that there had merely been “teething problems” with the IT support for Army recruitment? If today’s reports are accurate, I would advise the Defence Secretary to seek dental advice elsewhere, because today we have learned that the problems are even worse than anyone thought and still have not been fixed.

Will the Defence Secretary tell the House which Minister signed off the deal and who has been responsible for monitoring it? Will he confirm that the project, costing £1.3 billion, is almost two years behind schedule and will not be fully operational until April 2015 at the earliest?

The Future Reserves 2020 report, placed in the Library on 18 December—I am sure it was only a coincidence that that was the day on which the House rose for the Christmas break—confirms that an improved IT system will be developed in partnership with Capita. Will the Secretary of State confirm how much that will cost? Is it the figure of nearly £50 million that has been reported in the papers today?

Will the Secretary of State also confirm that £15.5 million has been spent building the existing flawed computer system behind the project? Finally, is it correct that this continuing disaster is costing taxpayers £1 million every month?

On 10 April 2013, the then Minister of State, the right hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Mr Robathan), said that

“the Recruiting Partnering Project with Capita…will lead to a significant increase in recruiting performance.”—[Official Report, 10 April 2013; Vol. 560, c. 1134W.]

Is there any Member of this House, any member of our armed forces or, indeed, any member of the British public who still believes that?

The blame for the mess we are now in lies squarely with the Government. We cannot take risks with our armed forces and we cannot gamble with our nation’s safety and security. Does the Defence Secretary not need to get a grip and sort out this shambles?

[Mr Hammond]

That is precisely what I am doing. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should remind himself that the initial gate business case for this project to outsource recruiting was approved in July 2008, so I hope we are not in dispute over the principle.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned an IT debacle. Yes, there are big problems with the IT and I have told the House on repeated occasions that we have IT challenges. There are problems with IT in Government. The hon. Gentleman speaks as if he was not a member of the Government who spent £13 billion on a health computer system that we had to write off and £400 million on a work and pensions computer system that had to be written off.

What we are doing now is gripping this problem and addressing it. That means, in the short term, workarounds and putting additional manpower into the system to provide additional support. Short-term solutions include the new front-end web application, which will go live over the next two weeks, to improve the experience of applicants accessing the platform.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the costs and I can give him some figures. The Capita solution will cost about £47.7 million to produce a full new IT platform. The alternative Atlas IT platform proposal would have cost about £43 million, so the additional cost of the Capita solution is about £4.5 million. He asked about the £15.5 million of sunk cost. Our initial estimate is that about £6.7 million of that represents costs that will have to be written off, but that will be subject to a proper audit process.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the additional cost—the running cost, as it were—of the interim solution that we have put in place. It comprises additional payments that have to be made and the cost of the additional manpower that has been delivered into the system. That is currently running at about £1 million per month. The solution that we have adopted and that we have now approved—going ahead with Capita platform and placing the integration risk back on Capita—is judged to be the quickest way of eliminating that ongoing expenditure and the best way of delivering a permanent solution for the benefit of the Army and the taxpayer.