Ministry of Defence: IT Systems

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Astor of Hever]

No, my Lords, it was not. The whole idea of this was to try to relieve manpower to enable soldiers to go back to the front line as well as reducing cost. However, I point out to the noble Lord that this is not the first IT project to go on. In 1998, Labour announced a programme to reform the way that the NHS used IT. It was originally intended to cost £6.2 billion, but costs later doubled to almost £13 billion. In 2011, the Government axed that project and replaced it with a cheaper, locally led system. The National Audit Office slammed the original scheme, saying that it did not represent value for money, so this is not the first time that there have been problems with IT.

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, that is exactly the point that the Minister has made. This is not the first time that an IT system has gone wrong. As the noble Lord, Lord West, has said, this trial was going completely against the traditional methods of recruiting. Will the noble Lord tell the House whether it was adequately tried out before it was forced on what I understand was a very reluctant Army?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

The noble Lord is probably better informed on that than I am. We want to get the best of both worlds. The Army is not losing control of recruiting—it was always going to be in control of recruiting—but we want to use the very best software to help it do the job properly and get recruits into the reserves and into the regulars.