Central Courts IT System Debate

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Department: Scotland Office

Central Courts IT System

Lord Scriven Excerpts
Wednesday 23rd January 2019

(5 years, 9 months ago)

Lords Chamber
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Lord Keen of Elie Portrait Lord Keen of Elie
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My Lords, I was not involved directly in the preparation of this Statement. I was invited to repeat it in this House on the basis of information given to me. I cannot directly answer the question of who was consulted in the preparation of the Statement itself. If the noble Lord wishes I will write to him on the point—but if he has no desire for me to do so I will not.

Lord Scriven Portrait Lord Scriven (LD)
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My Lords, less than three years ago there was a whole-Whitehall review of the £500 million contracts given to Atos for government IT systems. This is another potential catastrophe with an IT system that Atos has implemented in government. In the light of that, what government-wide review will now be done of Atos’s ability to provide IT services for government on such a scale?

Lord Keen of Elie Portrait Lord Keen of Elie
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My Lords, this issue arose in the context not of the implementation of an IT system but of an existing system, in particular the corruption of part of the hardware, namely a routing server, which has now been replaced. Given that that has been identified and rectified, we would not contemplate launching the form of inquiry indicated by the noble Lord.