Speeches by Jones.

“I do not know why. I do not know how TBI came up with that number. You would have to ask them. As I say, the OBR was making some assumptions, which it recognised were broad assumptions just for the OBR’s purposes. It rightly identified, to be clear, that this is something that is not yet fully formed, which is why it p…”

“No, because it is a genuine consultation. We will have to buy something, but the reason you could not put a number on it in the Budget is that we have not consulted yet. There is a whole spectrum of options. You could try to build the whole system yourself in Government and totally replicate what the private sector has…”

“The first thing to say is that the OBR number was an assumption that it made based on the public information that was available at the time about what the cost range might be. The Government do not recognise that number because we have not consulted yet. I cannot tell you how much it is going to cost because I do not k…”

“—can do a whole host of other things in the future. It might make it easier for you to claim your entitlement to funded childcare. It may make it easier for you to engage with HMRC and those types of things. The technology enables the application of the digital right-to-work check, which we will do digitally because di…”

“I would say a couple of things. The right-to-work check is already mandatory by law, but the Prime Minister has announced that it will have to be done digitally from 2029 if you are working and getting a new job. That is an application of the technology, but the technology itself—”

“Let us just step back and ask, “What are we delivering?” It is the ability to log into a Government app and prove who you are in order to get better access to certain services.”

“Yes. I do not know what will be in the draft Bill because, as I say, we have not consulted.”

“It will be both. There will be broad principles. The public may want to be involved in some of the broader discussion about their current experience of public services; how things are not working, perhaps with telephone hotlines, paper-based forms or having to tell your story five times to different Departments across …”

“We are hoping to be able to get going towards the back end of January. It is a genuine consultation. We have not pre-decided what we want to do and are not consulting just to manage legal risk. We want to make sure there is sufficient time to engage on the issues that people care about in terms of privacy, security and…”

“Let me come back to you in the new year. I am very excited, though, so I hope you will be as well.”

“I do not know whether I am allowed to announce it yet. I have to sign off some things.”

“Yes, because I said so. I wanted to make sure that we were consulting in a different way. I do not want this just to be a gov.uk web form. I want it to be a more engaging process with the public across the country, through MPs, through Parliament and with Select Committees, because I recognise that it is an issue that …”

“That is exactly right.”

“The Department for technology will be engaging with technology providers and procuring technology. It will be looking at how the system is built, operated and deployed across Government. Where there is policy co-ordination, that is where we play our role.”

“The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology co-ordinates technology procurement, build and deployment across Government, as the technology Department, but the Secretary of State for DSIT was very conscious that this particular project is one that will require a lot of cross-Government co-ordination. While the…”

“That is exactly right.”

“Yes, they are called strategy documents for a reason. It will be about strategic outcomes against spending. With time, we are integrating finance systems across Whitehall so that we can share near real‑time data, which will replace the manual Excel spreadsheet system that we inherited from the last Labour Govern…”

“The system was rubbish, basically, in my view. The ODPs were set up by Gordon Brown when he was in the Treasury. They played an important role, but they became very manual and technocratic. It is essentially an Excel spreadsheet that permanent secretaries fill out and submit to the Treasury to say what they are deliver…”

“Yes.”

“We have not pushed it that hard yet, so I cannot tell you for sure. Change is difficult for people. Departments, no doubt, enjoy their autonomy and will want to protect that. There is some argument for that. You would not want to completely undermine it. If there was any process of change in that direction, I suspect t…”