Speeches by Hoare.

“So why is your client so livid?”

“Bereavement and complex cases, yes, but do you accept that your performance has been so lamentable and your corporate reputation so hanging by a sliver thread that you do not now have the luxury of triaging when it comes to how you handle calls? Each call, irrespective of genesis, should be dealt with as pressing and u…”

“Where does one start? Let’s take that as a key point. How confident are you that Capita is operating with a full—for want of a better phrase—open-book approach and showing you as the Cabinet Office and the surge team everything?”

“You take me on to my follow-up question. From memory, Government awarded the contract to Capita principally because of their commanding narrative around digital data handling and AI. Either they lied to secure the contract, or they have been let down by a third-party supplier, or the scrutiny of the Cabinet Office to d…”

“In the promise to develop, was there an adequate, realistic window to develop that capability prior to the green light coming to them to operate the contract from day one?”

“Hindsight is, of course, the wonderful gift that we all wish we had when we are taking decisions. Are you convinced that sufficiently robust scrutiny by Government during that two-year window of technological development would give Government confidence that the capability would be there from day one?”

“I am not particularly well known for being up to date with all the latest management speak, but you used the phrase “our colleagues in Capita”. I presume you are not talking about the surge team from HMRC.”

“But they are not your colleagues in Capita. They are a private business, which His Majesty’s Government has contracted to provide a service. With the greatest of respect to him, I would not call the man who comes to repair my boiler or my car my colleague. I am paying him to deliver a service. Could I suggest that the …”

“Minister, the nub of the conundrum is surely this: there is no competitive marketplace of bidders in this sector or in many others where the Government have outsourced. At worst, it has been concentrated into monopoly bidders. Sometimes there are just one or two. You are all wrestling with the fact that if the outcomes…”

“Is that the point when we get out our tiny violins and play a tune for Capita?”

“I do not want the question the honesty and voracity of answer that you gave a moment or so ago, but I would like to see some data to back up something that you have just told the Committee, which, forgive me, I find hard to believe. Mr Clements, you said that there were people who were not receiving their pension or no…”

“Let me pause you there, and forgive my ignorance on this point. You inherited the contract, or you won the contract, it having been taken away from MyCSP for reasons that we all readily have to hand; they do not need relitigating here. First, they had been paying out pensions. As Members of Parliament, we were not gett…”

“We know that. But surely you realised that when you submitted your bid for the tender. That did not come as a great surprise, surely. It was not like a lightbulb moment.”

“But that is the purpose of the transition period.”

“Hang on. Let us just pause that. You had a transition period, the purpose of which was not to metaphorically—I do not mean this disparagingly—twiddle corporate thumbs; it was to prepare the ground to ensure that there could be as seamless a transition as possible from one contract provider to another. At what point did…”

“That may be true, but I am afraid that does not answer my question. At what point did you tell the Cabinet Office that the technological solution that you had promised in the bidding process for the contract was taking longer to reach the levels of scope and reliability that you recognised were required?”

“Sorry, Mr Holroyd, that was a question to Mr Clements.”

“Hang on. So you have a bad situation, which you then decide to make worse by putting in untrained staff to answer telephone calls. That is what you have just told us, Mr Clements? Correct?”

“I think the record will show—you may have misspoken and wish to clarify—that you have just told the Committee that to address the backlog, you put in people who were not qualified to answer telephone calls to, guess what, answer telephone calls.”

“That is good, but that is not what you said.”