HC Deb 28 October 1999 vol 336 cc1105-13

1.8 pm

The President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mrs. Margaret Beckett)

I am announcing today the results of the October monthly review of progress in tackling the millennium bug across government. The completed questionnaires will all be placed in the Libraries of the House and published on the internet as usual. The report follows those that Members have received in writing from my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, Privy Council Office and myself during the recess. I will also be reporting on preparedness across the national infrastructure, including key services delivered by the wider public sector. I have also informed the House of information published during the recess, in answer to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Ms Keeble).

I am pleased to report that very good progress has been made by Government Departments and agencies in tackling the bug since I last reported on the Floor of the House. The latest returns show that work on more than 99 per cent. of business-critical systems has now been completed. That means that systems have been fixed, tested and successfully put back into operation. However, work on a few business-critical systems still remains to be completed. Three organisations report some completion dates in November and December: the Ministry of Defence, the Office for National Statistics and the Planning Inspectorate.

The Ministry of Defence's very large and complex programme is close to completion. Ninety-eight per cent. of critical systems have been made compliant and all front-line systems are ready. Robust and comprehensive continuity plans have been developed and tested.

The Office for National Statistics has experienced a delay in the roll-out of new compliant registration software to register offices in England and Wales. The roll-out in England is due to finish by the end of this month, except for register offices in one county—Hampshire—which has requested a delay until November to fit in with its operational plans. The roll-out is not scheduled to finish until mid-November in Wales, but in all these cases, robust and tested business continuity plans are already in place.

The planning inspectorate has completed 90 per cent. of work on its business-critical systems and is on target to finish in November. Since autumn of last year we have been placing greater emphasis on the importance of business continuity plans and millennium operating regimes, which are essential safeguards against the impact of unforeseen bug failures and the other pressures of the millennium holiday period. The vast majority of Departments and agencies already have tested business continuity plans and millennium operating regimes in place. Ministerial colleagues have given me their personal assurances that all Departments and agencies will meet the deadline of the end of October for putting into place and testing the plans and millennium operating regimes.

As I foresaw in my September letter to Members, arrangements have been put in place so that the Government and the key infrastructure providers can share information over the millennium about how things are going and how any problems that emerge are being handled. Yesterday my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and I announced the arrangements for the Government millennium centre, which will handle the flow of information over the critical period.

Exercise Herald, which took place on 26 October, tested how the information flows will work. This Cabinet Office-led exercise involved Government Departments and their agencies, Action 2000, the utilities, the Central Office of Information, the Government offices, and representatives of the media. A full analysis of the success of the exercise is not yet available, but preliminary indications are that a further exercise on a similar scale is unlikely to be required.

Independent assessments of the readiness of key parts of the national infrastructure have been undertaken as part of Action 2000's national infrastructure assessment programme. This programme has also included an assessment of business continuity plans and millennium operating regimes. The results of the latest assessments were announced at the national infrastructure forum on 21 October and are being published in a series of newspaper adverts in the national press.

I am pleased to report that almost all sectors of the national infrastructure have been rated as 100 per cent. "blue". That means that the independent assessors have not identified any risk of material disruption and that the public can expect a normal service. This includes key utilities services such as electricity, telecommunications, water and gas.

A number of essential and important services are delivered by the public sector. They, too, have been independently assessed as part of Action 2000's NIF programme. The benefit payments process has been blue since July. I am pleased to confirm that police services, fire brigades and NHS organisations are now all 100 per cent. blue. There has also been considerable progress in tackling the bug in local government. Local authorities in England, Scotland, and Wales are now 100 per cent. blue.

Financial institutions have been assessed as 98 per cent. blue. Seven medium-impact financial institutions are rated amber, but are expected to be blue by 12 November. Elsewhere, very few elements of amber remain, but further assessment work is under way in these sectors and all are expected to be 100 per cent. blue by the end of October.

No matter how much testing has been done, the possibility of failures occurring still remains. To address any remaining or unforeseen risks, and in line with best practice in the private sector, we have adopted a belt-and-braces approach to the issue, emphasising the need for all service providers to put proper and robust business continuity plans in place so that they can continue to deliver essential services, come what may.

There has been a vast amount of work in the UK to prepare for the millennium bug. We have subjected essential service providers to a rigorous programme of independent assessments—a process which gives us one of the most, if not the most, comprehensive and objective pictures of national readiness in the world. However, we have less information about other countries, so we cannot be confident that the rest of the world will be ready. We will therefore continue to prepare for potential disruption and make contingency plans to minimise any impact.

The Government will continue to lead by example and to be open and transparent on this issue. I will report further progress to the House in November and December. The United Kingdom remains one of the world leaders in tackling the millennium bug.

Mrs. Angela Browning (Tiverton and Honiton)

I am most grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving me an advance copy of today's statement, and for the briefing with officials that she enabled me to hold earlier this month.

I welcome the fact that, in the latest report, blue status has been awarded in many private and public sector organisations. I am grateful for that information. We can all share the right hon. Lady's relief at that progress. However, some concerns remain, especially in the public sector.

When the right hon. Lady makes statements on this subject, she places in the Library some rather large tomes of detailed data. She will be encouraged to know that I have ploughed through the documents that were placed in the Library in September, although I have not had a chance to consult those for October, which she is placing in the Library today. My questions are thus based on the information available to me.

I noticed that the contingency plans for many parts of government—the business continuity plans—have yet to be tested. If alternative arrangements have been set up, it is imperative that they have at least been tested. I hope that the right hon. Lady will give us some updated information on progress on testing. In her statement, she announced the establishment of the Government millennium centre, which will be Cabinet Office led and will be the Government's hub for dealing with any problems that might arise. However, in the section on the Cabinet Office in the September report, I note that the business continuity plan for the Government's secure intranet has not yet been tested. If the internal intranet is to be at the hub of the Government's dissemination of information, it is important that it should be tested. I should be grateful for some updated information on that point.

In her statement to the House on 17 June, the right hon. Lady announced 30 September 1999 as the target date for NHS contingency plans. Will she confirm that that target was met, and that the systems and contingency plans for the NHS have been satisfactorily tested?

There is continuing concern about the testing of contingency plans in many parts of the public sector—for example, the Passport Agency. The right hon. Lady will know why I choose that example. That agency does not have a good track record, so the fact that it has yet to report the completion and testing of the work is worrying. Will she confirm that the Passport Agency completed its business continuity plan by the end of September and that the October report, which she is placing in the Library today, shows that the plan has been tested?

Even more important are those plans with a target date of the end of November and the end of December. The right hon. Lady nods—I am grateful for that acknowledgement that the matter is now of extremely grave concern, because of the time constraints. On 9 September 1998, when she made her quarterly statement on the subject, she stated: I am concerned that there has been some slippage: the completion dates of a small number of plans have moved by a quarter, mostly from December 1998 to March 1999. I am particularly concerned that a number of the target dates are close to the end of 1999. I share the concerns that the right hon. Lady expressed a year ago—especially those about the overall capability of the Ministry of Defence to complete its work on time and, in particular, for that work to be tested. She stated that she was satisfied that critical systems—especially front-line systems—had met their targets. However, there seems to have been no overall improvement in the completion of work in the MOD to a target of the end of November or December—according to the graph in the right hon. Lady's documents in the Library, the MOD does not appear to have made any progress during the past year. If the work is to be completed by the end of December, it is self-evident that the test will not be made before the millennium—the millennium itself will be the test for the MOD. That is a matter of extreme concern.

I appreciate the fact that things such as nuclear weapons systems are not involved; I am referring to the MOD's overall capability. None the less, that Department is very important and we are looking to the right hon. Lady to advise us today as to what action she is taking to ensure that it not only completes its work by the end of December but puts its systems through the required testing in advance of that date.

The right hon. Lady referred to the state of preparedness in other countries. If the Cabinet Office is to act as the hub of Government at the millennium, it is important that we know exactly how the general public will receive information post-millennium. The Cabinet Office will presumably not be able to rely entirely on IT systems to disseminate that information. As it is only 64 days to the millennium, will the right hon. Lady outline today how the Government intend to put information in the public domain? For example, people may require travel advice, perhaps for health and safety reasons, for various parts of the world. How will our embassies and high commissions provide local information to the United Kingdom so that it may be analysed and passed on to the public?

The right hon. Lady promised in her statement to give two further personal statements before Christmas. The right hon. Lady will appreciate that, if we are scrutinise the situation properly, we must have access to as much information as possible before the House rises for Christmas. As the right hon. Lady has influence over the scheduling of business in the House, will she arrange for the December statement to be made in good time so that hon. Members can study it and ask relevant questions? It will be our last opportunity to do that before the millennium, and we will want to test the reassurances that the right hon. Lady has given today.

Mrs. Beckett

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her comments and I will try to deal with most of the issues that she has raised.

Further testing is continuing on the Cabinet Office intranet. I am not certain whether it has been completed, so I shall write to the hon. Lady about the matter. I think she will find that NHS work and testing is now complete. The hon. Lady asked also about the Passport Agency. Its work is well under way and the Home Office announced recently that, after encountering some problems, the Passport Agency is now meeting its normal targets. Much of its work using older systems has dealt with post-2000 dates for a considerable period.

The hon. Lady raised concerns about some November and December completion dates. She will know that I share her concern in that regard, and have long done so. We have nagged Departments ruthlessly to bring those dates forward as far as they can. The hon. Lady will be aware—the available information will confirm this—that in all cases, not just the vast majority, we are talking about finalising testing and the independent assessment of contingency planning. A feature of our assessment process is that we are not prepared to sign off people until all the work is completed.

The hon. Lady expressed particular concern about the work of the MOD, which she said seemed not to have improved in the past year. That is certainly not the case: the MOD has improved enormously. I suppose that it appears, to some extent, to be in the same parish because some work remains to be completed. However, the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy, for example, have finished all work on their business-critical systems. Although a small amount of work on MOD programmes remains to be done, it is on systems that provide support—for example, logistics support and equipment maintenance. The vast majority of the remaining work is awaiting the completion of testing and assessment certification. Although I share the hon. Lady's regret that the work was not finished earlier, we are talking about the final stages of completion, not about work that has barely begun.

The hon. Lady also asked me about the international situation and how information will be collected and disseminated. As was announced yesterday, over the millennium period information will come to the information centre, primarily from Foreign and Commonwealth Office posts, which are charged with that responsibility. That information will be monitored. Media representatives will be in the information centre, so information that gives cause for concern can, if it is of considerable impact, be disseminated immediately. However, the Foreign Office will, of course, continue to update and assess the information that it has.

The information centre will remain open until 4 or 5 January at the least, because that is when many people will return to work and when some minor problems may be discovered. Similarly, as information comes in about other countries, we shall continue to update it. I anticipate that that will be done through the FCO website. If there is more that I can say about that, I shall write to the hon. Lady.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody (Crewe and Nantwich)

Is my right hon. Friend aware that one of the issues that worries us is that some foreign countries do not have the same access to skilled support systems and may still be lagging behind, particularly in aviation? Will she assure me that the Civil Aviation Authority and the Foreign Office have carried out all possible checks to ensure that other nations' airlines that fly over London into Heathrow are absolutely certain that their systems are capable of dealing with any problems that. might arise?

Mrs. Beckett

My hon. Friend is entirely right to express that concern. That assessment and monitoring is continuing. I assure her that the air transport authorities, which are independent of Government, have made it absolutely clear that should there be any dubiety about the safety of aircraft or of airlines that would normally fly into London, their licences will be withdrawn. There will be no question of such aircraft being in United Kingdom airspace.

Mr. Richard Allan (Sheffield, Hallam)

The Leader of the House will be aware of the problems that can be caused to the telecommunications network by peaks in demand, as we saw recently when the simple operation of selling tickets for an England v. Scotland game caused major disruption, and callers—whether Scottish or English—were left being offered glazing services instead of tickets. Will she assure the House that business continuity planning covers the possible cumulative effect of panic calling resulting from systems going down or simply from human concerns?

On a more parochial level, will the right hon. Lady endorse and support efforts by the Information Committee and Officers of the House to ensure that all Members upgrade their systems and their staff's systems so that we are all ready to serve our constituents from the morning of 1 January 2000?

Mrs. Beckett

I shall deal first with the hon. Gentleman's second question. I fear that I cannot take responsibility for all Members and their offices. However, the House authorities are on the case and we are doing everything that we can to ensure that the services provided by the House to Members will be available in the ordinary way. We certainly encourage all Members to be aware of the impact on their own activities.

On the hon. Gentleman's initial question, everyone has been very mindful—there has been much discussion and in-depth consideration—of the problems that could occur, including those that result from human behaviour and from peaks of demand. All the telecommunications agencies have prepared for exceptional demand. Equally, one feature of the Government's approach to the matter—I commend this to Members—is that we encourage human behaviour that is less likely to exacerbate the difficulties. For example, we urge everyone not to pick up the phone and test it to see whether it is working immediately after midnight. That is the one thing that might mean that it does not work when one wants it to. I assure the hon. Gentleman, however, that special work and special committees have dealt with the general operation of telecommunications and, in particular, emergency communications. They are addressing issues such as demand as well as any problems that might arise from the millennium bug.

Mr. Gerald Bermingham (St. Helens, South)

Will my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House reassure me that, in the event of people suffering loss or damage because of a non-compliance fault, they will be compensated with speed and efficiency, so that the state will set an example of best practice to those who will undoubtedly be hurt by the private sector's non-compliance in some cases?

Mrs. Beckett

I cannot give my hon. Friend the blanket assurance that he seeks. We cannot undertake to remove completely the ordinary, day-to-day problems that occur in the natural course of life. That is one of the features of handling the issue. I shall give him a simple example that I always find quite compelling: every day, an average of 40,000 people are without electricity supply for about an hour. We clearly cannot undertake that such things will not happen over the millennium period. However, we can say that everything is being done to minimise the likelihood of any problems. Of course, if there are problems due to negligence in some way, that will have to be taken into consideration. Our aim is to avoid such difficulties.

Mr. Ian Bruce (South Dorset)

Are there any instances in reports that the right hon. Lady has received from different Departments of the other dates about which we were all warned—9.9.99, the beginning of the financial year and the beginning of 1999—causing problems for Government computers? Has she any indication of the cost to all Departments of preparing for 2000? Have the Government provided additional funds for organisations such as the health service, which might have had to take money from patient care to deal with the problem?

Mrs. Beckett

I am indeed aware of such implications. There was some worry about 1 September and, for obvious reasons, about 9 September. There has been no adverse impact, that we can discover, on any of those dates. Indeed, there have been few confirmed reports of adverse impact even in the private sector or in other countries.

The anticipated cost to Departments has been pretty stable for some considerable time at around £420 million or £430 million. One of the reasons for that, which the hon. Gentleman will readily appreciate, is that, in the national health service, for example, to which he referred, work, albeit on a smallish scale, began as long ago as 1995. We are talking about work in many key areas that has not been confined to one critical period, but has been spread over time.

Mr. Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston)

From my discussions with people in other countries, it is clear that, on international comparisons, the Government and the nation have so far done a superb job—about that there is no doubt.

One aspect that is worthy of further consideration, perhaps through the newly created millennium centre, is the possible occurrence of minor problems as a result of the coincidence of Y2K and, for example, bad weather conditions. That could present difficulties in areas such as the public utilities, which no reasonable person could foresee. Indeed, part of my electricity supply was off over last Christmas and new year, without a Y2K problem. Against that background, will my right hon. Friend ask the newly created millennium centre to draw up contingency plans in order to cope with such eventualities?

Mrs. Beckett

My hon. Friend is entirely right in his observations. He is right, too, to identify the substantial implications of the size and scale of the holiday, and, obviously, when it arises. If there is any impact, we may look back on it as being due primarily to bad weather, a flu epidemic or something of that kind, rather than to the millennium bug. I assure my hon. Friend that that has been a huge factor in all the thought, preparation and planning.

One of the reasons why the millennium centre was launched yesterday by the Home Secretary and myself is the range of services that are engaged in dealing with events over the millennium quite apart from the millennium bug. As an information centre, the millennium centre will be handling the flow of information on millennium events, not merely on millennium bug issues. We hope that that will mean a satisfactory flow of information to all who need to be kept informed.

Mr. Alasdair Morgan (Galloway and Upper Nithsdale)

Is the Leader of the House in a position to estimate, however roughly, the percentage of the work on this problem that has been taken up with checking and testing, and the percentage taken up with fixing bugs that have been found? In other words, what amount of the work has turned out to be purely precautionary, albeit a necessary precaution?

Mrs. Beckett

That is a very good question. I cannot make such an assessment at this moment. My gut feeling, from the very many reports to which I have listened, is that, on the whole, in most areas, fixing has been a fairly small fraction of the work, and that the great bulk of the work has been that of checking and identifying possible problems, contingency planning and so on. However, obviously no one could have known that without that checking and examination.

I told my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Mr. Miller) about the operation of the millennium centre. Although the hon. Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale (Mr. Morgan) did not raise the matter with me, he may like to know that similar centres will operate in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham)

I thank the President of the Council for her helpful statement, acknowledging in the process the hard work that is being done throughout the country to seek to ensure universal compliance by the due date. But, given that the right hon. Lady will recall from earlier exchanges in the House the widespread concern about the fact that the Department of Trade and Industry, a sponsoring Department, was a serious culprit and had a very dilatory approach to tackling those important matters, I wonder whether the right hon. Lady can give us an update today. Will she tell the House how the DTI has since performed—no doubt following a degree of nudging and encouragement from her—in absolute terms and relative to other Departments? Will she add something about the performance of the Export Credits Guarantee Department, about which there has been widespread concern for many months?

Mrs. Beckett

I would not call it nudging; it would be more accurate to call it beating over the head. I understand that all Government Departments, including the DTI and the ECGD, have completed their work, tested their contingency plans and are up to speed.

Mr. Owen Paterson (North Shropshire)

Last year the River Severn flooded, causing very serious damage, and this year it has already overflowed its banks. As I understand it, the countermeasure systems in the event of a possible failure have yet to be tested, and that is especially important for flood warning and the estimation of river levels. What contingency plans do the Government have?

Mrs. Beckett

I understand that that work also is on target. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, who will reply to the agriculture debate, has some responsibility for those matters. Who knows—with the hon. Gentleman's ingenuity and Madam Speaker's good will, he may manage to pursue the matter.

Mrs. Browning

I remind the right hon. Lady that when she laid the September report in the Library, no countermeasures had been identified by the ECGD. They were due to be completed in October. Therefore they have yet to be identified as complete, let alone tested. I should be grateful if the right hon. Lady would investigate that specifically.

Mrs. Beckett

I am most grateful to the hon. Lady. I have no briefing that suggests that there is any continuing problem with the ECGD, but she is right to raise the matter and I am grateful to her for doing so. I shall ensure that there is no continued problem.