§ Mr. WebbTo ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on how many occasions the Department has made compensation payments to Electronic Data Systems as a result of contractual changes to the Child Support Agency Reforms information technology project; and what the value was of each of those payments. [149517]
§ Mr. PondThe Department has not made any compensation payments to EDS. As announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on 27 January 2003,Official Report, columns 564–68, the Department has previously agreed an increase of around 7 per cent. in the value of the original contract, over its term. This increase reflected that the IT system had proved to be more complex than had been thought at the outset, something not uncommon in large scale IT systems.