On the Today Programme this week, I challenged the Government on their attempt to lock-in a quick deal just weeks before an election with the suppliers for the £12.7 billion National Programme for IT, known as NPfIT.
Cabinet Office guidance makes it crystal clear that a Government is acting out of line if it makes decisions that could tie the hands of the next Government on ‘large and/or contentious procurement contracts’ in the period before a General Election.
But, when asked directly on the Today Programme, Government Health Minister Mike O’Brien admitted that negotiations on the hugely controversial NPfIT were indeed going ahead.
Not only is this bad news for the NHS, it is highly worrying for taxpayers. The aim of the Programme – to deliver electronic health records to every patient in England – is as far away from being realised as ever. Whilst GPs were well on the way to having electronic records before the NPfIT began, the main focus of the Programme – to create electronic records in acute care and link these up with the rest of the NHS – has failed: only 13 NHS hospital Trusts have full IT systems under the NPfIT to date despite a total spend on the initiative of £6.1 billion.
Mike O’Brien claims that the Government is renegotiating the contracts in order to deliver on the Chancellor’s pre-budget report pledge to cut the Programme by £600 million. But industry experts were quick to point out on Radio 4′s File on 4 Programme this week that the suppliers have the Government over a barrel: as one IT consultant put it, ‘for every £1 taken out of the contracts, £2 will come out of what they have to deliver.’
In the light of Labour’s ongoing dispute with Fujitsu – said to be worth £700 million, and its half a billion pound pay-off to BT last year (rumoured to have been a bargaining chip to keep them from exiting the NPfIT), the public have plenty of reason to be wary about the Government’s latest trip to the negotiating table. At best it is a last-ditch attempt to tackle a deficit of their own making; at worst it is an underhand effort to tie the hands of the next Government and block Conservative plans to finally deliver value for money to the public through our localised, interoperable vision of NHS IT.
( 8 comments ) Tags: national programme for it, nhs, NPfIT, Radio 4's File on 4
Comment by Iswani Fed on March 5, 2010 at 10:39 am
This actually gets worse in my opinion, because not only hasn’t SOME NPfIT suppliers not met their delivery promises, NHS management now wants to reward them with big, juicy extensions to ‘support’ their existing systems (because of their software delivery delays). For what? Continued support of old, aging healthcare systems – some of them on outdated technology stacks – all at a premium price?
Comment by Iswani Fed on March 5, 2010 at 10:42 am
REVISED – This actually gets worse, in my opinion, because not only have SOME of NPfIT suppliers not met their delivery promises, NHS management now wants to reward them with big, juicy extensions to ’support’ their existing systems (because of their software delivery delays). For what? Continued support of old, aging healthcare systems – some of them on outdated technology stacks – all at a premium price? It’s an outrage!
Comment by Fraser Niven on March 5, 2010 at 12:01 pm
There are many examples of waste this government is guilty of incurring. It must be a key strategy to shout about all of it – not only NHS, MOD contracts, the Scottish Parliament debacle and the useless identity scheme.
Comment by Chris on March 5, 2010 at 4:18 pm
Capitalism is the way this country will destruct itself.
With labour-Tories selling whatever they can to make them look as if their saving us money…..
MONEY MONEY MONEY……………..
I think politicians need to remember how they get where they are. People not money.. Mind not sure their is a real honest Politician’s.
I don’t think I could watch Tories Make richer “richer” .Today we have 2 people. Them with, them without.
Us voters are a majority without. But we believe these politicians will help. But once voted in their cant be much change because the banks wont allow it unless its making them money somewhere
Comment by David Knight on March 6, 2010 at 10:10 am
Referring to the comments by Chris I can completely agree that the majority of us voters are feeling pretty powerless in our current situation and the Banks have got away with far to much. But I cant understand your other views frankly. It has to be about money as the current Labour government has spent too much and was doing so well before the recession. So if you were in alot of debt because of previous over spending, what would you do to correct it, as even you must realise you cant go on spending !
Comment by David Wilkinson on March 10, 2010 at 9:48 am
The logic for this program is flawed. It presumes that every Trust has the same IT needs, be they a large teaching hospital or a regional DGH. It also assumes that the only answer lies overseas – echo’s of Mr Blair being seduced by Bill gates et al. Everyone knows, it, including the Labour MP’s – they have known it for 4+ years. But still the activity flows on, and money is wasted. What we need is to merge thinking around our national strategy for R&D and this program. It is a fantastic opportunity for innovative technology companies to help the government solve a major cost headache. Right now, and for the last 6 years, the government’s strategy has been to kill what is left of our industry by denying them a market in which to innovate. That is the inheritance of the Blair/Brown era.
Comment by Ian Harris on March 10, 2010 at 7:35 pm
Conservatives should make it clear that any large contracts entered into by this government in its dying days will not be honoured by Conservatives. Labour is doing its best to tie Conservatives into Labour-approved projects irrespective of future costs.
Comment by Dr R Freeman on May 21, 2010 at 11:39 am
The summary care record as proposed by connecting for health is a gross invasion of privacy for the vast majority of individuals and is of no benefit to them. Why not upload the records of just those patients who would benefit, after getting their full consent and at the same time save a fortune? Ask GP’s who they are, we know whose medical records need to be centrally available. I for one would be willing to promote it on this basis.