Q61 Mr Field: We know from the Report that the Agency has been concentrating on those who may abuse young people and not weighting equally those who care for elderly people. Did you give them those instructions?
Mr Lewis: I think it was always the case that we saw the role of the Bureau to help employers take better informed recruitment decisions and protect all of those who might be vulnerable.
Q62 Mr Field: Mr Lewis, our time is, unfortunately, limited. Did you give any instructions on this or not?
Mr Lewis: There were no specific instructions given to the Agency to focus on one group or another.
Q63 Mr Field: How did you find out that the work was being weighted in that way?
Mr Lewis: I think I need to be able to answer this question in my own words. It is not a question of the work being weighted in this way.
Q64 Mr Field: You are answering all the questions in your own words.
Mr Lewis: It is a fact that when the Bureau ran into difficulties then the decision was taken that before it took on new work and new roles and new disclosures it was necessary, first of all, to get it operating properly and effectively in respect of its original groups, but, as you will know, it is now undertaking additional checks on new care home staV, on domiciliary care agency staff and so on and it is gradually extending its reach to cover other potentially vulnerable groups and people who work for them and with them.
Q65 Mr Field: Let me come back to the contract. I am not terribly good at making judgments about people but I am wonderfully supported by many of my constituents who are pretty hard nosed and if they were sitting here looking at a contract which was placed at this level in which the Report says the Home Office did not seriously consider the other applicants once the prices were known, that the cost of that contract has escalated by £150 million and we still do not know where it is going to land, they would say there was a fix on and that money would have changed hands. Given that that is a charge I now put to you and your Department and given the Department
loves having consultants even if they do not know what the price of these consultants is, what moves do you make to make sure that such a fix did not occur in this or any of the other contracts?
Mr Lewis: First of all, I would like, since you have put it in those terms, to place on the record that there is no evidence whatsoever of any impropriety of any kind.
Q66 Mr Field: I am asking you what steps you took to check that there was not any impropriety?
Mr Lewis: What steps were taken actually were pretty rigorous. When those best and final oVers were received a great deal of due diligence and a great deal of investigation went into analysing those bits and those figures, including a specially commissioned one of examination of the Capita bid precisely because it was at a significant lower cost than the other bids.
Q67 Mr Field: Given that with the result the findings were spectacularly out, have any of those people lost their jobs for losing taxpayers so much money?
Mr Lewis: No, they have not. I think one of the difficulties which we face, and I absolutely understand the line of questioning which you are pursuing, is that we are now applying what we know now to the decision that was taken then. At that point we had three bids.
Q68 Mr Field: That is the nature of our inquiry.
Mr Lewis: It is, but I think it is important to go back to what was facing the decision-makers at the time that the decision to let that contract was taken. What we were facing then was three bids with a difference in price between the cheapest and most expensive of over £100 million over 10 years. A great deal of due diligence was undertaken and a special examination was undertaken of those bids, the results of which suggested that the proper course was to accept the Capita bid, as was done. Had a different decision been taken at the time I think it might have been extraordinarily difficult to justify it to this Committee.
Q69 Mr Field: We now know the outcome despite your due diligence enquiries. You mentioned to Mr.Bacon that the cost was going to rise to something like £400 million. In what year is that going to be the cost?
Mr Lewis: That will be over the lifetime of the contract.
Q70 Mr Field: Which is?
Mr Lewis: Ten years.
Mr Field: Will you be prepared to put your salary on the fact that it will not rise and that taxpayers will not be called upon to double the sum again?
Chairman: I do not think that is a fair question to put to the Permanent Secretary.