ICL Pathway Diary Note
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To: Tony Oppenheim
Mike Coombs
Liam Foley
Ce:
From: John Bennett Ref: jhb/98aug364
Date: 14 August 1998
Subject: Meeting with George McCorkell - Thursday 13 August 1998
1. I took the main topic of conversation to George to be the process of finalising the
decision on the programme and progress with ministers.
. His view is that Darling wants a quick decision so as to get this issue off his desk
for good. He has space at the moment to give it appropriate thought, but as soon as
we get into September and beyond, ministerial attention will have to focus on
major issues of welfare reform particularly pensions, which is a much more
politically important area of activity.
. He knew that Peter Mandelson was on leave, but speculated that each minister had
a “duty minister” available to look after affairs in the meantime and depending on
the line agreed within DTI then this might apply. Personally, I think Mandelson
will not want this out of his sight.
. It is quite clear that the only way BA will accept the restructuring proposal is if
they are told to do it in the better interests of government. If that is the case then
Government will also have to spell out the commercial arrangements under which
such an approach is to be followed. George’s suggestion was that someone else in
Government would have to do the negotiations with us and then he would be told
what they are. On the other hand he wasn’t at all clear who this other part of
Government might be.
. I told him that there was a growing body of opinion elsewhere in Government
(outside BA) which was now moving firmly behind supporting the payment card as
the best value for money opportunity across government. I took him through the
logic of this (I shall write this up separately) and challenge him to disagree with it.
He was in the end unable to criticise or or fault the logic or put forward any
credible alternative scenario other than his suggestion of everyone proceeding with
an infrastructure but without the payment card. In other words Treasury option 2,
which he led me to believe is one which he had put forward not one which
Treasury had defined.
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6. However, he made it absolutely clear that in pursuing this middle way option that
BA had absolutely no intention of cancelling the payment card for convenience and
picking up the costs. Equally, he doesn’t see any basis whatsoever for
compensation payments to ICL and does not agree that the Treasury has this right.
In short he is looking to get off the payment card at no cost to BA.
7. He appears generally frustrated that he is powerless to sort this issue out in the way
he wants, and was quite insistent that once a decision had been made, that this must
also quickly get rid of the commercials, such that programme activity could move
on without constant reference to commercial legal issues. This is something we
could well agree with. We talked a bit about an approach in which the ICL costs
spent, plus the ICL costs yet to be spent in total, gave us a business case with an
acceptable rate of return regardless of what programme implementation was
followed. I told him we had already made many proposals along these lines but
that these had not been responded to at all.
8. He mentioned that the 13 week period following the “cure period letter” had now
run out and gave me the clear impression that more correspondence to us was on its
way.
9. Stuart Lord has left the DSS and is now working on a London Government project.
George’s view was this was a well planned move, was in the pipeline for some
time and was therefore not a sudden decision. The new man taking over is Stephen
Hickey who is now in post. He raised at the end of our meeting a number of
programme related thoughts which I list below.
10.He thinks the Model Office is running one week behind schedule.
11.CAPS/BA are upset at our response to the re-plan proposal. He considers that they
have worked very hard to accommodate our requirements, have shown great
flexibility and feel that they are being wrongly blamed for issues within the plan,
notwithstanding the fact that they themselves are absolutely on schedule and have
got their foot flat on the floor to make progress.
12.He agreed that the person most effected by this was Vince Gaskill there would be
benefit gained if Mike Coombs made direct contact with Vince to talk through the
issues around their sensitivities.
13.He said he was personally concerned at the lack of dialogue that he was having
with Post Office Counters Ltd, and in particular was critical of the fact that the
Horizon Programme Board agreed to be part of the new management arrangements
had not yet met. This denied him the chance to update Horizon on the CAPS
progress. He compared this with his own position whereby the CAPS and Cards
Board had come into effect in April, met regularly and formally and was taking
input from Horizon. He found it difficult to understand why the reverse was not in
place.
14In addition, although Dave Miller attends the CAPS Board he had been expecting
to see more of Mike Coombs, coming and attending with Dave and wasn’t quite
sure why this was not being done.
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I shall follow up the commercial issues in this review with Tony and the programme
issues with Mike.
Regards,
JOHN BENNETT
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