 Felly, wrth gyd, mae'n fawr i'r cymdeithasol y Gweithio Llywodraeth Cymru hwnnw, rhai ddweud ei wneud i'r dros y gyrdd gyda'r gweithwyr sydd yn ei ddaf i gyd. Rwy'n fawr i'n fawr i'w ddwyllai'n gweithwyr i'r cymdeithasol y gyrdd gyda'r gweithwyr o'r cymdeithasol i'r gweithwyr o'r cymdeithasol. Felly, gyda'r cymdeithasol o'r cymdeithasol i'r cymdeithasol i'r cymdeithasol i'r cymdeithasol Fy motion yn fuic Question in and in EGIS Report called 2414-15 Audit cwechwch ond—Y update management of IT contract. game upgraded from NHS in 2014 project. I have two separate evidence discussions today in Öfpers panel is Ian Crichton, the interim chief executive of the NHS 24, and Margo McGock, who is the director of finance for the NHS 24. I understand that Mr Crichton has a brief opening statement to make. Good morning. On behalf of NHS 24, I want to make sure that the committee is quite clear about just how concerned the board is about where we are, and I apologise unreservedly for where we find ourselves. From the very start, the organisation vastly underestimated the scale and complexity involved in bringing such an ambitious programme into service, and it has struggled to cope. An awful lot of very, very good people have spent a lot of time trying to recover that position, and I'm sure we'll talk more about that today. Our challenges have been systemic in the sense that none of the governance around the programme has successfully mitigated the risk enough to deliver on time and to budget. Again, I'll take you back to what was planned from inception and the challenges in terms of making that happen. Although many mistakes have been made, and I can understand the extreme concern and dissatisfaction of the committee, I think that it's important that you understand that NHS 24 has learned from them. I may not feel like that when you look at it from a distance, but if you look at each stage where we have fallen down, we've picked ourselves up and we've taken it forward to get to a position where the technology today works, and that's not a position we were in a year ago. I think finally I'd like you to be in no doubt about the organisation's resolve to get this now right. As I told you, we genuinely have very committed people who, particularly in the past 12 to 18 months, have worked incredibly hard to get this thing into the sort of state it needs to be for us to launch, and I expect us to do that in the coming year. Okay, thank you, Mr Greighton. I have a few questions firstly from myself in connection with and particularly in connection with the report. Can I firstly confirm that you are currently the accountable officer for NHS 24? I am. Why is that the interim? I was asked if I would take it on from September 1st, and I'm also the chief executive and accountable officer for national services Scotland. Can you confirm your annual salary? It's in the zone of £134,000. And was that the same annual salary that you received from your other post? No, I'm giving you my annual salary for my NSS post. I received a 15% uplift to do this. So, just for the benefit of the record, can we confirm since this project was first developed to present what the overspend position is? The overspend position, as it stands today, you've got the information in front of you. Can we confirm that? Yeah, no, I will just give me a sec to pull it up. I think there are a lot of numbers being bounced around, so I think it's quite important to get the numbers right. The numbers that have been trailed most in the press etc are £117.4 million, which would indicate about a £41.6 million variance to the original programme cost. I think that what's important to understand with that is that that's a 10-year estimate for the system, so that £41.6 million overspend is an overspend over the 10 years. The sunk cost to date is just north of £70 million. It means what we have actually physically spent. Yeah, so we've already spent £70 million, is that correct? The overspend is £46 million, is that correct? One of the things that I've done is bring my director of finance here with me, so what might help you if you wanted to go precisely through a lot of different numbers but let's just clarify for the benefit of the public out there, obviously I think I would speak for. I can't think of many people would argue with the fact that £46 million is a significant overspend. In my estimations, that would be about 1,900 nurses that could be employed as a result of this overspend. Do you not find that unacceptable? I do. Do you not think that, on behalf of the organisation, not only should we apologise, but the organisation should be ashamed of the fact that it's found themselves in this position, is that not correct? I think that the organisation is not happy that it's in this position. No, but should it not be ashamed, though? I mean, is it not in a position that it should be? The organisation consists of almost 1,500 people, so I think that 1,500 people are responsible for the situation. No, I do not. Do I think that they provide you with an absolute first rate service and that over Christmas 75,000 people are grateful to them for the support that they got? Yes, I do. Does the board management, the people managing this programme, do I think that they are all very unhappy and ashamed of where we are? Yes. So you've been brought in since September, so who do you blame? Who do you think is accountable for the fails of this organisation? Because you advise me, there's 1,500 individuals, you advise me, that not all of them can effectively be blamed or be, not all of them could be blamed. I understand that position that you said, so you tell me who is responsible for the failures of this organisation. I think that blame is a lot less helpful than learning, but in terms of who is to blame, I told you in my submission that, for me, this is systemic, so I know that it's not what you want to hear. No, I'll decide what I want to hear. We'll ask the questions if you can answer them, but please don't make assumptions of what I want to hear. We're seeking evidence today based on the report and on the issues that we want to raise in terms of governance, so I'm asking you, would the accountable officer be responsible for the systemic failures that you referred to? Accountable officer is always responsible for systemic failures. No, accountable officer is responsible for the performance of the board and the board had the responsibility to deliver that. Accountable officer absolutely shoulders part of the responsibility. I wouldn't duck it, I wouldn't expect my predecessor to duck it. I want to be very clear about that. The governance involves a series of checks and balances to ensure that the accountable officer is doing their job, and those manifestly have not kicked in the way they should, otherwise we wouldn't be where we are. Does that refer to specific individuals who would have been part of a management team? I don't know, I don't think that it's an individual thing. It's 41.6 million pounds overspent. Are you advising me that no individuals who have been part of this management team or the accountable officer who was the former chief executive have to look themselves in the mirror and that they may have been responsible for some decisions that they made may have had an impact on this significant overspent? The money wasn't spent by itself, it wasn't managed by itself. There was a management team in place to do this work, was there not? There was. It wasn't an IT system that took these decisions, was it? No, it absolutely wasn't. So it was individuals who took the decisions that were paid to take these decisions, as you've confirmed, paying it in a salary of £130,000. It's a significant responsibility placed in you. It is. So these are individuals who are paid to do this work. So I'm asking you the question. Were the previous individuals who took these decisions that effectively resulted in 41.6 million pounds of overspent? No system should be reliant on individuals to make decisions on this level of money. So individuals will contribute towards it. The management team own where we are and they understand that and they absolutely are gutted by it. Gutted by a 41.6 million overspent? Any other organisation would be bankrupt. If this was Apple or a number of other companies out there, they would find that acceptable. I disagree. I absolutely disagree. There are plenty of companies who have had worse overspends than this and they're not bankrupt, but it doesn't excuse it. But they provide their funds to just keep propping up an organisation that's clearly losing money? Would it help if I explained what the 41.6 million overrun would have lost? Because I think that then plays to who could do what. Very briefly, and then I'll move on to Mary Scanlon. All right, so the 41.6 million has made up really of four core different pieces. I think one is the scope and redesign change we needed to make. That represents the business case being weak and not picking up things that we should have done at the start. So when we talk about overspend, we're talking about overspend against a budget that was approved that would have never been sufficient to implement the system. So that's the 7.6 million. You have additional 10-year contract costs, which again relate back to the business case that should have been picked up in the business case and were not. Who should have picked them up? And this is what I mean by it's systemic. Start off with the accountable officer, chief executive, his executive team. The board who reviewed that document should have picked it up. The Scottish Government who reviewed it should have picked it up. None of them did. So I absolutely don't want to duck the idea that a variety of people are responsible for this, but the important part, I think, if we're going to learn from it, is that we understand the extremely high risk nature of doing something like this and the need for governance around that to be proportionate. Just to finish off around the extra costs, that's roughly half the 41.6. The other half of the 41.6 is due to really the delays because what was done was we activated the contracts for the new system, planning to get a cross on to that, as well as having the contracts for the old system. And because of that, we're incurring double running costs. So roughly half the waste of money is the cost of having the old system continuing to go and the new system being paid for in part, but not yet ready to use. Okay, well, there's one person in NHS 24 who really shouldn't be ashamed, and that's the person who discovered the omissions in the tender document discovered by NHS 24 staff member in August 2011. Now, according to the auditor general, the performance measure specified in tender negotiation documents didn't appear in the final contract. That is the nub of this error. You negotiated a contract, and what you negotiated wasn't in the final contract, and that's basically what's costing taxpayers in this country a waste of £42 million, and councils out there this day looking at how they can implement cuts and you're wasting £42 million. So what I want to ask is, given that this staff member raised the contract omissions in August 2011, why did you sign the contract in March 2012, and why did it take you 29 months before the NHS 24 chief executive was made aware of this omission? So what was happening within your organisation? Seven months after the omissions were found, the contracts were signed. 29 months after the omissions were found, the chief executive is told. A bit dysfunctional, is it not? So I don't want to duck the question, but I wasn't... I hope you won't duck the question. We've not got a lot of time here. I wasn't there and you'll be talking to John Turner later on who was. If I pick up the part of the question around the contract and whether the failure to get the specs in it is the reason we are where we are completely, it's absolutely part of it, and it was a very bad mistake to make, but the general commercial... See, it's not a bad mistake. It's pretty serious incompetence. You negotiate something and you don't bother eating the final contract and you're costing taxpayers £42 million. I don't disagree with you. Pretty high level of incompetence there. I think you need to talk to John given he was there. We're talking to him but you're the accountable officer and you're responsible for going forward and you're not even listening to a staff member who tells you what's wrong here. As a matter of course, I do listen to my staff. I guess what I'm trying to say to you around the contract is that the commercial construct around the contract is also an issue. It's not just the fact that these things were missed and one of the challenges we have had in terms of recovering the position is, if you like, the way the contract deals with the risk. So each time we have hit problems, that contract is providing more protection to the suppliers than it is to us. You're two people in a contract. You negotiate a contract. If what you've negotiated isn't in the final contract, you really have not fulfilled your part of the contract on behalf of the taxpayers in Scotland. You've really seriously let people down here. That's a fundamental flaw, isn't it? That's the core of this problem, is it not? It's a huge part of it. My second point is that I've been on this committee now for almost five years. The previous Auditor General brought us IT contracts, registers of Scotland and various others, and he said that there was an issue in Scottish governance in the oversight of IT contracts. As such, the Scottish Government and indeed the NHS National Services Division, the Government's digital team, they were all there on hand for the past five years to give you the help, the guidance, the review, the oversight, the support, the advice. They've either let you hang out to dry on £42 million or they haven't given you what we were told it would give you. So what's the Scottish Government's part in this? Did they let you down? Did you ask for advice and not get it? Or was the advice, did the advice lead to you overspending by £42 million? As we discussed at the start of this, as accountable officer, ultimately I'm responsible for delivery and the board is responsible for discharging and executing the programme. The Scottish Government's part in it is clearly they have oversight and they use various checks and balances to check a direction of travel. They also rely on our external auditors, etc. In terms of support from them, support from NSS, I think, again John will be closer to the exact history than I am, but we got to a point, I think, in 2014 where we went to use the technology and it didn't work and I think that was a seminal point in terms of this journey. That's where we understood the issue very clearly around the contract. That's where help was sought at any kind of scale. So in terms of looking for help at that point in time, the Scottish Government, I think, were understanding and helpful and they did provide support to help. So if the Scottish Government is helping you and the Scottish Government's digital team are helping you and this new chief information, we've been given all these assurances for five years that this kind of mess and overspend wasn't going to happen again because the Government oversight would be sufficient to make sure that you were on the right track. So why five years later, with all this help and all this understanding, what's happened? Why are we still looking at £42 million? Help is different to the governance framework. Fundamentally, in my view, the governance framework around IT is deficient. The governance framework is deficient around large-scale IT programmes. I'm sorry, convener, but why is it deficient? I mean, this is a serious allegation. We've got a lot of money going in there to help you guys. Why is it deficient? I'll give you a parallel example. If you take the way that property is managed by the public sector today, it's very different to the way that it was managed five, ten years ago. There is a very robust framework around it. There is access to significant expertise. There is the capital investment group that are experts in that kind of capital investment, and they review all the big things coming through. The boards are accountable, but there's a route that that stuff goes through. If you look at performance today, whether it's capital and the NHS managed through Framework Scotland, or whether it's through the NPD model managed through the Scottish Futures Trust, there is very robust checks and balances and significant access to expert advice. What is in place for IT today is quite different. It is variable across sector. Again, you will need to check with John, but my understanding is that the approval for this went through the capital investment group, which is a body that primarily understands property, not IT. The question for me around the framework is, do we have the right framework in place to make sure that those programmes progress safely and that organisations that will be stretched put them in place? For NHS 24, this is a once-in-a-decade event. It's not something that they do regularly—clinical triage that we do regularly. For something that's a once-in-a-chef execs or an executive team's lifetime event, is the framework around them strong enough to be able to compensate for any weakness that will be there? Patently, given the overspend, it is not. I know that other colleagues will wish to pursue the question, but I got quite annoyed when I read your submission to the committee here at 1.8. Basically, what you are doing is trying to blame Capgemini. The failure of Capgemini to meet their commitment to supply a working solution in 2013 manifested weaknesses. Is that fair? For the avoidance of doubt, I do not blame Capgemini. I am saying with that statement that the reason this thing has been brought to a head the way it has is because we ended up in a position where we couldn't actually implement the system, because it didn't technically work. That's because Capgemini were fulfilling the contract as it was signed and that what you had negotiated in your tender negotiations wasn't in that contract. It's quite unfair to blame Capgemini, as you've done here, for this overspend of £42 million. I think that I've been quite clear that the board apologises. We wouldn't apologise if it was Capgemini's fault. The issue around Capgemini is the contract and where, when things went wrong, the risk flowed. That's not a Capgemini's issue, that is ours. When you've written here the failure of Capgemini to meet their commitments, you would retract that statement. I don't retract it. They failed to deliver the agreed spec. I agree with you that the spec was not in the contract. That's right. Public sector tendering is a complex process. It was quite clear from the earlier documentation what the expectation was around that system performance, so that they did not deliver on what we needed. The purpose of the young support that the Government gave us was to try and get us and Capgemini to a better place so that we could work together to resolve that, so that we could make sure that the technical solution worked. I think that that was difficult because clearly we were not happy that the technical solution was not ready to go. Looking at the sequence of events here, was there ever a point at which you thought, call it a day, to start again? If I depersonalise it and make it about the board, I think that it's quite clear that, on at least one occasion, once we understood that there were problems, the board had a very long hard look at whether or not we'd proceed. Since I arrived, we've gone through a similar exercise now around the implementation piece. To my knowledge, we've looked at least twice at whether we should continue on or abort. Do we have a final cost for this project? I think that it will be between £170 million and £125 million. What is still under negotiation at this point? I just want to make sure that I understand your question. What elements of this project are still not finalised and are still under negotiation with Capgemini or internal bodies? Having launched before Christmas and having to go back, clearly what we're working on at the moment is relaunching as soon as it is practical to do so. The lion's share of planning and negotiation at the moment are around coming back and getting that implementation done. At this point, we don't have a final figure and there are still negotiations going on. Sorry, just to be clear around final figure, because these things are quite complex. In terms of the cost of the overall programme, the £117 million that we're talking about, there is flexibility around that that we are working on, because clearly we've got a duty to recover what we can in terms of public money over that duration. There are tolerances within the way that the system is used and everything else that can afford us some flexibility. I think that the most concrete thing that we need to work up right now is what the cost of physically implementing is from now to the point that we go live, which we estimated around £7.6 million. That's a budget that has resilience built into it and provision. I can't tell you what the exact number is. I can tell you that that's what we believe, worst case, that we would need to launch successfully. I'm looking at the question of this contract negotiation, which I must confess seems very odd to me. I've been involved in negotiating many contracts in the past when I was in the private sector and I've never seen a contract where the business side has not read the contract, which is what it's saying here. The lawyers were saying that emissions are not an unusual event, so the matter wasn't escalated to the chief executive or the board. How can we sign a document that we haven't actually read? I find the comment that you just made from the lawyers extraordinary. I have done a lot of contracts and I haven't seen this before myself. I think that it is highly unusual. I believe that people had read a lot of different drafts because my understanding is that it was NHS 24's lawyers who drafted the contract. I think that the contract was read. I don't think that they went through proper due diligence around the sign-off protocols and not convinced that it was sore-thumbed properly, all those kinds of things, but you'd need to ask the previous chief executive. What about this question of truncated text and truncated contracts and so on? I've never heard of that either. I think that there were an awful lot of changes and there are a lot of change control notes associated with this way in excess of what would be normal. I think that what you're seeing is an awful lot of moving parts around the time that the contract was signed, but again, I was not there, but that would be my working assumption. We physically have big business contract. 500 pages, 1,000 pages? I think that just under 1,000, I think that just under 1,000 pages seems extraordinary. Did they include in the body of the contract each and every requirement, or was it an overall contract with sub-agreements beneath that? I'm not as familiar with the contract as my predecessor would be. I don't know, Margot, whether you know about the contract contract. The contract was the document itself, so there's two documents, one for the BT contract and one for the Capgemini contract. The Capgemini contract was separated into two separate documents, so one was the front end of the clauses around the contract. The second part was the detailed output based specification, and that's the part of the contract where the emissions occurred. Who negotiated the contract? You'll have to again check this with the previous accountable officer, but my understanding is the previous director of finance and advisors. The director of finance was the one that negotiated the technical contract. Working with advisors? Who were the advisors? From a technical perspective, from a legal perspective, and the procurement perspective. Who were they with the in-house or external? A combination. A combination. So did we spend money on these external advisors to help us to put this contract together? That doesn't seem to have worked. We did. We did. Who were the external advisors? I wasn't in post at the time, so I can give you the information that comes to mind. My understanding was that we worked with the Scottish Government, we worked with National Services Scotland, we worked with the solicitors who drafted the contract for us, Vincent Mason. We worked with one of the big accountancy firms, Deloitte. Those are the key technical elements of it. I mean the legal side of it, you expect a competent lawyer to put together. Who signed off on the technical elements? You'll have to speak to the previous accountable officer. I wasn't involved, I wasn't in post in the organisation at the time. Who was it who decided that because it was too difficult and too big it shouldn't be read? I think that as Margot said, neither of us were in post at the time, so I do not know who said that. I was just coming back to Capgemini and you've said that you're not having a go at them. You're not saying that although you say that their solution failed and that they failed to deliver that somehow they're not responsible, NHS24 engaged Capgemini rightly or wrongly deeply into the project to act basically on NHS24's behalf. So the supplier was actually determining to some extent what was going to be delivered, which is again from an IT point of view quite extraordinary. Who made that decision that that was the right way to go? So I don't think it is extraordinary that an organisation that's not specialised in something relies on the supplier, but I completely agree with you that we were overly reliant on them. But I think it's part of what you buy when you put these contracts in places, the expertise, I think what we've failed manifestly to do with them is have a good enough construct around them where if they did not deliver, we could do something about it. Did we understand what they were actually proposing? I think that we did. Again, you should confirm that with Mr Turner later on, but I think that we understood what was proposed. I think that nobody understood the technical difficulty of getting the two applications to work together that they were proposing. Would Capgemini have not referred that information and been able to say that these two applications wouldn't work together? Surely that's what you hired them for? Well, they can because they currently now do, but they didn't at that point in time. Previously, Capgemini should, with its technical expertise and the position that they had been placed, a position of trust to deliver, fail to do so. I just advise colleagues that it would be helpful for us to ask questions if you have an opinion on what happened previously, but if it's specific factual information concerning that, that will be for the next one in the stance, so I think it would be helpful just for both sides typically on that. Richard Simpson? Yes, and I appreciate that neither of you were in post when much of this went on, and you've taken on a somewhat poison chalice, so I want to concentrate on a couple of areas. One is the March, August 2013 gateway review by the Government and that this was by the Government, and it said that the future programme is a particularly strong exemplar of good practice that would be transferable to other programmes. As the incoming interim chief executive, you'll have had a look at that, and I just find it difficult to understand that that was the situation, and then within, by March 2014, we were into the Ernst and Young review looking at whether this could actually go ahead or not. So taking your earlier point, we have a situation in which this is not the first programme that's gone badly wrong. E-care was supposed to solve all our problems about data communication within the health and social care service. It was abandoned after seven or eight years at a cost, we're told 56 million but I suspect it was very substantially more than that, and it was just abandoned completely, and here we are with another set of circumstances where the governance has been wholly inadequate. So I want to understand that, of your situation coming in in September, you were expecting this programme to be functioning in October, and it was tried for a weekend in October. At that point, it was being tested, I presume, in parallel. Can you explain what was going on then, and what happened that failed? I mean, what was the failure due to... So there's a lot in that, so if I miss something, let me know. If we start with the gateway review, I'm not sure people always understand what gateway reviews do, so gateway reviews have the limitations. That gateway review, I believe, did what that gateway review should do, which is a look to the programme construct, and it satisfied itself around the general approach, and it made some recommendations. But a gateway review is not in itself an effective governance or something of this complexity and scale. I think two people from memory did it, and their expertise would definitely not be around call centre implementation. So they would be in a position to form a view around, if you like, the general programme construct, but not much more than that, and much more than that, I think, in terms of broader IT governance would be required. So I think that would be my view on the gateway review. Would that be seen by the government as being, you know, this is okay, this is functioning all right? I mean, it's trying to understand, I mean, we've been given a new governance system by the government in the last few months since the second critical report by the Auditor General, and it seems to me to be so complex that I just don't know who's responsible for what. So, you know, this gateway thing, would that mean if I was sitting as the minister, I would say, well, this NHS programme is doing fine, you know, it's an exemplar of good practice, I don't need to worry about that. I can cross that off my list of worries when I go to sleep at night. What the minister thinks is a question for the minister, I mean, what I can say is that I think people take, and this is what I mean about the governance, I think there are a lot of different set pieces that were done that people took comfort from, but because they were individual pieces that sat in isolation, I think that comfort was misplaced. And the question is how you have sufficient checks and balances that knit together that you can get more comfortable with it. The point that I was trying to make earlier on around the capgeminite thing is had the capgeminite solution worked when we came to use it, when we looked at accepting it and to use, if that had been the case, a lot of these other things that subsequently happened would not have happened, so I think in this case the reason it's so stark is that. In terms of the Ernst and Young review, as I said earlier on, Ernst and Young review was very much focused on what was needed to kind of get the programme moving forward. Because it had not worked at that point, so it needed this. So we needed to solve the technical problem that was there and we managed to do that and a solution architect was brought on board, did a phenomenal job of actually solving that in a way that Cap had not been able to, so good progress came out of that. And the other thing that needed to change was a relationship with supplier, because having looked at the options of withdrawal, if we were going to continue, the idea that you'd sort of continued to be fighting your way through that process made no sense. So that was Ernst and Young review. In terms of the launch itself and the implementation, an awful lot of the risk management and an awful lot of the concern was around the technology, because that's what had failed. Unfortunately, when we went to implement, we had done dress rehearsal, so we had physically done testing, and we tested at reasonable scale. But hindsight makes it all very smart, and what's clear is that that testing was nowhere near good enough. When we went live, the system essentially halved our productivity, and because our productivity halved, we didn't have enough people to staff it safely, and therefore I took the decision to sort of roll it back. It was a high risk decision to launch into winter, because winter is our busiest time of year, as you will know. Had it worked as intended, we felt we could have tough through that, and it was worth, in our view, taking the risk given the cost of double running for continuing onwards, but it was patently obvious that we were not ready, and that's why we pulled it back. But the readiness was not to technological failure, it was one of making sure that the way the system works and the way my staff need things to work that those things dovetail better than they currently do. I understand why you then wouldn't want to try and relaunch in January or February, but we're talking about June. If it's not a technological problem, why are we having to wait until June to relaunch? On the basis that there's a cost every month of the double running? I agree with you that it seems like a long time. I think that the challenge is getting it teed up right so that it works. I think that the board has not yet agreed on when we launch, so I'm sure they will ask me a similar question to you when I meet with them at the end of this month. But I think that the challenge is our priority needs to be around patient safety. We have adjustments to make to the system. Any of you who are familiar with IT will know that once you adjust the system, you need to test it. One of the few advantages of having let you down in terms of launching this thing before Christmas is that we now have a very large test because over 30,000 people went through it. We have a comprehensive list of what went wrong because the technology does work. We know that we can get the system to work, but we need to take enough time to test it properly and get it right this time. The only cost we have of doing an implementation is not just if you like the running costs. There's also the cost of getting people trained, lined up, ready to go. I think that those are the things that we need to make sure we take enough time to do. June seems like a long time. I think that for the programme, there's quite a short period of time given the need to get this teed up right. I think that I'll leave it and maybe come back then to allow other people to do it. Thank you and I can be on a good morning panel. On the submission that you have provided to the committee on 1.8 of that submission, you highlight that the programme governance was ineffective, commercial management was weak, too much reliance was put on suppliers' promises, and the organisation had insufficient understanding of call centre system implementation to successfully launch. With you stating that, what research did NHS 24 undertake in order to try to put together the actual requirements for a new system? Did NHS 24 speak to other large call centres, whether in the public sector or in the private sector, to try to get an understanding? Particularly in areas where, or companies or organisations where, they potentially went through a recent upgrade of their own systems. I'm not aware of what was done back at inception around that. I think that that's a matter for my predecessor to comment on. On 1.12 of your document, on the third bullet point where you talk about the expertise that is being used to provide effective commercial management and expertise that is currently being sought to support system implementation at launch, in terms of the commercial management, can you provide any further information in terms of that, in terms of the expertise that is being used? I think that in terms of commercial management, NSS, which is my other organisation, provided some procurement advice at the time to the board, but it was limited in scope to what they asked for. The board itself tried to manage the programme commercially. I think that I would be of the view that they didn't have the right expertise to do that and, in particular, to negotiate a contract at this scale. The idea that that executive team would have had the expertise on a once-in-a-lifetime event that wasn't part of their core business, I think, would have been unlikely. Again, it's something that you can check with my predecessor, but I think that fundamental failing would have been that. When I talk about the need for support and governance, that's what I mean. NSS has significant commercial expertise. It belongs to the public sector. It exists to support organisations like this, but it is completely at each organisation's discretion whether or not they seek that help. I question whether that is a sensible approach, because sitting in NSS are some of the best contract lawyers in Scotland who understand the public sector and can help managers to manage them. Sitting in NSS is national integration IT expertise who can help around very difficult IT problems. Sitting inside NSS is a procurement department that spends over £1 billion a year and understands what's necessary in terms of offsetting private sector expertise in contract management and negotiation. I think that that was not utilised the way that it could have been. From where I sit, I can't see evidence that the team that was there had that expertise. Obviously, the immediate future is to get the system operational working and delivering for NSS 24. Post that, as I said this morning, that this would be a once-in-a-decade event in terms of this kind of project. When this is operational and you are satisfied and you are happy with how it is working, at what point would the planning start for the next IT roll-out, the next improvement? I guess that picking up a question of yours earlier on around expertise and call centre implementation in that piece, what NHS 24 has in spades is expertise around running a call centre. That's not the same as implementing a call centre. The board of NHS 24, in my view, is an extremely strong board now. It is not the same board that has been in place throughout the length of this project. You have asked me from the start how badly do people feel about where we currently are? They feel extremely badly about where we are and there's a credit to them because they're not part of the reason we are where we are. They absolutely recognise the need to get very good implementation expertise in place and that works under way at the moment. In terms of once the system is in place, the intent of this has been to be a staged implementation. There's an awful lot of discussion around the money that I understand but the big idea behind this system was not just saving money, it was providing a much better service to patients and providing a safer service, providing a service that was less repetitive with the questions that we ask people at a time when they're most vulnerable, those kind of things. Once we get this in place, rather than just being an IT system like the old one was, it's basically a call centre system, this one actually has the potential to be a very decent digital platform that we can build off, which is one of the reasons for the complexity that's been incurred in getting us to this point. Once this thing is in place properly, we have a programme team that are very well blooded to know what they're doing. There are a lot of lessons that we are learning from this, which I am hoping that you've picked up and those will be incorporated then in how we formulate business case for next stage. It clearly needs to be very different to what we've done over the last five years and more incremental. The final thing would be that the board is absolutely committed to making sure that this asset is sweated as hard as we can for Scotland, so I hope that it will be a significant period of time before we're back in the marketplace procuring something new. What we need to be doing is thinking about how we make better use of NHS 24, better use of the asset, and providing a much more effective service to the people of Scotland. I accept what you've said, but at the same time I also understand that when it comes to IT, whether it's software or IT hardware, it can go out of date extremely quickly. When it comes to hardware, it seems that it leaves the factory at its out-of-date pace of that particular sector. I have heard a lot of what you've said this morning in terms of the lessons going forward, but at the same time I would urge you, when it comes to software and IT hardware, to be very aware and vigilant that a 10-year period of time in terms of IT will be a totally different place in 10 years. I completely agree with you that technology ages quickly. What I would say to you is that I believe that the NHS is a very bad place to cut teeth on brand new things. I think that making use of tried and tested technology, evolving it, making the best of it, that's what we need to be focused on. This is very current for what we have gone to the market and procured. I think that we were overly ambitious at the beginning around what could be achieved, so we've pathbound. One of the few, if you like, benefits of that is that what we now have is fairly current, and I think that it will serve the NHS very well through the next decade. First of all, can I recognise, as Richard Simpson did, that both of you are subsequent to what happened in the outset on this particular project? Mr Crichton, you very helpfully said right at the start of your remarks that you said that at the very start of this project it went wrong. Can you clarify that for the committee, please? For me—again, I would encourage you to ask my predecessor later, and if he's saying something different, I will agree with him. From where I sit and from where I look, in my opinion, looking back, is that the business case was not broad enough in scope, that it did not think through all the things that a system of this scale would require, so the amount of money asked for was well short of what should have been in there, there was not provision in case things went wrong, to the degree that I would have expected, all those kinds of things. Okay, and did that lead you to the point that you made, I think, to Colin Beattie about the Scottish Government's assessment process being one that seemed to be more aimed at dealing with property issues rather than IT issues? Or did I misunderstand your— I wasn't there at the time. I think that the interesting question for me would be if it went through the current process that it is today would have gone through, and I'm not convinced that it would have. You mean the project would have been sanctioned? Yeah, I think we're talking about five years ago. Sure, in terms of what was in place for it five years ago, I'm not sure, so I don't know if it would get through what is in place today. I know it definitely falls short of what you would expect, in that line business case, to look like for this kind of programme. Is that because of Stuart McMillan's point that you think that it was frankly far too ambitious and it was off the shelf as opposed to— sorry, it wasn't off the shelf at that point. It was quite a reverse. It was a bespoke solution that no one, no part of the NHS has ever tried before. I think that the concept of it being very, very ambitious, yes, that's part of it. I think that also part of it, though, is a lack of understanding around the risks of something that's complicated because of all the different moving parts. So I think that what happened is that it grew arms and legs as it went. So I think that they rightly recognised once they started that it wasn't just about the IT, it's actually about service redesign and the way things worked. That expanded, I think, the scope. The question is, was there ever a requirement to come back once these things really broadened to take another look at it early days before you've spantled the serious money and all the development? No. If I build a new sports centre, which we're just about to do in Shetland, we add on lots of things as we go along. The crossages go up and up and up and the builder loves us for it, as does the architect, as does every other professional. That's what happened to you, isn't it, effectively? I think, to be honest, because we've talked about Capgemin, I don't think that there's an element of that, but there's an element that is that there's a huge cost to us not getting it right and therefore having to run two systems. Then there's a huge cost to us not in the original outline business case picking things up. Those two things for me are the big things. It's failure to initially scope it out properly and then failure to get it in place when we thought we would. Those are two things, I think, of the cost drivers. Just on the point that you made earlier on about the actual moneys involved, I think that you helpfully said to the committee that this still could cost £125 million. Is that the top end of your expectations as to what the budget may end up being? Yes, and I was serious about the quality of people who are working against this, so I believe that it can be done for less, but I think that you've had enough unpleasant surprises. That would mean that the overspend ended up at £50 million, which would be another matter. Finally, other colleagues have asked about the lines of responsibility for the public sector. I mean, I've got a lot of decisions that have just lost their jobs, but on a gas industry, they haven't lost £41 million, they've just lost their jobs. Did anyone lose a job over this one? I guess how you define losing a job. Well, trying to get sacked is what I mean, because they've wasted £41 million of public moneys, really. Different people have left, and the basis for them leaving would be a matter for them, but I think that the chair of the board is no longer there, the chief executive is no longer there, the director of finance is no longer there, and there have been six programme managers. Both of you were brought in to improve the situation and to sort it out. Were you both given this, as it was, specific remit by your board and, for that matter, by ministers? My job is to get it launched and to protect the public purse as best I can from where I sit. Thank you very much. So, can I just start some brief questions before we close? Firstly, in terms of the previous errors that have been made, have you put in place measures to ensure that it never happens again? So, that contract flaw that we've referred to, can you give us assurances as long as you're the accountable officer? There won't be a recurrence of this position? I can absolutely assure you, as long as I'm the accountable officer, there won't be a recurrence. I think that what the committee needs to reflect on is that I'm more optimistic than Mr McMillan, but let's say that the system lasts for another 15 years. In 16 years' time, there will be a need to re-procure it. So, how many contracts have you signed as accountable officers in September? For NHS 24, none. I have signed adjustments and amendments to this one to get things done. So, for every document that's been signed similar to the one that we understand, we kept Gemini as a flawed contract, have you personally reviewed every one of those documents? Yes. So, what's put in place to ensure that the director of finance is with you today? Does he perhaps not provide that information to you? Well, I think that the director of finance is not providing me with information that her role requires her to do unacceptable. So, there's a starting point, which is understanding that, I mean, you asked about... So, how do you prevent that? Or can you? I think you can. I mean, you have... You need in any organisation checks and balances. You also need a decent value set. You need people who are pulling with you. You need a degree of team spirit. But you need checks and balances. You need effective audit. You need effective risk management, those kinds of things. But, I mean, it's a specific question, though. For director of finance who's sitting next to you today says, I'm not going to provide that information, actually. There's a contract flaw here. I don't think it's in my personal interest to provide that information to Mr Crichton. So, I just won't report it. So, what then happens? Then it's a failure in me because public service requires people to do the right thing. So, there isn't a check and balance in the world can stop somebody hiding something from you. But, at the end of the day, the question would be why would they want to. And things that drive that kind of behaviour are things like blame. So, I have no doubt that director of finance sitting next to me would not do it. I have absolutely no doubt that since she went in and she's been there longer than me, she has done an amazing job of putting in the right kind of checks and balances into that place to make sure that things for much less money than this are properly supervised. And that financial control in the organisation is good. My fundamental requirements are accountable officers to assure that and I can give you that assurance. Okay. So, I just ask finally, what if the Scottish Government says we're not giving you the money? So, where do we go from there? Is the organisation bankrupt? No. So, what happens then if you don't? So, to the Scottish Government to say sorry, but as we know, Scottish Government, I've been placed in a number of boards across the sector have been asked to make cuts. I know of 60 million pounds of worth of cuts that have been proposed in my local board in HS Greater Glasgow for apparently over the next five years. It's 60 million pounds worth of cuts. How can they possibly be guaranteed that you're provided with this funding? What if they just turn the tap off and say sorry, we're not going to provide it? Where do we go from there? I think if they turn the tap off, we'll need to look at that and consider that, and it's a decision ultimately from my board. But I think pragmatically what it would mean would be staying with our legacy system until such time the money is available to do something. I think what the Scottish Government would need to reflect on would be the 70 million pounds of sunk investment, the fact that no more than another 7.6 should get us home, the fact that once this is in place its recurring cost is less than the old system it's replacing, and the fact that I think there will be an increasing role for NHS 24 in trying to help the rest of the system cope with the increasing demand we know that an ageing population is generating for us. I do think that it's very important in your submission to us at 1.8 you talked about Cap Gemini. The organisation had insufficient understanding of call centre system implementation to successfully launch. That's a rather brutal defamatory statement against a global company. Do you wish to apologise or retract that statement? I don't think that I said that Cap Gemini didn't have that. What organisation were you talking about? NHS 24. NHS 24 had insufficient understanding of call centre implementation. You're talking about Cap Gemini in the first part of the sentence. You don't have sufficient understanding of call centre system implementation, but you are a call centre. Did NHS 24 not actually understand itself? It understood itself very well and delivers a first rate service. That's not what you say. No, what I say is that in terms of implementing call centres that is not what NHS 24 do. That's why you wasted seven years and 42 million. So just briefly, convener, given that this question hasn't been asked, you served a default notice on Cap Gemini. That ended up in the high court up the road. You withdrew from that legal case because you'd already spent 38 million. Why did you withdraw and my second point, convener, which may have come in written evidence? Vincent Mason was called in, Pricewaterhouse Cooper was called in, Ernst and Young were called in and the substantial legal costs, I presume. Can you give us perhaps in written evidence, convener, if not today, what was the cost of all these experts that were brought in to try and sort this out? So why did you withdraw from the court case after serving a default notice on Cap Gemini? So my predecessor will be up next and you can ask him because he's the person who made the decision. From my perspective in terms of why do I think NHS 24 was drew, I think because the contract construct would have meant that any damages you secured in court would have been very small relative to the investment that was sunk and therefore he would have understood that he was better off getting to an agreement with Cap Gemini around how NHS 24 and Cap Gemini made the solution work than fighting it out in court, which would have meant another couple of years delay and everything else. So that was another waste of time and it was another delay in the project that led to legal costs but no advancement in implementation and no benefit to people in Scotland. I think that you would need to ask him the reasons for it. Richard Simpson. I'm very brief on that as we've talked a lot about the Cap Gemini aspect and the software and that's obviously been the main thing. I just want to confirm that the BT side of the project, which was actually £55 million compared to £20 million for Cap Gemini, that there have been no problems with that at all. There absolutely have been problems with that and we have had to work our way through them. It takes me back to why I don't think you can blame Cap Gemini for why we are where we are, we own it. So the commercial management is one of the things I have said to you was deficient. The scoping in total of what would be required was not where it should have been. In particular, the BT element that has been challenging for us has been the post-go live model. So the idea of what does the world look like once this thing is finally in place and how do those costs work and how do those contracts work. That has been challenging with BT because of the way the contracts and things were established and the business case up front. So we have had challenges. They have been easier to manage in the sense that this is the point that I was trying to make about Cap Gemini. On the BT thing, there hasn't been, if you like, a thing that absolutely couldn't be done, whereas with the Cap Gemini thing, when we came to actually use it, the solution didn't work. I just wonder from your perspective, as in it from NSS, you said that there is expertise there. Should all projects of this sort, which are one-off to a subsidiary organisation, and I include the NHS boards where we have had problems with track care contracts, for example closing down clinical systems for 24 hours for routine upgrades, which seems to me to be a disgraceful contract, not for track care. Track care is perfectly entitled to say that, but for someone to sign a contract off that would work clinically, the clinicians are without their electronic backup for up to 24 hours for a routine upgrade is ridiculous. So should all these contracts not be being signed off by NSS Scotland and they should be the repository of expertise, because it's going to continue. We've got this devolved system that tries to prevent major losses, it hasn't, and we've got a fractured dysfunctional system, frankly, across the whole of the NHS. The portal systems of this grace are shocking, if you're a clinician, and you've got to go in and out. It's just a complete mess. We are so far behind in IT. Should the NSS not have actually much greater control and say in this going forward in terms of signing things off, no one should undertake a contract unless they actually get agreement from the centre. I think for contracts of scale there's definitely a more involved role that NSS should play. I think private sector expertise is also something that we should be thoughtful about, because there's a tendency to think that sometimes from the public sector perspective that that's bad, or the private sector use tends to be the deloitte to this world and those kind of things, and actually there is a range of expertise out there that would never be worth bringing in-house to something like NSS, because at the end of the day you don't need it that often. It exists, it's out there, and there are companies these days bigger than NHS 24 who use these kind of people, so I think it is out there. It's what's the checklist that you'd need to go through doing a programme like this that would make sure that as accountable officer you could assure your board that you've complied with that checklist and the requisite expertise you would need for this. What does that look like? My suggestion is that I do not believe when this was insected that there was such a checklist. Right, and you're not totally convinced that it's there today? No. Absolutely, I think that's the most important point. Looking at the evidence in front of us here, it's quite clear that during a very critical period in connection with the memorandum of understanding and with the contract itself, that the chief executive, himself as incoming director of finance and the board were not made aware of these problems, were these issues deliberately kept from these people? It says yes here, I'll just let you come in. A full investigation was carried out at the request of the board to determine why the minute of amendment process was not brought to the attention of the chief executive and the wider executive management team. That report was part of a disciplinary process, but I would actually prefer if you referred that specific question to Mr Turner. But there was a review. The result of that investigational review was that information was deliberately withheld, so it wasn't deliberately withheld, it just wasn't told. Not deliberately? It wasn't deliberately not told. Oh, your colleagues, I think that asking the panel for comment on previous is acceptable, that specific events, we've got the next one. In this specific case, the incoming director of finance was involved in this one. I wasn't actually involved in the investigation, but I was in... You were in the post during part of that time? Yes. Effectively, I uncovered the minute of amendment process existed at that point in time. Two very brief questions. First of all, has NHS 24 recovered any costs from CAP Gemini or BT? I think the answer to that would be yes, in the sense that we have actively negotiated with them through the periods, so yes. We also have the potential in future. And again, in open forum like this, difficult to comment more, but happy to give you more details outside. And secondly, I'll show you a point. We highlighted my apparent lack of optimism in your comments earlier. I'm accused of many things, but lack of optimism is not one of them. Certainly in my early question to yourself, I actually quoted yourself in terms of the decade, so later on you highlighted potentially a 15-year period, but I was really just quoting yourself earlier on. Okay, I think that Mr Crichton and Mr MacGough for their contribution this morning. Can I now move the committee into a brief five minute interval before the next agenda item? Thank you, colleagues. Can we now move back to agenda item number two? Can I welcome our next witness on the EGS report entitled the 2014-15 audit of NHS 24 update on management of IT contracts? Can I welcome John Turner, the former chief executive of NHS 24? I understand Mr Turner's brief opening statement to make. Thank you and good morning, convener committee. I am John Turner, former chief executive of NHS 24, an accountable officer for the organisation from September 2008 to July 2015. The NHS 24 future programme was established to enable continuous improvement in patient care to meet the requirement to re-precure technology contracts and to build a better technology platform in support of the Government's 2020 vision for health. The drive behind it was to make services better for patients. A larger number of dedicated NHS 24 staff and service partners have worked on the programme since 2010, which received significant investment in the form of brokerage from Scottish Government. I am very sorry for the fact that the implementation of the future programme is delayed so much, meaning that patients and staff are not yet receiving all the additional benefits and that there has been a considerable overrun on the public purse. This is a matter of disappointment, frustration and deep regret. I absolutely accept my responsibilities as accountable officer at the time and offer my full apology. Patient care and safety is the highest priority and NHS 24 was able to maintain and improve and expand services to the public during this time. I have put a brief factual submission to the committee noting the four main phases and key points of the programme during my time as chief executive and I do hope that is of some assistance. I have followed the work of the committee on this matter to date and I would be happy to explain the facts relating to the contract development and the contract signature that have been previously discussed. I would also be pleased to explain to the committee the core problem at the heart of the delay that we experience with the CAPGEMNI technology that rendered it unsafe and how we managed and challenged this. Finally, convener, I would not wish any other part of the public sector in Scotland to go through the difficulties that NHS 24 and its staff have with this technology programme. I have been able to reflect on the experience that I have had and have given it much thought. If there is anything that I can contribute to or assist the committee in the wider lessons learned considerations, I am certainly most willing to do so. Thank you, Mr Tunnall. I can address the open questions by first confirming, so you have obviously confirmed this already, that you were the Accountable Officer in 2008 and July 2015. The salary that you received when you left in 2015 was? Approximately £110,000. Can I just ask you what terms you left the organisation when you asked to leave? I reached agreement with the organisation to leave. I had been there nearly seven years, the last two years—it is a tough role anyway that the last two years were exceptionally difficult with the future programme. In discussion with the chairman of the board, it felt appropriate for me to leave the organisation. So you did not leave with any enhanced package or anything that was basically your left organisation with how much more notice did you give them? I left the organisation with a settlement agreement in line with my contractual terms. Can you confirm for the benefit of the record what that sum was or what the agreement was? The agreement was six months' notice and some annual leave that I had not taken. Well, you have heard from your opening statement that you accept responsibilities. In a sense, that is accepted in that humility. You have shown that people would see that as a step forward. Who do you? We heard earlier that there were some issues concerning the way in which the system operated, particularly governance, in your organisation. Who do you think was responsible apart from yourself? I was the accountable officer at the time. I took my responsibilities as accountable officer very seriously. My career is in NHS management. I am not an expert in IT or clinical matters. The approach that I took was to surround myself with a governance framework in the organisation, which started with the NHS 24 board. We had a dedicated committee with a programme board, which I chaired with partners and suppliers. The Scottish Government was part of that. Then we had a detailed management and project management system. It was a very detailed and comprehensive approach. I brought in external experts to assist and advise where that was appropriate. I also brought in additional staff just to provide more capacity for the organisation in the work that was undertaken. I also sought external views. We had a number of key stage reviews. We had four in total that were undertaken by PWC. We had the gateway review that was referred to earlier. IE's chief executive was in continuous discussion with others around the system and taking advice. Can I just reiterate my question? I understand that it would take us some considerable time to clarify all the arrangements that are in place. I am speculating here, but do you feel let down by some members of the team who are around you at that point? We will look at the contract that has been signed. That seems to be the whole stem of what this report is about, as a contractual flaw, which in the public eye would be unacceptable. Did you feel let down by any particular group of advisers? Yes, I did. Be specific about that. Specifically, I felt very let down by my director of finance and technology. Did he fail to advise you of that contractual flaw? Yes, he did. So when did he advise you? He did not advise me at all. So when did he become aware? My understanding, I signed the contract in March 2012. And did you review the contract? Can I just part that just for a moment please? I signed the contract in March 2012. My understanding is that NHS24 staff identified the gaps in the contract in April 2012. I myself was not informed until 22 months after the signature of the contract. That was in January 2014. By that time, the director of finance and technology had retired from the organisation. So yes, I absolutely felt let down when I found that, because there had been many opportunities to inform me, the future committee of the board and indeed the board itself. Also, and again, I'm sure we'll come on to this convener, there was a fundamental issue with the technology solution that Capgemini provided to us. I'm not looking for one moment my accountability for the organisation, but there was a severe technology problem that we encountered. At one point, Capgemini said to me, their senior executive, that he believed that there was a fundamental flaw in the system that they were providing to NHS24. That was at an advanced stage of the programme. So I did feel let down that it had taken that amount of time for Capgemini to identify that fundamental flaw in the system. We did prove indeed to be the case until quite a bit after until it was resolved. Would you like me to come back to the contract signature? Just a little bit of background and then the signing of the contract on the day. There were two contracts signed, lot one, which was the software with Capgemini, £20 million for the software build approximately, and the BT lot two contract for hardware, that was £55 million for the hardware build and then for the 10-year prime provider service. The contracts themselves, as I think has been previously alluded to, are thick technical documents. The Capgemini one is just short of a thousand pages in two volumes. It has 28 schedules to it. The two volumes, one is with all the legal substantive terms in it and the second one has NHS 24640 requirements and Capgemini's response to each of those requirements. Those requirements are broadly clinical, service management and technical. I established to take the whole contracting and procurement process forward, a team to lead on that. It was led by the NHS 24 director of finance and technology. We had the advice and input from Vincent Mason's leading law firm and specifically a partner who specialised in IT contracts, and there were a lot of other NHS 24 staff and others involved in that whole process. Capgemini were appointed preferred providers in August 2011 and BT in September 2011, so there were then six months of detailed negotiations leading up to the final contract signature in March 2012. When it came to the contract signature, I was in the position where the NHS 24 team, led by the director of finance with the support of the specialist lawyer, had led the process and had drafted, had written the contracts and had managed that whole process. There had been six months of detailed negotiation following the procurement exercise, which I had been kept very regularly briefed on. Of course, the 640 requirements, I was in the knowledge that they had been specified by NHS 24 itself. On the day of signature, I took assurance from all of these sources. We did also, on that day, have a brief walkthrough of the contracts and what was in them from the lawyer, so I felt assured that I could sign off on those contracts. Can I take you to just then, just finally before I bring in Mary Scanlon, just confirm? I signed a mortgage agreement with my bank and my solicitor gives me advice. He gives me advice that is incorrect and I end up signing for something that I was not advised of when I signed the contractual document. My understanding is that I can then go back to if I find subsequently that I am responsible for something that maybe I should not have been, there is something in the contract that should not have been there. My understanding is that I could take action against the solicitor who gave me advice. Why did that not happen on this occasion? You should have always felt like down by the start. I mean, I can understand the issue of your directive and answer if you have all made that clear. That is for further discussion, but let us deal with the legal advice that you receive. What would the sums have been that the legal adviser would have been paid because this is a specialist solicitor that you have been providing new advice with? Certainly, several hundred thousand pounds. A company who has been providing several hundred thousand pounds worth of work has provided advice specifically to you saying that you can sign this document, Mr Turner, we are more than happy for you to sign this. This is our legal advice, but there is a document that is omitted from the final document. Are they not then responsible for this? Yes, sir. Why did you take action against them when this became apparent? That was a matter that was considered by the board. When I left the board, that was a matter that was still under consideration. The separate legal advice that we received was that we had up to five years to raise an action if that is what the board determined to do. That would have been within the five years? Yes. At the time, we felt that it was right to put all our energies and focus on the programme. Can I just say it with respect, though? I understand why you want to focus on your energy and resources, but you have just received legal advice, which subsequently requires the organisation that we find now, which is £41.6 million worth of debt, which, if it was not provided by the Scottish Government, the organisation would need to close down and people would lose their jobs. Surely, pursuing the legal advice that you received that was incorrect should have been a priority, should it not? That was carefully considered by the board. I was a council officer with the board, so I decided that that was a matter that I wished to investigate further, but the priority felt at the time that it was different. I am just meeting the point. It seems pretty straightforward to me. You are advising me today that the Solicitor has provided advice to you, which subsequently required you to sign the document, which has now cost the public pass £41.6 million. You are advising me that it is not a priority to pursue that legal adviser. Again, that is a feeling in your part. I mean, understanding that you have accepted your humility today, you are the accountable officer, but you advise me that you are incorrectly advised, so why not take action against the Solicitor as the responsible, and also for that matter, your director of finance? What happened subsequently? I can only repeat myself that that was a matter that the board was considering. What advice did you give to the board? We should be pursuing these two individuals who have required us to sign this document, or who have advised us to sign this document. We had taken advice from other legal advisers that we had taken on board, and their advice was that there was a case that we should seriously consider. Has it still been considered as we speak? Yes, that is my understanding. It was being actively considered. You have just asked finally what was your advice to the board. Well, I think that we needed to take a careful look at all of the circumstances, the further legal advice that we had taken, and the central legal office. I understand that, but I am asking a straightforward question. You find yourself here today, you have lost a job. As a result of this document that was signed, you should not have been signed looking at it now. You have lost a job. Did you not say at the time that we have faced significant challenges because of a flawed document that you asked me to sign? What was your position on that? Forget about the position of the legal adviser that you received, what was your personal advice to the board? My own position would be that we should seek every opportunity that we can to address that issue. I am right in saying that you said that you were let down by your director of finance, that director of finance knew about the omissions in the document that were agreed verbally, but they were not written into the document. You said that you were let down by your director of finance. Yes. That is certainly how I feel. The timeline that we have got from the auditor general and it may be a new director of finance, but in January 2014 that was the date that NHS 24 chief executive yourself and your director of finance were made aware of the size and the nature of the flaws. Here it says that the director of finance was only told in January 2014, but we also know that the omissions in the tender document were raised by a staff member in August 2011. Three years later, you and your director of finance were told, contract was signed on March 2012. Can you explain why you said that you were let down by your director of finance who knew about the omissions, but in the document that we have got, the director of finance was told about the flaws in the same day as you were? Yes. I am trying to reconcile that. Was that a different director of finance? Yes. There was a previous director of finance in technology. So that director of finance left without passing on? Can you provide your names as well, rather than the titles, please? Yes. The previous director of finance was Mr Robert Stewart, who was Mrs McGurk's predecessor. Okay. When did Robert Stewart leave? He left in the summer of 2013. Summer of 2013. Was Mr Robert Stewart aware of the omissions from the tender document that was discovered by the staff member in August 2011? Was he aware of those omissions before the contracts were signed in March 2012? You said that you were let down by him, so can we just get a yes or a no? Was he aware? I understand that he was aware of the omissions in the final contract, which I signed in March 2012. You signed that contract? Sorry, I signed it in March 2012. I understand that he was made aware that it was within six weeks of my signing those contracts, so that would have been in April 2012. Right. NHS staff identified sections that were missing a month after you signed them. That's right. Right. So this Robert Stewart, he didn't know about the staff member discovering the omissions in August 2011. Was this staff member so irrelevant that nobody paid any attention to him or her? I think that in August 2011, the contract was still in a process of negotiation. Omissions were highlighted in August 2011 by a staff member. It's from the Auditor General's people. Yes, and that was part of the negotiation process, so that should have been picked up at that time. Well, it was picked off by a staff member. Yes, the staff member raised that issue, raised it with Vincent Mason's lawyers. What transpired is that, although the omission was picked up then, it had been thought that it had been corrected. It hadn't been corrected. So the staff member raised it with Vincent Mason's, but didn't bother telling the director of finance, who seemed to be in charge of the negotiations with BT and Capgemini. So this staff member was negotiating with Vincent Mason. He didn't know anything about it and the director of finance. Robert Stewart didn't know anything about the omissions in the contract. That seems pretty dysfunctional to me. I don't know if Mr Stewart knew about the omission. Well, you've just told me that Mr Stewart knew about the omissions one month after the contract was signed, which is April 2012. NHS staff identified that some sections were missing from the signed contract. So one month after the document was signed, that's when the previous director of finance was told. But he didn't bother telling you until two years later. He didn't tell me at all. I discovered this in January 2014. So this NHS staff member, you were the boss at the time. That's pretty serious stuff that Auditor General has told us. Omissions were there. Omissions that were negotiated were not in the tender document. As the accountable officer, were you not accountable for every member of staff? Were you not in touch with all the members of staff? Were you not aware that this member of staff had highlighted something pretty significant? Did this single member of staff have the authority of you to go to Vincent Mason's and negotiate with them and get legal advice and not to tell anyone? It doesn't add up. Can you tell us his member of staff's name who was ignored and had to go off on his own and get legal advice from Vincent Mason? In August 2011, when that member of staff identified an omission in that one requirement, that was one requirement. Omissions, plural, plural, not just one. That was an omission in one requirement out of 640 that were being negotiated and discussed with Capgemini at that time. We had several teams, technology staff, service management staff, clinical staff working through on all of the requirements. The system that we had in the programme management at that time was that all of the, as these issues would be identified and negotiated, all of the changes were being put through to Vincent Mason. We had an approach I think through the board secretary who managed all of that from NHS 24's perspective. So you were aware that this person had raised the omissions? You were aware that the person had gone to Vincent Mason? You were made aware that everything was sorted out and so you happily signed the document in March 2012 and one month later NHS staff identified some sections were missing from the signed contract. That is the critical part. Tell me, were you aware of this person, Vincent Mason? Did someone mislead you and say that it has all been sorted out? The omissions, in the tender document, have all been sorted out, Mr Turner, so you can happily sign it and we'll tell you a month later that it's not there. I'm not getting this. I had no knowledge at all of the omissions leading up to the contract nor until January 2014. You didn't know that a member of your staff was talking to a legal firm, Vincent Mason? Vincent Mason was working with us day in, day out on this contract at the time. They had not just a lawyer but their own legal team supporting us and there was very regular contact between the NHS 24 contract against procurement team, which I previously described and Vincent Mason. That was at that time almost a daily exchange of information. OK, you've apologised for your lack of oversight and I think that's reasonable because there was undoubtedly a lack of oversight, but to be fair NHS 24 don't bring in new IT projects every year. Fraser McKinlay from Audit Scotland, in his evidence, spoke about the wider environment where public sector IT projects should be supported. The Scottish Government and the digital team should be coming in. We also have NHS national services division with a big procurement function and experience in IT. The wider system question is how we bring experience to bear on big contracts. We've heard your comment but the truth is that for a huge multimillion pound contract you were needing more help. The help was there. Did you also feel let down by the Scottish Government, national health services division, the digital team? When you had problems, did you go to them for help and was the help there? The approach that I took and it was a best endeavours approach was to seek advice and external input on a very regular basis and that I did and that's as described in the papers I put forward. From the people I mentioned it? Yes and from others as well. I think that the point that I've reflected on and it's similar to a point that Mr Crichton made earlier is that each authority is required to determine its own arranged... I just want to know if you got the help. We've got to move on to other members and the convener is sort of appreciating me. Can I please get an answer? Did you get the help that you needed from the Scottish Government, the digital team and NHS services division who are all there to help you? Did they give you the help that you needed and the taxpayer needed in order not to waste £42 million? I received a lot of help from the Scottish Government, I'm from NSS. I'm happy to detail that. So their contribution led to £42 million overspend. That was the kind of help that you got. It doesn't sound very helpful to me. Just continuing down the well-worn track of this contract, do you consider that information was deliberately withheld from you and the board and from the incoming director of finance? That's a conclusion that it's difficult not to come to, sir. I, in January 2014, when I was made aware of the emissions, I met with Mr Robert Stewart to ask him directly about this and to of course check whether he had raised this with me or anybody else within NHS 24 and he confirmed to me that he had not, that he had taken advice from Vincent Mason that he would resolve the issue through a process called a minute of amendment. There were many opportunities called for him to tell me, but as director of finance and technology was leading the contract, clearly when Mrs McGurk came in there was a handover of responsibilities and arrangements as well and there was clearly also an opportunity there to inform her. So I find it very difficult to come to a conclusion other than that information was withheld from me. Robert Stewart left in the summer of 2013. You didn't become aware of the issues until January 2014. When did Mrs McGurk take up duties? Again in the summer of 2013. So someone else must have taken a decision not to pass information to her in addition to herself and the board. So at what level was that decision taken? Well Mr Stewart was the executive director with lead responsibility for the contracts. So he'd gone and you weren't advised of any of the issues until January 2014 nor was Mrs McGurk apparently. So who at that lower level decided not to communicate that information to herself? How would that happen? When Mr Stewart left I actually created an arrangement where it was to keep his knowledge and expertise around the contract available to the organisation. I came to an arrangement with him where he did undertake some further work for a couple of months for NHS 24 specifically around the management of the contract and the advice around the contract to arrange a smooth handover and indeed I asked him to write up in a sense the history of the procurements and the contracting process which he did yes. And he did that? Was in that two months? He did yes. Did it mention any of those problems? No it didn't. It didn't. That still leaves a gap between those two months when Mr Stewart was still overseeing the project so to speak and January 2014 when you became aware. Someone still made a decision somewhere that this information did not require to be passed on. From the discussions that I had with more genius staff when this emerged in January 2014, it was clear to me that they believed that Mr Stewart had briefed me on this issue. But for a project this size you must have been receiving regular briefings from whoever the project team was, as to how it was going, both from the technical side and from the legal side. You must have been receiving these briefings. Indeed, yes. So someone took a decision in giving you these briefings not to pass on this information? Otherwise you would have known. My interpretation of what I was told at the time is that they believed that this issue was raised back in April 2012. They believed that Mr Stewart had made me fully aware of that over a year. There must be a document where all those things are being tracked and which you yourself would have access to and inspect from time to time. It would come up in the briefings. It is a big project. Other staff within NHS 24 at a board junior level were aware of the emissions. They did not tell me when I found out and asked them the impression that I got from those discussions was that they believed that Mr Stewart had told me about them some time before. How often did you meet the project team? Always a very regular, very regular. The project team base was set up. We had a dedicated space for that. I was in and around that on a very regular basis. So none of those issues are being tracked by the project team? No, sir. They weren't? No. How were they being handled, just sort of ad hoc by a member of staff? How was this controlled? The responsibility for the overall management of the contract was with Mr Stewart when Mr Stewart left the organisation. That became Mrs McGurk and I arranged for a bit of a handover period as such between that. Mrs McGurk said that she didn't become aware of any of those issues until January 2014, same time as you. Although she was managing the contract, she still did not have access to that information, which would have alerted her to the fact that there was a problem. So who did not pass that information on? Where did the communication breakdown? I can only repeat myself, sir. Mr Stewart did not tell me. He did not tell Mrs McGurk. But he wasn't there at that point. He'd gone. Well, there had been a process of handover from him to Mrs McGurk and, of course, he'd written up. But Mrs McGurk, to repeat, did not become aware of those issues until January 2014. So clearly, the handover was incomplete or inadequate. Yes. Someone somewhere knew about this. Someone somewhere was tracking this, dealing with the lawyers and so on, and it wasn't feeding into the project team. Is that correct? Yes. And there was no overall document that captured all the issues around this project. Is that correct? Or this would have been picked up? Yes. I mean, we had a very detailed management plan, which was tracked and monitored on almost the daily basis throughout 2013. Everybody was working on the software and the hardware and the builds. I think everybody had assumed that the contract issues had been sorted out by Mr Stewart, so none of the contract issues appeared on any of the briefings you received or any of the documents tracking outstanding issues that came past you. Not in relation to the specific performance metrics, which was one of the emissions from the contract, sir. That's only one thing. Is that the traceability metrics that you're talking about? No, those were the performance metrics to do with the way, how quickly the system worked. That sounds like it's just restricted to the technical side, as opposed to a lot of the admin side that goes round it as well, which is just as important on this. Yes. The contract was being managed by Mr Stewart with his lead responsibility and expertise. The majority of the staff were focused on the build and the development of the technology solution, which was being very regularly managed and monitored. Mr Stewart, there seems to be big gaps in there as to how this was managed, to be quite honest. I think that we're clear about that you're not being informed about things, but my understanding from reading the papers is that the original gap was discovered, that something had been admitted, and there was an omission between the tender document and the contract, and that Vincent Mason said, this is not unusual, this sometimes happens. Almost a regular occurrence, we can deal with it with a memorandum of understanding and Capgemini were happy with that. The thing was then compounded by the next document, the one you signed, still had that omitted from it. How significant was that? I think that we're getting confused between the failures of the Capgemini software system and the omission, because you've repeatedly said that it was a single omission out of 640 requirements. Was that really significant? I mean, it seems to us to have been highly significant that a contract would have been admitted, and that obviously must have had an effect when you came to actually getting into a confrontation with Capgemini, but was it that significant that that particular omission? Yes, let me try to be as clear as I can in relation to that. When the contract was printed in the offices of the NHS 24 lawyers, it was printed from a system called the extra net, and the extra net was where each of the 640 requirements were kept, and as they were negotiated and changed and updated, there was almost an ever-moving final version of each of the requirements. They eventually went into a final folder. When it came to printing out the final folder in the offices of the lawyers, not all of the final requirements were printed. There was more than one. I think that several dozen pages at least were not printed. One of the pages that was not printed was in relation to the performance requirements of the system. In essence, this is when a member of staff has a patient on their phone and has the system in front of them, how quickly the page turns, which is a fundamental part of the system. That was included in the pages that were not printed. So it was omitted. It was in the tender document but not in the contract document. Yes, it was in the very first requirements documents that NHS 24 went to the market. Cap Gemini was certainly aware of that. The speed of turnovers was one of the reasons for doing this, was to reduce the duplication within your NHS system and to speed the process up. Indeed. The performance measures are actually five for specific tasks, each of which were approximately a second or less from memory. There is a Cap Gemini response early on in the procurement process whereby they give a response to that requirement. You said earlier on that you chaired the programme board, and yet this was never brought to the programme board. That seems to me to be where there is again a fairly fundamental flaw, that neither Vincent Mason nor Robert Stewart, who was aware of this, brought that to the programme board and said that there is an omission that has been duplicated, occurred twice and that it has not yet been corrected. That is fairly clear. That was all related to Cap Gemini. There were no problems in the contract with BT at that point. What later transpired is that there had been a similar issue with the BT contract in that not all the pages that should have been printed were printed, but that that was resolved through a minister of amendment process with BT by Vincent Mason. However, Cap Gemini was not dealt with in a minute. There was no separate minute that dealt with this for them. What later transpired is that Vincent Mason had tried to resolve the issue through a minister of amendment process with Cap Gemini but had not achieved sign-off on that, whereas it had achieved sign-off on the BT. Was that because Cap Gemini was simply not prepared to sign up to something, despite the fact that that was the basis on which he tended? On investigation, once that had transpired, there seemed to be one point that was not related to the performance metrics that Cap Gemini sought to reopen in that process. However, because that was not reported to myself, to the future service committee or to the board, we did not have that governance eye over it to ensure that it was handled and closed off satisfactorily. The advice that you were getting from NSS or from the Government through their expertise, did they attend the programme board? Yes, there were two members of Scottish Government staff who attended the programme board through 2012 and 2013. What were their expertise? One of the members of staff was from the performance management directorate that had oversight of NHS 24 generally and the other was from the eHealth directorate in Scottish Government. The eHealth directorate, again, presumably we asked them, they presumably weren't informed about any of this either. Thank you, just a couple of very brief points. After what we just heard there regarding the printing out of the contract, what I am trying to understand here now is that the sheets were printed out, were put together and, by the sounds of things, there was not a final check of what was printed out when it was put together for this contract to be put in front of yourself to sign. Is that an accurate assessment? Yes, it is. There was not a page turn or equivalence exercise to ensure that everything that had been agreed and should have been printed off was printed off. Why not? Why didn't that happen? Particularly for a contract worth the sums of money that we have been talking about? That is a question that has tormented me since this came to life. I have this side regarded as a basic administrative function within the officers of the lawyers and their team. It hadn't a basic process that, before a contract would be put in front of a client for signature, it would have been checked to ensure that it was a full and complete contract. It transpired that it hadn't been checked. I understand that all of the final versions in the extra net had been read and checked, but when it was printed out, there wasn't that page turn exercise. It really surprised me at the most important stage, that very basic element of governance, if I want to have a better word. I was astounded when I found out. You answered the convener's questions earlier on about when you left the organisation and your discussion with the board chairman. Were you told by the board chairman that you were leaving the organisation because of this situation? It was a very personal discussion with the board's chairman. I don't want to know about that. It's not appropriate for me to know about that, it's just on the business that you were employed to do, which is obviously this particular function. Was that the main reason why you left the organisation? It was a key factor. Was that the main reason? I would say that it was a key factor. I don't know what a key factor is, but there were lots of key factors? There were other points as well. As I said earlier, I'd been there seven years. I'd had two really tough years with the programme leading up to this. There was something very personal for me about that. I needed to step back and refresh a little. I just want to be very clear, because we're trying to identify what went wrong here, were you asked to leave because of this particular project by the board chairman? This was part of the discussion that we had, so yes. Do you understand the public outcry about settlement agreements to people leaving public sector jobs with this kind of scenario in front of them? Absolutely, yes. OK, I have no questions. Thank you very much. Good morning, Mr Turner. I'm wondering if I can just take you back to a subject that I still haven't settled in my mind. I'm looking at the timeline, which tells me about August 2011 that there were emissions in the tender document that you signed the contracts in around March 2012, and shortly thereafter, April 2012, people identified that the sections are missing. I think that those are totally different issues, but the second one relates to documents that just weren't printed out and therefore apparently didn't become part of the contract, whereas the emission in the tender document, which was ahead of it being printed, presumably was a very different issue that was spotted in March. Can I ask you just to go back over that and explain what the differences perhaps were with it, please? Yes, perhaps if I could start right at the beginning when NHS 24 first went to market with the requirement. The requirement was for a page turn, and as I said earlier, there were five specific requirements, but how quickly that screen turn took place. That was at the beginning of the process. As the documentation was managed through the process, that requirement got cut in a—it was a transition from one software system to another in terms of the management of the requirements. Instead of saying that we want the system to do A, B, C, D and E, it just said that we want the system to do. That was it, so that's how it became truncated. In August 2011, I understand that a member of NHS 24 staff spotted that it had become shortened and raised that with Vincent Mason to rectify the situation. Capgemini were notified of that and responded to that. What then happened is that the full version didn't remain in the updated versions as it went forward. What was in the final version on the extra net was the truncated version rather than the full version with Capgemini's response, which then was part of the pages that weren't printed out. Under those circumstances, why would Capgemini, as a contractor, having responded to a requirement that they knew was there, not recognise that fact and simply say that that's what we discussed and that's what we're going to do? The working relationship with Capgemini through the whole of the build process was very close. By that I mean that Capgemini staff alongside with BT staff and NHS 24 staff were all working in the same space. We had a shared plan that everybody was working to. That plan was managed on a daily basis and on a weekly basis I held a senior executive meeting, an escalation meeting with the senior executive colleagues in Capgemini and BT. As the implementation went forward, it was in the summer of 2013 that NHS 24 identified and escalated a particular issue with one element of the software. That escalated to NHS 24 board chair and the Capgemini UK chair in terms of how the totality of this element of the software was being developed. That remained a critical factor through July and August 2013 and then in September 2013, following a dress rehearsal exercise that NHS 24 had done, the Capgemini senior executive said to me that the problem still remained. He thought that he was concerned that there may be a fundamental flaw in the system and he undertook to have a specialist technical review of that. At no point in any of that process and the regularity of the meetings and the intensity of the work that we were doing was the issue of the performance metrics ever brought up by Capgemini. It was only when not only did this element not function correctly, so it just didn't work, but also the speed at which it was working was not acceptable that this issue had the spotlight shone on it. Right, I understand that and for those who are sitting outside, if you don't get told, you don't get told, what I'm trying to understand is that how those who are actually engaged in writing the software and literally looking at the screens and what it would do somehow fail to pick this up because it is pretty fundamental because looking at a screen is exactly what the person using the software is going to do and I'm just wondering if you can, with the benefit of hindsight of course, give me some clues as to how those who were actually doing it. We would say at the joke face but actually in front of the screen, failed to see that that was what they were producing. There were many elements to the software that we were very pleased with and worked excellently and that's what was consistently coming back from all of the staff who were testing it, but the elements around the clinical content piece, which is called RETSO, the staff raised concerns with me and I with Cap Gemini and the NHS 24 board chair with the Cap Gemini UK chair. We raised concerns consistently about how that was working. Cap Gemini were developing it as we were going along and as we kept testing it, it kept not working and this issue remained as I say a critical factor through July and August to the extent that in September, as I say, Cap Gemini and I identified that as a potential fundamental flaw in the system. Okay thank you, I think that we've struggled to leave it now. You could just raise some final questions with our members. I just start by asking you to reflect on the fact that you were there from 2008 to 2015. During that time, it changed from the post that you, the accountable officer's role, changed from being responsible as an NHS manager to somebody who was in charge of a significant IT project. That's really what happened here, was that you became responsible for something that perhaps when you signed up for the job, it wasn't such a significant part of the role. Were you out of your depth? Was that something that just got, I mean, because we can blame the director of finance and you've taken responsibility as well, but did this not just become an issue that you really couldn't manage the project? Because we've heard from Mr Beattie there's some issues about tracking the decisions that were taken, the whole process of managing the contracts, they just not get out of hand. When we knew we were going to go through the procurement and contracting process and we needed to get new technology, we were very aware that this was a high-risk programme. We were very up-front about that. With best efforts, we brought in external expertise. We used the expertise that we had in the organisation. You needed somebody to manage that, though, didn't you? I mean, at the end of the day, you could bring in all sorts of expertise, but this became a major IT project. I mean, we're talking about significant sums of public money that has to be spent that you have ultimately become responsible for. You know, you've got a track record as an NHS manager, people managing staff in different ways, but you never had any experience in managing a significant IT project, did you? No, I hadn't though, which is... She didn't not have been something that you reflected on and said yet. Listen, I need to reflect on this. I'm maybe not the accountable officer to take forward this project. I'm asking you this question because you've said that you want to be part of the process, or you said that you would be willing to be part of the process of reflecting on this, but it was just not that you just didn't have the expertise and too much pressure has been placed on you. Hence the reason why the management of this project just got out of hand. People weren't reporting things to you. As I reflect, I think at a micro level, there are many things that within NHS 24 we could have done better, some of which we've touched on today and there'll be many more. When you overspend £41.6 million, you could have done a lot better and if the tap had been turned off, 1,500 people would have lost their job, is that not correct? I mean, if the Scottish Government said, we're not giving you any more money for your IT project, the organisation would be effectively people would lose their jobs, is that not correct? Should you not have reflected in this when you looked at the project and said, IT project, it's so significant, I really can't do that? Is that not a time when you've accepted humility today after the event, but is that not something that you could have looked ahead and said, I'm not in a position to manage this, this is not for me? One element that hasn't come out, sir, is that we did have a create a programme director post as part of the programme. I think, as reported to the committee, that's a post that we struggled to recruit to. I'm asking about you as your accountable officer. If you asked me to be the manager of Manchester United and say, don't ask anybody in this room that could do that, we're not qualified to do that, that's a significant task. But the question that I'm putting to you is, should you not have said, wait a minute, this is significant, I do not have expertise in this IT project, I'm a manager of NHS staff, that's what I do, that's where I come from, really this is not for me, is that not at that stage, you should have said that? Certainly as I look back, despite the fact that I took external advice, external reviews and brought in external staff, I can see that we've really benefited from the services of somebody who's been through that. You needed the responsibility, you had to make sure that these advisors were brought in, you can bring in all the players that you want, but you need to be the person that manages these players that you're bringing in and you didn't do that effectively, did you? Because they didn't feel the confidence to come, we heard from the earlier evidence that we were advising Mr Crack that the staff would feel that they could advise me of a, it wouldn't be the blame game, they could advise me that it was false in the system, so that didn't happen this occasion, did it? No it didn't, no. So the staff didn't feel that they could come and advise you, so the management process wasn't in place, was it, as effectively as it should have been? Well, have that been said, the issues would have been raised earlier? So can I just ask one final quick question, connection with the legal advisers? So when it was uncovered there was a flaw in the contract, I take it that legal advisers had to start making representations to the various parties to see whether they could reconcile the contract. Did they charge for that work that they carried out, did they bill the organisation for that? Well, by January 2014, when the issues emerged with the contract omissions, NHS 24 had, was working with Anderson Strathorn as solicitors, so we changed that from Vincent Mason's in October 2013. So, yes, Anderson Strathorn went through a contract, didn't he? But here's the question, he advises that Mr Stewart had instructed the solicitors to look at ways in which they could clarify the contract. Oh, I see. Yeah, at that stage, when they were asked to do that by Mr Stewart, so effectively there was work required of them in terms of taking this forward. Did they bill the NHS 24? I'm sorry, I misunderstood. Now they agreed that that was their issue and they would seek to resolve it at no charge to NHS 24. That no textimata, next question. So they agreed then that it was their issue. Yes. So where's the legal argument here then? If they accept that it was their issue, then why are we worrying about who's responsible for this? Should we not have been very clearly placing all responsibility on the legal advisers? Because they've admitted at that point that they were responsible for it. So why was there a debate about that? Because they would have billed you if they weren't responsible for it. I'm sorry, so I'm not catching the question. I think the question is crystal clear and you've actually answered part of it. The responsibility was very, you advise me there that the legal advisers have uncovered that there was a flaw in the contract. Yes. And you've advised me that they said that they were aware that they were responsible for that, is that correct? Yes, that's what I find out. Because they didn't bill us accordingly. So when, at a later stage, the board was considering what action they could take in respect to the legal advisers who provided the advice, it was a no brainer. I mean it must be pretty straightforward argument. The legal advisers have already advised you that they are responsible for the flaw in the contract. So why is there an argument about taking further action against the solicitors? Well. Because you advised me earlier that we've looked at it, we're not really sure whether we could take action or not. We're still considering it, it's within a five year period. Yes. It's pretty straightforward, the advice that they're not going to bill you because they were responsible for it. Yes. So why was there any debate about whether we would take action against them or not? 41.6 million pounds of public money and you're debating whether we should take action against the legal adviser who's already admitted that they were responsible. Yes. Internally? Yes, I mean the board clearly needs to take legal advice on how strong its case was. The board, before I left, had received advice from Anderson Strathurne and was in the process of taking further advice from the central legal office. I mean they're reflecting on us for quite a long time or the not. It's 41.6 million pounds of money worth of public money and it's, you know, less than if you think about it. Yes. Okay. 40.6 million pounds of public money and you're debating whether we should take action against the legal adviser who's already admitted that they were responsible for it. Thank you, convener. I must say that following from what the convener has been saying about lawyers, I have to say that there are certain questions in my mind over Vincent Mason and their activities in this, from the evidence that we've seen and questions about, you know, how much value they actually added to this. Have you ever, have you, did you have a process of meeting with the lawyers at any point? Did you meet them? Yes, I did from time to time, so yes. On a regular basis, what was the subject to the meeting? The director of finance was the executive lead who had most regular contact with the lawyers. I met with them, as I say, from time to time in terms of oversight of the contract and the issues and the progress that we were making. So they would have updated you on the issues with the contract? Yes, sir. Yes. They did. Let me just clarify there. You say that you meet the lawyer from time to time. You met the lawyer from time to time and that they would, presumably for the purpose of giving you briefings on where things were, although the director of finance, she says, is more sort of called a daily contact with them on issues. So they actually briefed you periodically and they would have covered issues on the contract. Yes, yes. They did. So you were aware of the problems on the contract? No, no, I wasn't aware of the emissions. So are we saying that the lawyer also withheld that information? It certainly wasn't forthcoming with it, sir, yes. So your opinion is that during those briefings you got from the lawyer, which covered contracts and presumably any legal issues around that, at no point did they indicate that there were any problems? No. They didn't? No. What would you say that we spent several hundred thousand pounds on Vincent Mason? Is that correct? Yes. What was the basis of the payment? Was it a fixed payment for the work done or was it sort of an hourly billing? It was an hourly raise. Very nice. Who signed off on that? The director of finance that I believe I'm right in saying, when I joined the organisation NHS 24 already had a legal advice arrangement in place with Vincent Mason. Was there a budget? Yes, that was within the overall budget of the organisation. Yes. But there was a specific budget, presumably, for legal advice and support? There certainly was in the future programme overall budgets, yes. Very brief questions. What job are you in now? I'm looking for work at the moment. Have you been looking for work since you left NHS? NHS 24. Now only for the past month or so. Can I ask about Robert Stewart, because this person's had to shoulder a significant part of the blame for this huge multimillion-pound overspend on the project? Were disciplinary procedures taken out against Robert Stewart prior to him leaving NHS 24? Was the overspend of £42 million a key factor in his leaving? No. So he did not accept any responsibility for this project, given that you've fairly, well fairly, I don't know, but you've squarely laid the blame on his shoulders. Did he choose to leave of his own volition? Yes, I mean he retired. He retired, yes. There was no disciplinary procedures taken out against him, given that he, his action, or lack of action, was a key factor in this huge overspend. No. Did no-one, did you not talk to him and say why didn't you do this, this is a very serious omission, given that you've in the public eye today, and I've no doubt Mr Stewart will be looking in. Given that you've laid that blame on his shoulders, you never spoke to him about his knowledge of the emissions in the contract that he failed to bring to your attention as a countable officer. Did you never have that conversation with him? Yes, I did. In January 2014, when this came to my attention, actually in the week it came to my attention, I met with Mr Stewart. I asked him whether he knew about the emissions in the Minister of Amendment process and he said to me that he did. He advised me that he had discussions with Vincent Mason about this and that they had agreed to resolve the matter through a Minister of Amendment process. It was an administrative matter and that he hadn't raised it with me because there were other things going on at the time and he thought that it would be resolved by the lawyers. Subsequently, as Mrs McGurk highlighted earlier, the board, specifically the board chairman, commissioned a review of the matter from PWC as auditors. They interviewed Mr Stewart and essentially repeated what I've just said to them. Did you get early retirement and a severance package when he left? At what age was he going to retire? Oh, gosh. I think that he just retired early 60s. Early 60s? No disciplinary proceedings. That's quite shocking for an accountable officer. You come to a public audit committee in the Scottish Parliament and you lay a huge amount of blame on that man's shoulders, but you never took the action that an accountable officer would be expected to take, given that the responsibility was his. He was aware of omissions that were not brought to your attention. That's quite defamatory and quite damning, isn't it? Yes. None of the issues were brought to my attention until Mr Stewart had retired from the organisation. He was aware of them, that's my point. Yes, but I wasn't in the knowledge of them at the time. I accept my responsibility, although that happened on my watch. I am the accountable officer for that. I'm just trying to explain to the committee the facts and the series of events as I experience them. Okay, thank you for your contribution this morning. Mr Turner, can you move to agenda item number 3, which is responses from the Scottish Government and Audit Scotland on the AGS report entitled NHS in Scotland 2015? Can I ask colleagues for comments? Richard Simpson? One of the comments of Mr Gray's response, which I don't really quite understand, is that he says that the paper highlights that despite demanded A and E departments continuing to increase, I've printed off the ISD's reports from April 2010 to November 2015 of the attendances at accident and emergency. At no time between April 2015 and November 2015, which is the last monthly report that we've got, were the number of attendances at the highest in the last five years indeed. If you take April 2015 and take April as a month, the highest attendance was actually in 2011. In May, in each of the last five years, the highest attendance by quite a margin was actually in 2010-11. If I can give you the figures chair, in May 2015 the attendances were 138,777, but in May 2010 it was 149,538. Some of the problems that we're experiencing with accident and emergency, which were again very evident in the last week's reports—now we're getting weekly reports—don't indicate that this is due to an increased level of attendance. There may be other reasons behind it, but it's not an increased level of attendance. I just wonder why the question of increased demand—I've tried to look back at the Auditor General's paper and I can't see that they've suggested that there is a substantial increase in demand. That's the first point. The second point that I want to make is that at least I carried out a freedom of information inquiry of all the boards with regard to the alternative access routes. That arose from the problems that we are having at the Queen Elizabeth university hospital with the so-called acute assessment unit, which is a different route by which patients can come in and which is not subject to waiting times targets and doesn't seem to be subject to any sort of monitoring. In fact, there are a huge list of these. I mean, I can submit this to the committee, but they're called CPDUs, GPAUs, MRUs, SAUs, pediatric assessments, RAMA, whatever that is, in the Highlands, and I could go on and on and on. Each of the boards has all those different alternative assessment units in which, on some occasions, they have a four-hour target, but most of them don't have a target at all. The situation is a lot more complicated in terms of the accident and emergency thing. I wonder whether other members feel, as I do, that we aren't getting the clear picture. That refers to the acute assessment units, also known as intermediate assessment units, where there are lots of other names. Many of them have grown up since the waiting-time scandal of 2011. I am concerned that they are being utilised maybe inappropriately or inappropriately, but I am not convinced that this is a part of the system that we understand fully. Mary Scanlon, in the convener, will be here. I will ask colleagues to give some recommendation on how they would wish to take that forward. I would like to ask for further information, convener. The further information I would like is really in terms of clarity. I wrote down the words Fudgin Waffle after I read this about three times. We did ask for information on the Audit Scotland's paper accident and emergency and also targets. We also asked about the purpose of assessment units. In the third main paragraph, Paul Gray states that they do not know the reasons for referrals. We do not collect specific data on the number of referrals and reason for referral. The reason was that our understanding that the acute assessment units are not subject to the four-hour A&E target. That is a way of sidelining the target. My point, convener, is that we had a previous report from Audit Scotland. I remember clearly a complete page of who referred people to accident and emergency. That was the GP, Scottish Ambulance Service and NHS 24. Our concern as a committee, and it was Hugh Henry at the time, was the huge increase in self-referrals. We were trying to understand that better. We spoke to ISD, etc. I am not satisfied at the information that we have. I do not think that it fully answers the questions that we were asking. My point is that there was information in a previous Audit Scotland report about who referred patients to accident and emergency and what percentage were self-referred. That was a huge increase in previous years. I do not accept the point that the director general for health does not know this information when we have had this information in a previous report. I think that, following on from what Richard Simpson said, it would be interesting to see the figures that he has, because if we are going to take any sort of consideration on that, we need to really all have sight of those. Looking at NHS 2015, the backlog maintenance, I think, has answered fairly well. Leaving aside that there is possibly one or two pieces of information that we might ask again from Paul Gray, I think that we have probably gone about as far on that as possible, given the stage that we are before dissolution and so forth. Okay, Richard Simpson. Yeah, I totally agree with that. So could you just ask members to be clear what information they want from Paul Gray? I think that what I would like to see is that the Government previously has given us targets for completing the high-risk, dealing with the high-risk backlog maintenance, and those targets were not met. What I would like to see is what the current targets are going forward and when they are likely to be met so that the successor committee can hold the Government to account on the targets that they have not met. High-risk, we have already got the definition now from the Auditor General, and high-risk includes the possibility of considerable clinical risk. That is something that really concerns me that we should be seeing that very carefully. This is obviously a rolling feast, convener, in that you will get new items coming on, not only that you will get a redefinition from significant risk to high risk as time goes forward. So we need to understand what is actually happening in that respect in far greater detail than we have been provided for if we are to do our job in protecting the public. I think that we are pretty clear on what the information is that we have been further sought from Paul Gray. I think that it would also be helpful if Richard Simpson could provide the information to the clerks. I will pass this to the clerks. Okay, so is it agreed that we will seek further information, Paul Gray, on that? Now we move to agenda item number four, which is responses from Audit Scotland regarding reports on NHS Highland at NHS Tayside. Do colleagues have any comments? Mary Scanlon? I think that we have been pretty harsh on NHS Highland, but that was because Audit Scotland brought section 22 report to us. I do feel that they have reasonably addressed many of the poor financial management that was described in the report. When I read the actual spending on agency staff went up by 2.8 per cent. Now, while we are sitting here criticising NHS Highland for increasing agency staff by 2.8 per cent, agency spending in territorial boards across Scotland went up by 17 per cent. I just want to highlight that. We did hear about vacancy management in NHS Highland in order to save money, convener, but at the same time we have territorial boards that are eight times more spending on agency staff. As Highlands and Islands MSP, there are issues recruiting people. I am concerned about recruitment in radiology, clinical oncology, rheumatology and old age psychiatry, particularly given that government priorities, convener, are dementia and cancer. That is very serious. I do appreciate that there are issues recruiting people in remote and rural areas, as Tabby Scott would know. I have always thought that people in Highlands and Islands should have equality of access to the national health service that people living in the rest of Scotland have. Those are very serious issues. We know that cancer does not wait. I am less concerned at the moment about NHS Highland. It seems to be addressing most of the issues. There are minor things about its sickness, absinthe rate and so on. We have concerns about NHS Tayside and around about Ashludi and how key that is to them reaching their targets. Maybe we just need to keep an eye on that and get a report back again on how that is going. Without the sale of Ashludi, I think that they are going to struggle over the next few years. Clearly, what you mean by a report back is that we are asking for the order of general to consider a report. How do you want a report back? I do not know if we need the order of general necessarily to do it. Can we not just ask Tayside to come back and tell us when it is resolved? We can do that or we can flag out my legacy paper, if that would be helpful. Maybe that too. I think that it is an on-going issue. I agree to note the issue in the legacy paper. I move into, as I agreed, the private session for gender items number 5 and 6.