MPs condemn costly computer scheme

A project to provide computers for all magistrates' courts in England and Wales is today condemned by a committee of MPs after costs more than doubled in four years to almost £400 million.

The Public Accounts Committee described the project as one of the worst public finance schemes it had ever seen.

The Lord Chancellor's Department (LCD), now the Department for Constitutional Affairs, had failed to take "decisive action" after the projected costs rose from £184million to almost £400 million, the committee said.

The scheme, known as Libra, is a worse fiasco than the computer systems put in place by the Passport Office, the Criminal Records Bureau and the Child Support Agency - three Whitehall scandals that have cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds.

The cost of installing each personal computer terminal in the court is working out at £21,000. The project involves 11,000 computers.

The deal, agreed by Geoff Hoon in his first job in government as a junior minister in the LCD, aimed to streamline more than 300 magistrates' court procedures, saving millions of pounds.

The committee also criticised the contractor, ICL (now called Fujitsu Services), which twice threatened to walk away from the deal unless it received more money. The company had originally bid £146million but raised this to £184 million for 10 years. The contract was signed in December 1998 but revised twice. The total cost is now estimated at £390 million with 8.5 years of service.

Committee chairman Edward Leigh said: "The handling of this project by the LCD was disastrous at every turn."