Negotiations between the Inland Revenue and outsourcing firm Mapeley over the terms of its £1.5bn agreement are dragging on, two years after they started.
The admission was made at the Public Accounts Committee this week by David Varney, the new executive chairman of the Inland Revenue/Customs & Excise, and Jamie Hopkins, chief executive of Mapeley.
The committee must respond to the National Audit Office report on the Mapeley STEPS deal, published in May.
During the two-hour session, PAC chairman Edward Leigh MP said the departments had been “grotesquely naive” when they transferred their estate to a tax haven, and asked Varney how much “shame” this had caused.
The two parties have been wrangling over the pricing of the deal and the performance management system applied to Mapeley, which Hopkins described this week as “punitive”.
Varney said he hoped to conclude all negotiations by the time the Revenue and Customs merge in April 2005.
“There are features of the agreement that are not proving satisfactory,” he said.
When quizzed over why the departments have been paying Mapeley around £300m pa instead of the £170m pa facility payment envisaged by the NAO, both parties said the discrepancy covered expenses such as utility bills and additional services, such as childcare.
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The Public and Commercial Services Union has raised complaints with the PAC about “serious failings in Mapeley’s management of the estate”. It says: ● In one office, “Mapeley used a fairy light-style arrangement of bulbs suspended from the ceiling” rather than fixing the failed lights. ● Mapeley “has banned third-party organisations from premises, including organisations with long associations with the civil service”. Siobhan Mary McHale, director of estates at Inland Revenue/ Customs & Excise, told the committee: “We are working with Mapeley to look at health and safety reports and review those across the contract.” |
