Speeches by Lowe.

“You can have as many risk registers, processes and analytical tools as you like. In the end, you have to send people to prison for being dishonest. I know we have issues with the courts, which do not punish people properly, but in the end, people have to fear that when they break the law, when they are deceitful, when …”

“But what is lost, when you say lost assets? Most of them are apparently lost. What does that mean? Does anyone get punished for losing an asset? In my business, if somebody loses an asset with no justification, they have to pay for it.”

“Can I interrupt? You are talking in generalities. Let us go through the Report. On theft of assets: “Around two-thirds of these reports related to lost assets, with theft making up only 13%.” Can you define “lost assets”? On personnel management issues and information exploitation, the Report mentions “failure to follo…”

“I don’t quite know where to start. I don’t think this Report tells you about all the leakage that is taking place. When I look at the taxes being levied on farmers and small businesses that are forcing them to sell their farms and businesses, and I look at this leakage—you talk about £1.5 billion here—you are probably …”

“I would rather watch what the hands are doing than what the mouth is saying. What we as a Committee want to see is some action.”

“Okay.”

“When you have machinated long enough, I think we need to have a report on exactly what that is. Will this “could” become a “should”, or will we be given all sorts of complex reasons why the MoD cannot make it a “should”? If a report like this NAO Report was done about my Department, I would be very worried and have all…”

“I think that word should be “should”, not “could”, which seems to be common sense. I hear your answer, and I hear you talking about the reasons why it is difficult, but you have to overcome those problems. This is about fraud and dishonesty, and as I said, this needs to be dealt with. We have basically moved from being…”

“Very definitely.”

“I have a final question, reading the document and thinking about this issue. Have you any thoughts about how the rapid development of AI is likely to affect what you are doing? It strikes me that the software industry is very much at risk from AI. Whereas AI was probably quite inaccurate a year ago, and is still vaguel…”

“I have two other questions, really just from my interest. First, was this in any way driven by the advent of central bank digital currencies? I ask that because I know that the Governor is quite keen on them, as was—certainly—Rishi Sunak. I am less keen on them. But was that any motivation for this development? You did…”

“You have that absolutely bolted down?”

“But you have Accenture bolted down from an intellectual property point of view?”

“That sounds great. Can you commercialise this yourselves and turn it into something that you sell to other countries or people who might use it, and defray the cost further, or is it something you want to keep proprietary?”

“Then everybody knows what they are dealing with. People can then see the frictional costs of making a transfer. If we are trying to collectively help British industry, commerce and trade, we want a system that is transparent and that serves the end user and does not just enrich the banking system—which is arguably a pa…”

“I am a great believer in transparent charging.”

“That is great. I understand that you have discussed this with the users, because in your document you mention ultimately charging for this system. As you know, the banks often used to be accused—including by myself—of getting between the wall and the wallpaper, in that it took a long time to get your money to go from A…”

“It is great that you are comfortable that you have that covered off, because otherwise, in my experience, people suffer huge downstream effects.”

“So if you need to innovate, you have the skills in-house to do it.”

“I am interested in the support. In my experience of writing the kind of software that you need to do this, it is not just about implementation support. I see that there are still 125 people on the project: I think you have 32, Accenture has 84, PA Consulting has five and there are four contractors. Part of it is implem…”