When Railtrack first planned the upgrade of the West Coast Mainline it was to have been completed in two phases in 2002 and 2005, used untried signalling technology and cost £2.6 billion. In the event the signalling was not installed, progress was much slower than anticipated and Railtrack collapsed. Network rail took over the project and put in place a more robust strategy to deliver the upgrade in three stages between 2004 and 2008. The first two stages have already been delivered on schedule. However the total modernisation cost is likely to be around £8.6 billion and the line will still be prone to overcrowding at peak times and is thus likely to need further investment. This report looks at the project on the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General.

The Countryside Rights of Way Act 2000 introduced a public right to walk across designated mountain, moor, heath, downs and registered common land in England. DEFRA tasked the Countryside Agency with opening-up the new access by the end of 2005, and the target was met with two months to spare. However the implementation of the right to roam cost the Countryside Agency £24.6 million more than anticipated, with knock-on impacts on other programmes. This report looks at the implementation of open access and the effect of the policy under the headings: encouraging the public to use the right to roam across the countryside; protecting the environment of access land and the rights of landowners; improving planning and project management. However the success of legislation is as yet unknown because there is no information on the extent to which the public are making use of their new right. In October 2006 the responsibility for open access passed from the Countryside Agency to Natural England.

The Stationery Office annual catalogue 2011 provides a comprehensive source of bibliographic information on over 4900 Parliamentary, statutory and official publications - from the UK Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly, and many government departments and agencies - which were issued in 2011.

In January 2004, the Inland Revenue entered into a contract with Capgemini to provide IT services to support the Department's business. The contract, known as ASPIRE (Acquiring Strategic Partners for the Inland Revenue), replaced two previous contracts with EDS and Accenture and, following the merger of the Inland Revenue and HM Customs & Excise in 2005, the latter's IT services contract with Fujitsu was incorporated within ASPIRE in April 2006. This change from one supplier to another was the first of this scale in the public sector, and the contract provides wider lessons for the public sector in re-competing major contracts, particularly relating to the payment of transition costs. The cost of the contract has risen from £2.83 billion to £8.5 billion over the 10 year term. Following on from a NAO report on this topic (HCP 938, session 2005-06; ISBN 9780102939170) published in July 2006, the Committee's report examines the procurement process, the transition to a new supplier and the performance of the ASPIRE contract to date. Findings include: i) before concluding the deal, the Department should have evaluated bids against a range of demands for IT services and analysed the effect of different scenarios on suppliers' prices and profit margins; ii) it should have evaluated the performance of consultants and the lessons to be learned from their use, not only for their own benefit but for that of other departments; iii) by contributing to bid costs and paying transition costs to secure competition for the contract, the Department incurred a premium of £51.9 million; iv) it should set more challenging performance targets to impose sufficient discipline on suppliers; and v) the Government should not be placed in the invidious position of having to commission further work from a contractor in order to recover compensation for underperformance.

Forms are one of the most frequent ways a citizen interacts with government departments. If a form is badly designed it is likely lead to errors and increase processing costs, also the public is less inclined to believe that progress is being made to a more responsive and accessible service. Based on an NAO report (HC 1145 2002-03 ISBN 0102923604), the Committee took evidence from the Inland Revenue, DES, DWP and Passport Service on the three main issues of: designing user friendly forms; improved administrative efficiency; progress to providing online services. The \are 12 main recommendations.