Mr. John McKeon:

I will come to that. Although I do not wish to speak for the Comptroller and Auditor General, I think it is fair to say that he is not directing us; he is observing that the procurement to date is not compliant. It is a matter then for the Department to respond on that.

As regards the tender design, part of the process we took when we first became aware several years ago of the obligation to tender these documents was to take a deliberate and careful approach to how we go about it. We commissioned Indecon to prepare two reports on local employment services and jobs clubs. We then commissioned the Institute of Economic Studies and Social Finance International to carry out another study. They have all come to the conclusion, for good reasons, that there is an opportunity in the procurement to deliver a more integrated service. That is what it is really about. It is in the interests of jobseekers. At the moment, across the various job club and local employment services, we have approximately 66 different providers. We also have JobPath providers and our own service. It is a bit of a confused landscape for jobseekers. The advice we got clearly in all those reports was to try to bring it together and integrate it. The other advice we got that the different services such as ourselves as Intreo, JobPath, the local employment services and job clubs are all broadly involved across different cohorts of jobseekers. The advice we got was to try to focus each different service provision on particular cohorts. That kind of advice meant that we had to change things.