OFFSHORING AND DATA SECURITY

That this House is concerned by Hewlett Packard's (HP) application to offshore up to 200 jobs, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Lytham and Sheffield, working on the Adams 2 contract with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), to Bangalore and that HP workers based in India will be inshored to the UK from August 2011 to start knowledge transfer before the Government has announced its decision; is alarmed at the increased security risks of storing millions of live personal data files, including national insurance numbers, offshore; recognises the serious ethical implications of reducing the cost and increasing the profitability of a public sector contract through exploiting inferior pay and conditions of overseas workers; believes that any savings on DWP IT expenditure through offshoring would be exceeded by lost tax revenue and increased benefit payments; notes that offshoring and inshoring compromise the Government's ambition to tackle the deficit through growing employment; and calls on the Government to undertake and publish a full economic impact assessment of HP's offshoring application and to reject the application.