Why Did Eds Cough-up?

摘要

Officials at HM Revenue & Customs are grateful to services company EDS for settling a three-year legal dispute. EDS's final payment brings the total amount of compensation to more than ￡670m. But would such a legally-experienced supplier have settled if not for the recession and, especially, its takeover by Hewlett-Packard last year? EDS was not forced into a corner -it did not have to settle. The dispute has its origins in 2003, when EDS and HMRC introduced flawed systems to support tax credits. Some benefit claimants received too much money, but HMRC found it difficult to recover the overpayments. Under pressure from MPs to sue EDS, HMRC made threats of legal action, and in November 2005 reached an extraordinary deal with the supplier. HMRC announced that it had won ￡71.25m compensation from EDS. It looked from HMRC's public announcement that the compensation was assured. HMRC even announced that the settlement represented the most any UK government department had won in compensation from an IT supplier. But the deal was extraordinary because it did not guarantee that EDS would pay-up.