Phil Pavitt, the chief information officer at HM Revenue and Customs, said Labour’s multi-billion pound computer deals had grown out of control.

In an unusual intervention by a government official, he appeared to agree with a Conservative plan for a £100 million cap on the price of state IT contracts.

And he claimed that senior civil servants are warned they will be thrown out of a secret “club” of powerful Whitehall officials if they try to save public money.

Mr Pavitt’s comments came during a discussion about the largest state IT systems at a conference in Westminster for public sector managers and private contractors.

“It’s time as an industry … we began to reduce dramatically those programmes to sizes that can be understood, swallowed and delivered,” he said.

The Conservatives have said that if they win the next election, the Government would “never again” sign another IT deal for more than £100 million.

Mr Pavitt suggested that even this was too much. “£100 million is never £100 million,” he said.

“In an £100 million programme people forget why they started and the people responsible at the outset are rarely there at the end. All major changes should become medium changes.”

Mr Pavitt also said that after starting his job last September, he was visited by senior officials from the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), the Treasury’s spending watchdog.

“They mentioned I am in the top purchasing club,” Mr Pavitt said. “That means you have tremendous influence on buying power, buying ideas and management.

“I said: ‘If I reduce costs by 50 per cent, what happens?’, ‘Well, you leave the club,’ I was told.

“So here I am relieved of my ability to influence government’s ability to purchase if I am clever and do my job. It’s one of the most perverse things that I’ve heard.”

The Tories described Mr Pavitt’s comments as “an appalling exposé showing the spendaholic culture at the heart of Government”.

Philip Hammond, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said: “For 13 years, spending has ballooned with no regard to value for taxpayers’ money.

“Britain needs a change of Government to tackle this culture of waste and inefficiency.”

Mr Pavitt is in charge of overseeing HMRC’s Aspire computer system, which is contracted to Capgemini, BT and Fujitsu.

It was originally meant to cost the public £2.6 billion. Its total price has since grown to an estimated £9.75 billion, making it the Government’s largest IT outsourcing deal.

A series of high-profile IT contracts – including in the NHS, Ministry of Justice and Ministry of Defence – have gone billions of pounds over budget under the Labour government.

A study last year found that the biggest computer projects under Labour had run up a combined cost of £18.6 billion more than originally stated.

Mr Pavitt said that his department was often “paying twice” to get jobs done because the computer deal was so complex that contractors’ responsibilities were unclear.

“We have a complication where the role of who does what after a number of years of being outsourced is complex and it does blur,” he said.

An HMRC spokesman later issued a clarification from Mr Pavitt in which he insisted he was not “at odds” with the OGC.

The spokesman said: “The context is that Phil is fairly new to IT. He came in last year.”

He added: “The idea that you have to spend high in order to get the most benefit misses the point.

“It is collective buying power that delivers more for less within tighter spending constraints. Our priority is always to get best value for money for the taxpayer.”

Source:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/7221784/Senior-official-criticises-Governments-perverse-IT-spending-culture.html