Dizzy wonders why the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is avoiding answering the question of how much public money it paid to Capita plc (a major Labour party donor). The man in charge, Tom Watson says it's too expensive for his department to find out.

A cursory Googling reveals that the Cabinet Office's accounting system is Sun Accounts, and there seems to be an external procurement package running alongside it - from the linked document it's order processing only, which could mean that the invoice processing is done through Sun. 

It's possible that there are ancillary systems in, for example, Cabinet Office quangos which is probably how the justify the "too expensive" argument.

My suggestion would be to rephrase the question as: "how much was paid to Capita plc in each of year since 2001 via (a) the Cabinet Office's Sun Accounts system and, if different (b) the e-Pop system." This should pick up the bulk of the payments, but should be a trivial query for a semi-competent IT bod to do. Say 30 mins maximum each.

Anyone fancy giving an FoI a try?