Whitehall departments are on track to put public services online by 2005, the prime minister has said.

Challenged over the work of the Cabinet Office's e-envoy, Andrew Pinder, Tony Blair told the Commons liaison committee that his e-government commitment was "on time".

Edward Leigh had quizzed the PM over the government's e-delivery record amid claims that it was set to fail to hit a series of tough targets.

Leigh said that the e-envoy now employed 270 staff at a cost of £32 to 35 million a year.

"When we asked them what about the targets set - for example you said all government departments should be online by 2005 - the e-envoy was unable to tell us how successful he has been persuading government departments in trying to meet this targets," he told Blair.

Responding, the prime minister assured MPs that e-government was running to schedule and that the e-envoy represented value for money.

"[The e-envoy] gives regular reports to us and I can assure you that we are, in my view, on time to meet the government online proposals and its necessary," he said.

In "today's world a lot of people want to do business with government in a completely different way", Blair insisted.

And governments across the world had woken up to the potential of electronic government, said Blair.

"The reason for having a specific focus on electronic government, is this is a huge issue," he added.

"We are not the only government who have woken up to this and is doing it, I don't know of a modern government in the developed world that isn't focusing on it."