MoJ pulls the wool over its own eyes in G4S and Serco contracts
No matter which stage of the outsourcing process you look at, the same qualities are on show: incompetence, lack of interest, and failure of accountability.
The Ministry of Justice's inability to properly scrutinise its contracts and operations with private firms like Serco, G4S and Capita is well documented. The former two overcharged the department for years on electronic tagging contracts before Chris Grayling had to call in the Serious Fraud Office, for instance. But it has now emerged that the department doesn't even bother keeping track of the companies' activities in the tendering process.
A set of parliamentary questions from shadow justice minister Andy Slaughter to ministers at the department asked how often Serco, G4S and Capita had tendered for contracts since May 2010. The answer, from part-time prisons minister Andrew Selous, was the standard MoJ cut-and-paste refusal:
"To find out on how many occasions G4S and Serco have tendered for contracts let by the Department in each year since May 2010, would entail indentifying [sic] and then contacting all individuals responsible for the management of contracts. The individuals would then need to search electronic and manual records since May 2010 to determine whether G4S and Serco tendered for their areas contracts. This would incur disproportionate costs as it would exceed the costs threshold."
It's not just the MoJ. There was a similar answer from Tory Philip Dunne at the Ministry of Defence when asked about the three firms.
"The number of occasions that Capita Group plc, Serco and G4S have tendered for contracts let by the Ministry of Defence in each year since May 2010 is not held centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost."
The MoD is arguably even worse than the MoJ when it comes to managing private contracts, but no government department does well. Between them, Serco, G4S and Capita have created moral, financial and operational disasters in immigration removal centres, hospitals, local education authorities, deportation and prisons, to name just a few.
But still they are offered government contracts. What these parliamentary answers show is just how uninterested government departments are in taking a more critical view of these projects.
They do not bother collecting information on how often these firms tender for contracts or what on, and then they later wonder why they are so hopelessly outclassed when they go into negotiation. This is basic information which shows what kind of contracts the firms are interested in and how interested they are. It's small wonder the taxpayer is so often the loser in the financial agreement which follows. It's equivalent to a high street brand not bothering to do any market research.
As the public accounts committee found, civil servants do not have "the commercial expertise to compete with their counterparts in the private sector".
Once the contracts start they fail to oversee them properly, with government officials seeing the process as "mechanical and unimportant". When things go wrong, as in G4S' catastrophic mismanagement of the Olympic contract, or the abusive conduct of the electronic tagging contract, everything carries on as usual. There are harsh words in public, but behind the scenes things remain largely unchanged.
Taking a proper, circumspect view of these contracts would demonstrate a commitment to public service and taxpayer money. It would start at collecting basic information at the tendering level. The fact that does not happen speaks volumes.
