Senior executives from Britain’s four largest public services outsourcing firms, G4S, Atos, Serco and Capita, appeared before the people’s watchdog — Members of Parliament on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC). G4S and Serco remain under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office; they had charged taxpayers tens of millions of pounds and had billed the Ministry of Justice for applying electronic tags to ex-offenders who were no longer being tagged.
“Despite rather disorganised and timid questioning from MPs, the session did teach us a few things about privatisation in the UK,” writes Open Democracy.
- Everybody thinks transparency is a great idea; we still don’t have any
- Despite decades of public service delivery, none of the big outsourcers have adequate controls
- There is a fine (and blurred) line between poor judgement and dishonesty amongst the outsourcers
- Central government is not very good at procuringservices
- Central government is not very good at managingcontracts
“The session revealed a bleak picture of privatisation in Britain today,” it said. Read the full article here G4S & Serco fraud: Oops, we couldn’t tell the difference between right and wrong
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