Politics

Failed government outsourcing projects 'cost millions and undermine trust'


Failed outsourcing projects have cost the taxpayers millions of pounds and undermined public trust, a damning report has claimed.

The study by the Institute for Government found that consecutive governments have repeatedly overstated how much money is saved by privatising the running of public services.

Outsourcing is when a public body pays an outside company to provide a public service – it can as simple as cleaning an office or as complicated as running a prison.

The report highlights a series of high-profile contract failures – including security at the Olympics, welfare assessments, offender tagging and probation.

It says that the failed contracts “wasted millions of pounds, delivered poor services and undermined public trust”.

It calls on ministers to make the outsourcing of contracts more accountable to the public and improve civil servants commercial skills to help them deal with outside companies.

Earlier this year, the Tories announced they were renationalising the management of probation services in England and Wales after the failure of chaotic outsourcing that put public safety at risk.

John McDonnell said the report exposed the sham of outsourcing – but it had questions for Labour

The report claims that the outsourcing of probation “failed on every measure, harming ex-offenders trying to rebuild their lives”.

But the Institute claims that outsourcing waste collection, cleaning, catering and maintenance services has “delivered significant savings and benefits to citizens”.

Labour’s John McDonnell said it was “staggering to look back at the last 40 years of this failed experiment and see so little strong evidence that it works”.

He added:“The ‘string of high-profile failures’ discussed in this report are not just one-offs – they reflect a broken model for delivering public services, which prioritises profit over people.

Labour will end this racket and make sure our public services are run in the interests of the many, not to enrich a privileged few.”

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But the authors warn that Labour’s policy of bringing public services back into government hands by default would be a mistake.

Tom Sasse, Institute for Government senior researcher, said: “A lot of confusion continues to crowd the debate over outsourcing.

“Labour’s policy of bringing services back into government hands by default risks throwing away the benefits of outsourcing.

“But at the same time, the government must address the causes of repeated outsourcing failures.”





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