Labour threatens to ban Serco over blunders
Labour has threatened to ban Serco from any new Government contracts after its blunders led to criminals going untagged for months.
Lord Timpson, the prisons minister, said the global contracting giant could be blocked from future public contracts if there was 'another episode of similar poor performance'.
It follows an undercover investigation by Channel 4 Dispatches, which found that criminals including a murderer had gone untagged for months under the £51 million-a-year contract Serco had with the Ministry of Justice (MoJ).
An undercover reporter hired to fit and monitor electronic ankle tags on newly released prisoners was repeatedly sent to the wrong addresses for criminals including a murderer and paedophile.
The reporter also discovered that a murderer had gone without a tag for at least two months after claiming that his legs were too swollen for an ankle monitor.
Another criminal was accused of taking off her tag to go on holiday and boasting about it to almost 200,000 TikTok followers. Another was overheard claiming that he had ripped his tag off and could do what he wanted.
'Serco could be excluded from bidding'
At present, a total of 20,000 people are tagged, and the technology – which allows a freed offender to be tracked via GPS – is central to the Government's plans to expand the use of community punishments as an alternative to jail.
The plans could see the number of people tagged more than double as thousands more prisoners are released early from jail. Up to 40,000 criminals convicted of lower-level crimes could also be spared prison in favour of community orders.
In a letter to the Commons justice committee, Lord Timpson said new legislation – which came into force in February – would enable ministers to bar companies from being awarded contracts or securing procurements for up to five years.
It also enabled public authorities to exclude contractors from bidding for contracts if they were judged to be unreliable in delivering work or where public confidence could be undermined by the 'honesty, integrity and probity' of suppliers.
Lord Timpson said: 'In the event of another episode of similar poor performance [as defined in the Act] by Serco after the Act came into force, or a new occurrence of poor performance by Serco after the Act came into force, then Serco could be excluded from bidding or being awarded a future public contract through either the debarment or exclusion regimes.'
In a statement to Channel 4, Antony King, the managing director of Citizen Services at Serco, said: 'We are proud of the challenging work our people do, working with multiple partners across the criminal justice system in delivering an essential and critical public safety service, often with complex and ever-increasing requirements.
'Our performance continues to improve, which the MoJ recognise, and we continue to monitor record numbers of people in the community supporting our colleagues in probation and the Home Office.'
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