External Private Contractors: Government Use and Employment

Navendu Mishra Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Paula Barker)—my former employer, no less—for securing the debate. I draw Members’ attention to my membership of trade unions and donations from Unite, as set out in my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I also thank the PCS union, which represents more than 8,000 workers employed by private companies on Government contracts, for its ongoing work in this area, particularly its campaign to bring outsourced jobs back in-house, and for continuing to apply pressure on contractors and the Government to pay a real living wage—the one calculated by the Living Wage Foundation, not the one appropriated in a public relations stunt by former Chancellor George Osborne—while continuing to fight for workers to have access to the terms and conditions afforded to their civil service counterparts.

Last year I was proud to join more than 200 PCS members in my constituency of Stockport when they took industrial action over workloads, staffing levels and the oppressive working conditions that they were forced to endure while working on universal credit reforms. The level of outsourcing, cost to the taxpayer and general wastage of hiring private contractors in my region of Greater Manchester alone is truly eye-watering. It is a legacy that we have been forced to endure since the Thatcher era, and it has been a 30-year-long failed experiment.

Almost three years on from the collapse of Carillion, described at the time as the largest ever trading liquidation in the UK, lessons have failed to be learned and it is slowly coming to light just how entrenched outsourcing has become in this country. In my region alone, the Manchester Evening News was able to unearth Carillion’s involvement in 10 major public and private sector projects, including Network Rail electrification, the M6 smart motorway work, High Speed 2, Airport City and Owens Park. It was also heavily linked to Greater Manchester schools, roads and basic services, through contracts with Manchester, Tameside, Rochdale and my own local authority, Stockport Council. In my borough, a Carillion offshoot was contracted to handle estates, assets and facilities management at various sites.

That is all part of a staggering 10-year £100 million deal that was signed in 2014 to handle key development services. Private contracting permeates every single stratum of our society, from Stockport Town Hall to Greater Manchester police. With local authorities already strapped for cash by central Government, how can it be right that they sign off multimillion-pound contracts with companies that often have little to no track record of delivery, as we have seen most recently in the Government’s decision to outsource covid test and tracing to Serco? Months later, we still do not have a functioning system like those of our European partners.

What is worse is that, despite paying such exorbitant fees to private contractors, nothing is put in place to ensure that workers are treated with dignity. For example, earlier this year the PCS union led a month-long walkout in response to Interserve’s treatment of its staff, who were maintaining the then Foreign and Commonwealth Office premises. The move was the longest period of strike action in the history of the Foreign Office—all because Interserve was not prepared to recognise trade unionised workers and was continuing to drive down its staff through measures such as reducing working hours.

It is not much to ask in return for multimillion-pound, multi-year contracts that these organisations recognise trade unions. As we have seen time and again, these companies will never prioritise workers’ wellbeing over private profit. It is time to end that practice once and for all, bring these contracts back in-house and finally deliver the services that we so desperately need, efficiently and in a fiscally responsible way, if we are to kickstart our economy again and recover from this crippling pandemic.