Carillion and Public Sector Outsourcing
Debate between Tobias Ellwood and Jon Trickett(6 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jon Trickett
I am trying to make some progress. [Interruption.] Well, they will be glad that I am making progress, then.
In the Minister’s role at the Ministry of Justice, what did he do? He awarded a £25 million Government contract to G4S. But that company was under investigation for fraud against the taxpayer. He snuck out plans to privatise the collection of court fines, and he even proposed giving private companies the power to arrest our fellow citizens. His Department bailed out a private probation service with an additional £277 million over seven years, and he failed to deliver the promised £115 million that he said would be delivered by outsourcing two prisons.
We need to change direction. Let me briefly set out the case, because outsourcing of procurement has boomed under this Tory Government. It is now worth £242 billion. Nearly a third of public expenditure—of our taxes—is being put at risk by a Government who are blindly following a dogma.
To be clear, there never was a true market in outsourcing. It is an oligopoly. The course of action that the British Government set out on has led only to the creation of a handful of mega-corporations, almost too big to fail, and those corporations have penetrated nearly every aspect of the state, both central and local. This so-called market works well for a handful of companies making huge profits out of the taxpayer, but it is not working for anybody else.
We want the Government to see the facts as they are, not through the lens of a tired, stale, outdated, dogmatic view of the world. Jeremy Corbyn, our leader, commenting on the Carillion debacle—
Jon Trickett
Well, we still pay tribute to our leader, unlike some of the Government Members, who seem to be making up a point about it. Let us see how many of them—[Interruption.] My party leader said that we have now reached—