My Lords, the story of the Government’s policy on electronic tagging over the past seven years has been one of a prolonged disaster.
Of course, the Minister is not to blame for that. She has tried to be helpful, although today’s letter—referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas—warning recipients not to quote the contents of a document she sent us labelled “Embargoed” was, to put it mildly, unfortunate. I remain grateful for her attempt to be helpful, even if the Ministry of Justice appears to be vying with the Home Office in the competition to be seen as the most incompetent government department.
It is seven years since this policy began its gestation and 16 months since the announcement that the oligopolist G4S—an organisation presumed by the Government to be able to conduct all kinds of services across the system of government in this country—had been awarded a £25 million contract, notwithstanding the fact that it was then under investigation for fraud and that a National Audit Office report criticising the prolonged delay in implementing a policy of satellite tracking for offenders was soon to be published. A ban on G4S was imposed in 2013 after allegations of overcharging on contracts for the electrical monitoring of offenders, although the ban was lifted in 2014 on the basis that G4S had paid £109 million and Serco, another familiar scion of private enterprise, paid £70 million.
Labour’s shadow Lord Chancellor, Richard Burgon, has referred to G4S as having billed the Government,
“for tagging thousands of ‘phantom offenders’ – including those who were dead or in jail”,
and to,
“serious delays in informing the authorities that over 100 prisoners had been fitted with faulty electronic tags”.
In addition, Capita and two smaller firms became involved, although one withdrew after six months and another after 16 months, following incremental delays in the programme. Can the Minister explain how these failures in contracting occurred, and what steps have been taken to improve the department’s commissioning practice?
G4S purports to be able to provide public services across a broad range, including health, prisons and probation, but in January the Public Accounts Committee published a damning report, pointing out that a scheme due to be completed in 2013 was running five years late at a cost of £60 million to the taxpayer, with an additional irrecoverable loss of £9 million. What is more, the new tags are apparently expected to be available early next year. Can the Minister update us on progress, including both the starting and the completion dates for this project?
In its damning report in January 2018, the Public Accounts Committee described the programme as having been “fundamentally flawed”, and,
“so far … a catastrophic waste of public money which has failed to deliver the intended benefits”,
adding that the MoJ had
“wasted a huge amount of time and … money to end up with … the same types of tags and supplier it had when the programme started”.
Significantly, the committee’s critique declares that the Ministry of Justice
“lacked the capacity and capability to manage the difficulties and delays that it created”.
This appears to be confirmed by the fact that it is seven months since the report of the Secondary Legislation
Scrutiny Committee asked why the draft order had been laid while piloting of the scheme was in progress—the very issue raised in the noble Lord’s Motion.
Just how long is that process of piloting going to take? Who will evaluate the response? What role will Members of both Houses have in considering the response and triggering the implementation of the order? And what plans are there to review the performance of the contractors? Who will conduct such reviews, and what provision will be made to terminate contracts in the event of failure on the part of the contractors, or if it transpires that in any event, little or no improvement in reoffending by those fitted with tags has resulted?