What a Lovely Surprise!

This from BBC website on Thursday:-

G4S selected to run Wellingborough 'mega prison'

Private firm G4S has been selected as the preferred bidder to run a new "mega prison", the BBC understands. It is believed the contract to operate the jail in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, will be for 10 years at a cost of more than £300m.

The company has been told it has been chosen, but the contract has not been ratified and could be challenged. An official announcement on the prison, which will hold 1,600 male inmates, is expected over the next few weeks. A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: "The operator competition has not yet concluded. We will set out confirmed details in due course."

The decision comes as a surprise after G4S was stripped of its contract to run Birmingham Prison following a damning inspection report which said it was in a "state of crisis". The company also gave up running Medway secure training centre in Kent and Brook House immigration removal centre near Gatwick Airport after undercover filming by the BBC's Panorama programme showed inmates and detainees allegedly being mistreated.

However, G4S has been praised for its running of four prisons in England and Wales - Altcourse, Oakwood, Parc and Rye Hill. It is thought three other companies - Sodexo, Serco and MTC Novo - bid to run Wellingborough, which is costing £253m to build and is expected to open next year. A source with knowledge of the process said the G4S bid was not the "cheapest" but was regarded as of "higher quality" than the others.

Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said: "It is disappointing that public money is being squandered on expanding the prison estate; extremely disappointing that public money is being poured into the coffers of G4S. At a time when we need to invest in jobs and the nation's health, it is shameful to waste money on the profiteers of punishment."

Shadow justice secretary David Lammy said: "When G4S ran HMP Birmingham there had to be an emergency takeover by the government after reports of drug dealing, violence, squalid conditions and poor leadership. It highlighted many of the problems with privatisation in the justice system. Serious questions must now be asked about why the government plans to hand the company control of the new prison in Wellingborough."

Wellingborough MP Peter Bone said: "My concern would be to make sure that whoever runs it, runs it properly."

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This from BBC website on Friday:-

G4S fined £44m by Serious Fraud Office over electronic tagging

Security firm G4S has been fined £44m by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) as part of an agreement that will see it avoid prosecution for overcharging the Ministry of Justice for the electronic tagging of offenders, some of whom had died. The SFO said G4S had accepted responsibility for three counts of fraud that were carried out in an effort to “dishonestly mislead” the government, in order to boost its profits.

Former justice minister Chris Grayling asked the SFO to investigate G4S and rival Serco in 2013, after a departmental review found they had overcharged for tracking the movements of people who had moved abroad, returned to prison, or died. G4S agreed to compensate the Ministry of Justice in 2014, reaching a settlement worth £121m. But it remained under investigation by the SFO until Friday, when it announced a deferred prosecution agreement, pending approval by a judge at a hearing scheduled for next Friday.

Under the terms of the agreement, G4S will pay a £38.5m penalty and £5.9m to cover the SFO’s costs. The company was given a 40% discount on its fine after co-operating with the SFO. It has also agreed to enforce new controls, including a programme of “corporate renewal” to prevent a repeat of the scandal, which took place within its G4S Care & Justice division.

“G4S Care & Justice repeatedly lied to the Ministry of Justice, profiting to the tune of millions of pounds and failing to provide the openness, transparency, and overall good corporate citizenship that UK taxpayers expect and deserve from companies entering into government contracts,” SFO director Lisa Osofsky said. “The terms of this deferred prosecution agreement will provide substantial oversight and assurance regarding G4S Care & Justice’s commitment to responsible corporate behaviour.”

G4S chief executive Ashley Almanza said: 

“The behaviour which resulted in the offences committed in 2011 and 2012 is completely counter to the group’s values and standards and is not tolerated within G4S. We have apologised to the UK government and implemented significant changes to people, policies, practices and controls, designed to ensure that our culture is underpinned by high ethical standards and that our business is always conducted in a manner which is consistent with our values. We have made significant progress in embedding these standards throughout the group and we are pleased that this has been acknowledged by the SFO and the UK government.”

The £44.4m in fines and costs takes the total paid out by outsourcing firms involved in the prisoner tagging scandal to more than £250m. Serco reached its own £22.9m agreement with the SFO last year, six years after repaying £68m to the Ministry of Justice. The SFO said its agreement with G4S was made possible by factors including the company’s disclosure of evidence and its “overall – albeit delayed – substantial cooperation” with the investigation.

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In other dodgy-dealing - some would say corruption - news by HM Government, this from the Guardian:-  

Firm with links to Gove and Cummings given Covid-19 contract without open tender

The Cabinet Office has awarded an £840,000 contract to research public opinion about government policies to a company owned by two long-term associates of Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings, without putting the work out for tender.

Public First, a small policy and research company in London, is run by James Frayne, whose work alongside Cummings – the prime minister’s senior adviser – dates back to a Eurosceptic campaign 20 years ago, and Rachel Wolf, a former adviser to Gove who co-wrote the Conservative party’s 2019 election manifesto.

The government justified the absence of a competitive tendering process, which would have enabled other companies to bid, under emergency regulations that allow services to be urgently commissioned in response to the Covid-19 crisis. However, the Cabinet Office’s public record states that portions of the work, which involved focus group research, related to Brexit rather than Covid-19, a joint investigation by the Guardian and openDemocracy has established.

A Cabinet Office spokesman said this was because of bookkeeping methods, and insisted that, contrary to government records, all the focus group research done by Public First was related to the pandemic. The Cabinet Office, where Gove is the minister responsible, initially commissioned Public First to carry out focus groups from 3 March, although no contract was put in place until 5 June.

Government work is legally required to be put out for competitive tender to ensure the best qualified company is appointed, unless there are exceptional circumstances, such as an unforeseen emergency. When a contract was finally produced on 5 June, it was made retrospective to cover the work done since 3 March. The Cabinet Office paid Public First £253,000 for the two projects listed as being Brexit-related and two more pieces of work done before the contract was put in place.

Public First was required to conduct focus groups “covering the general public and key sub-groups”, according to a Cabinet Office letter. The firm was required to provide the government with “topline reporting” of their findings on the same day, with fuller findings reported the following day. The deal also included “on-site resource to support No 10 communications” in the form of a Public First partner, Gabriel Milland, being seconded to Downing Street until 26 June. Milland was the head of communications at the Department for Education when Gove was the minister and Cummings was his political adviser.

The Cabinet Office said in the letter that it had commissioned the work from Public First for a total of £840,000 without any tender “due to unforeseeable consequences of the current Covid-19 pandemic”. According to further details published by the government under its transparency requirements, Public First was paid £58,000 on 18 March for its first focus group work, classed by the Cabinet Office as being for “Gov Comms EU Exit Prog”, then a further £75,000 on 20 March for work classed as “Insight and Evaluation”.

On 2 April, 10 days into lockdown and with increasing numbers of people dying from Covid-19, the Cabinet Office paid Public First £42,000 for work listed again as “EU Exit Comms”. The first payment for work listed as being coronavirus-related was on 27 May: £78,187.07. A total of £253,187.07 was paid to Public First before the contract was entered into on 5 June.