On Tuesday 24th July, the UK Committee of Public Accounts produced a report underlining the controversy surrounding contracting out to the private sector. The report criticises the emergence of a small group of large companies who are expert at winning contracts but lack the expertise to deliver value for the sector in which they are bidding. The report recommends the Cabinet Office take a more active approach to examining the market to better understand the intentions and motivations of bidding companies.

Further concerns addressed in the report are the ambiguity of responsibility between Government and Private sector as well as the impact of poor contracting to the end user. The report summary touches upon this issue:

“Government contracts involve vast sums of public money and have significant impacts on the lives of citizens. The Government cannot divest itself of responsibility when it contracts out the delivery of public services. Many of the companies that we have looked at rely on the public purse for a significant proportion of their revenue. Those companies need to be accountable to Parliament and taxpayers once they decide to take public money.”

You can read the full report, including the recommendations from the committee here