£60m criminal tags scheme ‘a waste of cash’

A £60million scheme to develop stateof-the-art electronic tags for criminals has been condemned as a ‘catastrophic’ waste of taxpayers’ money.

A damning report found the Ministry of Justice pushed on with the programme despite it being ‘fundamentally flawed’.

Parliament’s spending watchdog said the project was ‘overly ambitious and poorly delivered’.

The tagging system is five years behind schedule and had failed to deliver any tangible benefits, said the Commons’ Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

In 2011, the MoJ announced it wanted to develop ‘bespoke’ ankle tags to monitor offenders 24/7 that combined radio frequency and GPS technology, like a car’s sat nav system. It was billed as the ‘most advanced tracking technology in the world’ and ministers said the tags would be rolled out in 2013.

But the tags were shelved because of mounting costs and technological problems that meant signals could be blocked by tall buildings or even trees.

Instead, ministers decided to buy technology already on the market. The PAC said at least £9million had been wasted so far, adding: ‘The programme has so far been a catastrophic waste of public money which has failed to deliver the intended benefits.’ The MoJ said: ‘We have been clear there were a number of challenges to our expansion of the ...programme.’