Outsourcing lessons not learned despite disgust over Carillion
WE’RE taught by history teachers that the best way to make sense of the present is to look at the past.
So let me reunite you with the fury you felt, three years ago this week, when government outsource firm Carillion went bust owing £7billion, destroying 3,000 direct jobs and costing taxpayers £150million, due to what MPs called a “chronic lack of accountability and professionalism”.
You were furious to discover its bosses paid out millions in dividends as the firm was going under and its pension deficit was soaring to £587million.
You no doubt fired off expletives when you read that Carillion’s chairman Philip Green (no relation but same animal) was such a part of the Tory chumocracy that David Cameron made him adviser on “corporate responsibility” and gave him a CBE for “services to business”. And despite three profit warnings in the six months before it collapsed, the Tories awarded them contracts worth £2billion.
And you won’t be surprised to hear that, so far, none of the disgraced firm’s bosses have been held accountable. Or that, this week, with 72 hours to go before a three-year legal deadline expired, ministers finally decided to take action against eight former Carillion directors which could see them face a boardroom ban. Don’t hold your breath though. They’ll be OK. They usually are.
Take Chartwells, which this week
was exposed for handing out pathetically inadequate free school meal parcels, effectively stealing food out of the mouths of the country’s poorest kids, while ripping off the taxpayer.
Its parent company, Compass, had previously admitted supplying meals with horse meat to schools in Northern Ireland and a subsidiary firm serving food in Canadian prisons laced with listeria.
But onwards it prospered, racking up revenues last year of £20billion.
Until last month, Chartwells’ chairman was Paul Walsh, a Tory donor who signed a letter praising George Osborne’s austerity policies before the 2015 General Election. Unsurprisingly, the Government has given his firm £350million worth of catering contracts since, making it the UK’s biggest school meal provider.
Labour MP Catherine McKinnell asked Boris Johnson this week if he felt shame at a young footballer schooling him on childhood hunger. Of course he didn’t. Like a serial granny-mugger he only regrets getting caught. The welfare of the victims is irrelevant.
When Tories voted against handing out free meals in the summer, one of them denounced it as “nationalising children”. They prefer to see parents given stingy handouts of half-cut vegetables and frozen bread, rather than cash, because they instinctively see the poor as feckless wasters.
And they assume they’ll get away with it because they believe those at the bottom have no voice. Thank God for Marcus Rashford.
The core Tory philosophy is that all private firms are wealth-creating dynamos while all publicsector bodies are wealthsucking parasites. And the more those firms are in bed with you the better. Look at the scandalous awarding of PPE contracts.
It’s why three years after Carillion crashed we’re still seeing disgusting evidence that outsourcing firms handed lucrative contracts in the most vital of areas don’t give a toss about the health of our people, only their profit sheets. And this government may condemn them when they are publicly exposed as shysters, but in its heart, it 100% agrees with them.
There endeth the history lesson.
These firms don’t give a toss about health, just their profit