Ross Clark
which always goes for the lowest possible price. That is a lesson we all learn when buying the cheapest sausages or choosing the cheapest builder over one who comes with bags of recommendations.
It is a lesson too which you might think the Government would have learned from the Carillion fiasco, when the company was showered with contracts for which it had tendered at a price it turned out it couldn’t possibly deliver. The result is a horrible mess with construction projects and other work having to be picked up by other firms.
I am not saying that Gemalto wouldn’t do a good job at printing passports but the record of farming out contracts for public services to all and sundry is hardly exemplary.
We have had botched PFI deals with the taxpayer shelling out millions more for new buildings than had they been built with money borrowed by the Government. We have had the Government having to call in the Army when security firm G4S found itself unable to supply enough security staff for the Olympics.
On the railways we have had train operators taking the Government for a ride: winning franchises on the back of promises to pay hefty premiums to the Government – only to give
THE difference is that the trains they run here seem to be vastly more expensive than those they run on their home systems. British commuters, most of whom who have no choice thanks to the monopolistic franchise system, seem to be treated as sitting ducks who can help to subsidise services in the companies’ home countries.
It is a similar story with water and electricity services, privatised only to end up in the hands, in several cases, of foreign state-owned firms.
Sometimes it is right to put public services out to the lowest tender but it has become too much of a doctrine. If the public sector is doing a good job, or as in the case of De La Rue and passports, a private sector company has had a successful long-term relationship with the Government, why the obsession with trying to find someone to undercut them by a few pounds?
If we end up with redundancies on Tyneside as a result of the passport decision, taxpayers may end up shelling out more in benefits than they save on passport printing costs. This is a part of the country where people voted heavily for Brexit precisely because they feared losing their jobs to foreign workers and whose support the Government needs.
It is the second time in a week that those who voted Brexit have been left feeling cheated by the Government after fishing communities in Scotland learned that we will not, after all, be leaving the Common Fisheries Policy when we officially leave the EU next March. It is only thanks to those Scottish seats that Mrs May survived in Number 10.
Life is not going to get any easier for the Government over the next couple of years as the Remain lobby ramps up its campaign to overturn the referendum result. The Government could do itself a favour by ceasing to offend some of its natural supporters.
‘It is folly just to go for the lowest price’