Tagging firms in overcharging investigation

[Osem]

Justice Secretary Chris Grayling has asked the Serious Fraud Office to investigate G4S for overcharging for tagging of criminals.

MPs heard that the overcharging by G4S and rival Serco ran to tens of millions of pounds.

Mr Grayling said the firms charged the government for tagging people who were not actually being monitored.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23272708

If this turns out to be true I hope they are severely punished and banned from any further govt. contracts.

I also hope they're banned from Government contracts if found guilty. This is the same firm that almost ballsed up the Olympics had we not had the more professional and dependable Army on hand. Personally I would rather we didn't have these private firms handling Police work anyway.

[denphone]

Well that's what you get when you get private firms being given contracts to run things as quite simply every time they will put profits and their shareholders before anything else and anybody who thinks otherwise is obviously deluded.

[Derek]

G4S and Serco overcharging for shoddy work? In other news the Pope has announced he is catholic and scientists have discovered bears sometimes defecate in the woods.

Tip of the iceberg, the rate that private firms have rushed in to cherry pick parts of the criminal justice system is staggering and the work they do is haphazard at best.

[danielf]

Ah. Capitalism at its finest...

[Derek]

Of course if they followed the money I'm sure they wouldnt find any links between who awarded the contracts and who profits from them.

[Kabaal]

Haven't they been at this kinda nonsense since they were Group 4?

Originally Posted by Derek

Of course if they followed the money I'm sure they wouldnt find any links between who awarded the contracts and who profits from them.

Well Private Eye has been doing an excellent job of finding the links and joining up the dots over this issue..

[adzii_nufc]

Originally Posted by Damien

I also hope they're banned from Government contracts if found guilty. This is the same firm that almost ballsed up the Olympics had we not had the more professional and dependable Army on hand. Personally I would rather we didn't have these private firms handling Police work anyway.

Almost is going a bit easy on them. They left several stadiums unmanned till the last minute. This happened in most of the country, my dealings with G4s as a whole were terrible and I'm sure I've exposed some of less publicized cock up's they had at the games somewhere

[nomadking]

It looks like a problem with their procedures when there is a change of circumstances. Is it delays in passing the info that a tag has been removed to other departments. The Ministry of Justice aren't exactly hot on passing on info quickly.

[Derek]

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25001800

Security firm G4S to pay back £23.3m over inappropriate billing of UK government for electronic tagging of offenders

Just as well they've just won a juicy contract to supply security for next years Commonwealth games to pay for this.

Both companies have said that they have charged in line with their genuine interpretation of the contracts .

So are we expected to believe that billing for tagging dead people or people not even on a tagging order is a legitimate interpretation of the contracts

and how do you interpret a contract beyond it's designed purpose

---------- Post added at 11:52 ---------- Previous post was at 11:50 ----------

Originally Posted by nomadking

It looks like a problem with their procedures when there is a change of circumstances. Is it delays in passing the info that a tag has been removed to other departments. The Ministry of Justice aren't exactly hot on passing on info quickly.

What about the dead ones or those not even placed on a tagging order by the courts ,how can that be a procedural error ?

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by martyh

Both companies have said that they have charged in line with their genuine interpretation of the contracts .

So are we expected to believe that billing for tagging dead people or people not even on a tagging order is a legitimate interpretation of the contracts

and how do you interpret a contract beyond it's designed purpose

Depends on two things: How good the contractor's (in this case G4S) Lawyers are and how good the contractee's (in this case the home office) Lawyers are.

The problem (in my experience) is that the contracts used by the government in general favour the contractor and not the government. I'll be honest, I've never seen one but I've dealt with several government contracts (working in my local hospital) and in general it has seemed as though each contract defined our responsibilities to the contractor quite tightly (tightly to the point where it was almost impossible to deviate from the contract), while allowing the contractors to do pretty much what they want.

That was nearly 20 years ago now, but nothing I have seen since convinces me that anything has changed.

[Osem]

Originally Posted by Stuart

Depends on two things: How good the contractor's (in this case G4S) Lawyers are and how good the contractee's (in this case the home office) Lawyers are.

The problem (in my experience) is that the contracts used by the government in general favour the contractor and not the government. I'll be honest, I've never seen one but I've dealt with several government contracts (working in my local hospital) and in general it has seemed as though each contract defined our responsibilities to the contractor quite tightly (tightly to the point where it was almost impossible to deviate from the contract), while allowing the contractors to do pretty much what they want.

That was nearly 20 years ago now, but nothing I have seen since convinces me that anything has changed.

I think we know the answer to that...

[TheDaddy]

Funnily enough security company of the year sodexo was recently done for over charging on government contracts, they're all at it.