Jeremy Hunt hands G4S a £13,000,000 NHS Contract even though they made a balls of the Olympics.

[ttosca]

Tonight, I can reveal that G4S have been handed a £13,000,000 contract to handle NHS Patients' Transport in Great Yarmouth. The details of the deal have not been made public but an insider has contacted me directly to express their disquiet at the deal.

Many of you, of course, will know G4S as the company who made a shambles of Olympic Security. Their contract ran into the tens of millions but the were unable to fulfill it. It led to the drafting in of security personnel to help plug the gap. G4S had years to meet their Olympic requirements but they failed Britain. I can reveal, that as a reward for their massive cock-up during the Olympics, Jeremy Hunt has rewarded G4S with a £13,000,000 NHS contract. That's right, G4S made a balls of Olympic Security and so Jeremy Hunt thought it might be a good idea to hand them a 5 year contract to run patient services in the NHS in Great Yarmouth (here). Even when Tory Donor's firms fail, the Tories are still willing to place our patients' safety in their hands. This reveals the true motives behind Tory contract awards and their privatisation agenda. It is simply a method of rewarding their own.
Invesco are major shareholders within G4S (here). Sir Martyn Arbib has been an executive at Invesco since 1996 and a non-executive Director since 2008 (here). During this time, he has donated more that £410,000 to the Tory Party (here). Other major shareholders of G4S include Legal & General of which Lib Dem MP, Robert Smith, has "registrable shareholdings (here). Lord Taverne of the Liberal Democrats also has shareholdings in the G4S shareholder (Legal & General). So both government parties are linked to the Monster Corporation.

eoin-clarke.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/jeremy-hunt-hands-g4s-13000000-nhs.html

[Xenia]

I have been trying to find the G4 contract on line as I want to read its terms. We have never seen what it said in order to check if they really breached it. We have just read press reports. Has anyone made a Freedom of INformation Act request to read it?

As the better mumsnetter readers will know the award of publuic contacts is under EU public procurement laws. You cannot just say I love X company so they get the contract. As ever the press get most facts wrong of course. Always delve behind the press articles.

[SeveredEdMcDunnough]

G4S are utter, utter bastards. And beyond useless.

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

In the world of security, there are only one or two companies that can handle extremely large contracts. G4S is the market leader. If there is an issue, it is lack of competition in the security market, not who owns G4S per se.

[meditrina]

£13mil just in one town? I had not idea that so much was sent on transport.

OK, we've seen with the railways that tender assessment can go badly wrong. Virgin was very clear in communicating to the Government what appeared to be wrong, and their stance was vindicated.

What does is insider think was done wrongly? Have they made an initial complaint?

[VivaLeBeaver]

That does sound a lot of money for transport for a town the size of Great Yarmouth.

Saying that my healthy 36yo brother went for a hospital appt prior to having an abcess removed and on the appt letter it said if he needed transport to/from the hospital then to ring xxxxxx number and it would be arranged free of charge for him. Not suprising if some hospitals do that that the costs are so high.

My dad in a different town is sereverly disabled, can't drive, can't walk, has terminal cancer and his hospital won't help with transport to his hospital as he only lives 2 miles away. He can't take a taxi as dropping him off at the front door would be no good as he can't walk to the ward. He has to go once a week for his line to be flushed plus chemo appts on top - so someone has to take a day off work every week to take him.

[ttosca]

In the world of security, there are only one or two companies that can handle extremely large contracts. G4S is the market leader. If there is an issue, it is lack of competition in the security market, not who owns G4S per se.

That's idiotic reasoning. If there is a market malfunction, then you don't go ahead with using the market regardless just to carry on with your privitization agenda.

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

I don't think it's idiotic at all. If there is no other organisation big enough to handle the security for an Olympics or an NHS contract, the answer is not going to be to set up a brand new state-run outfit from scratch with all the costs and difficulties that entails. The answer is to select a smaller company in the same sector and encourage them to make the necessary extra investment on the strength of your future business.

[Xenia]

May be I should make the FOIA request for the G4 Olympics contract.

[meditrina]

I thought patient transport services had been privatised years ago, and I doubt very much that the SoS then (or now) would be involved in a tendering process which well within the responsibility of the PCT.

The PCT can only chose from those who tender. What does the insider say was wrongly conducted about the tendering process, have any other contracts been similarly affected, and has the insider raised (à la Branson) a complaint about an unfair tendering process?

[MrsCurly]

Xenia the G4S Olympic contract is deemed like so many of these contracts to be commercially sensitive. It is exempt from the FOIA. Even the MPs on the Public Account Committee haven;t seen it.

[DorisIsWaiting]

It's 13 mil for a 5 year contract. It does stink given the fiasco of the Olympics. BUT as with all the large companies bidding for these contracts I'm sure that there would be links to the top in all of them.

Sadly I can't see a way around that with out making the playing field fairer for any smaller companies who still bother to bid for the work.

[WidowWadman]

5 year term? Doesn't the EU procurement directive restrict contracts to 4 years?

[Xenia]

That's very interesting. Commercial sensitivity is usually only a few clauses in big contracts, not the whole thing.
www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/information-access-rights/foi/foi-s43-exemptions.pdf etc

In theory a lot of contracts are here on the newi-ish contracts finder site
www.contractsfinder.businesslink.gov.uk/?site=1000&lang=en

Let us see if I can find the Great Yarmouth one but it may not be up yet.

[Xenia]

I searched G4S (and by the way as I've not read the contract I am certainly not against G4S in any sense and as a free market libertarian I am hugely in favour of a small state and contracting out)...

£6k contract G4S
HCA Security Services Framework - Provision of 24 hour manned guarding at the Ex Catford Stadium and network
You can access the Catford framework agreemento on that site 188 pages of it and costings. Awarded 6.6.11. No guaranteed value I think. I am not wading through all that now though.
I am just using it as an example. Cameron brought this in - the new site with contracts oni t whether an FOIA request is made or not, all contracts over £10k in the pubilc sector and it's a very good move. It is our money being spent or the half of us who actualyl contribute at all to this country rather than all those net takers who pay no tax.

Going back to catford the costs spreadsheet shows
G4S Secure Solutions (UK) Limited Catford Greyhound Stadium N/A £149,715.07

That is the cost in year 1.

I had better return to earning a crust.

[edam]

Or the NHS could provide its own patient transport, which would probably be cheaper and more efficient. Especially if 'the market' is failing with only one or two suppliers able to bid.

[QueenofWhatever]

edam the NHS via the respective ambulance services have run patient transport services for years. They have almost universally made a complete dog's dinner of it. I've seen too many frail elderly people sitting huddled in chairs on oxygen waiting two, three hours to be collected and taken home. They often come in just for a ten minute hospital appointment.

I'm no fan of outsourcing but PTS is one many support. I just wish community transport services etc. were more geared up for bidding for these contracts as they often do a great job.

[edam]

queen - that's appalling but sadly given G4S's record I doubt very much whether things will be any better. Not only the vast screw-up over the Olympics, but their shocking record of mistreating and even killing vulnerable people. And getting away with it.

I can believe ambulance services were badly mismanaged, btw, having spent some time researching the kind of game-playing that executives indulged in in order to pretend they were meeting government targets for emergency response times. Given how extraordinarily outrageous their behaviour was when there was a target (fiddling the records by 'stopping the clock' artificially when they arrived at a block of flats instead of reaching the casualty, and other such charming measures) I hate to think how badly they neglected the areas where there were no such targets.