Private Contractors: Justice Services

3. What steps she is taking to ensure that private contractors delivering justice services are held to account.

We inherited a set of contracts from the previous Government, some of which are not performing as we would like, particularly in the areas of maintenance and electronic tagging. The Prisons Minister in the other place is gripping this situation and driving progress, with regular meetings to review performance.

In 2013, Serco was fined £68.5 million for overcharging the Government for electronic tagging, but it was still awarded the new £200 million contract in 2023. Given the Secretary of State’s comments in March that the performance of Serco was “not good enough”, can the Minister explain what a private company actually needs to do for the Government to see it as unfit to hold a contract such as this one?

While the performance of Serco has been unacceptable, as the hon. Gentleman says, we have made progress, and performance is improving. We have imposed fines for poor performance, and will not hesitate to employ further contractual remedies or other measures should they be required, but this is a contract that we inherited from the Conservative party, and we are doing our best to make it work.

I thank the Minister for that response, and this Government are doing their best to make things work, but Channel 4 has revealed that the contract with Serco was fundamentally failing. In the answer to my written question in June, Serco’s performance was still deemed to be unacceptable, so where are we with bringing Serco around to perform properly? If it does not do so, will the Government consider cancelling that contract and bringing those services back in-house?

All options are always under review, but as I have said, performance under that contract is improving. The Prisons Minister in the other place is gripping this issue, and we will get to where we need to get to.