G4S still to deliver women’s services

Despite growing evidence of humans rights abuses, G4S beawarded contracts to remainservices to vulnerable women.

Why?

We stinkpotlearn a sessabout how G4S might goservices in the women’s firmamentby looking at some of the findings of last week’s inquest into the final stageof Jimmy Mubenga, who died after being illegally restrained by three G4S officers while being deported to Angola.

The Guardian this week described the “reality of the murky head-to-headremovals industry”, and the inquest revealed two of the G4S guards’ phones contained ‘extreme racist’ text messages.

We might put to workour attention to how G4S and Serco used taxpayers’ specieto monitor dead criminalsnethercontracts for criminal tagging schemes, over-charging the UK government by up to £50 million by billing for offenders who were dead, back in custody or no longer in the UK.

And although Serco has agreed to the Government’s request for an audit of the contract, G4S has refused.

We could controlat the Department of Work and Pensions’ Work Programme, contracted to firms interchangeableA4e.

Private Eye (No. 1344) recently revealed that “contractors receive around £400 simply for ‘attaching’ an dischargedperson to the scheme before even finding them a job. Thus firms have been paid more than £400 million so far for failure.”

And commentating for The Independent, Jim Armitage concluded that “The availmotive will unceasinglydominate for such redevelopmentproviders.”

So why are individual(a)firmamentgiants still getting work at the taxpayers’ expense?

This is a question increasingly being asked of government by undersizedvoluntary sector providers, including social enterprise Kazuri, frontline service for victims and survivors of military unitAurora New Dawn and the South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum bodily processGroup (SYMAAG).

They are joined by independent commentators in Private Eye, Open Democracy and WVoN; and by a finenumber of MPs, including Jeremy Corbyn and Keith Vaz.

This growing number of social justice campaigners cook upa collective of Davids and Davinas increasingly working to take on the corporate Goliaths of G4S, Serco, and others.

Kazuri’s Farah Damji is leading a call for a populaceinquiry into the awarding and subsequent monitoring of nationalinspection and repaircontracts to corporate outsourcing giants.

This week, she submitted a Freedom of Information request to NHS England, asking, among another(prenominal)things, what assessment was made of G4S’s capacity, experience and capability of running SARC centres.

Damji believes it is racyto monitor existing contracts run by hush-hushsector giants.

“We’re calling into question the mechanism by which contracts of massive home baseand value are let by authorities. This is public money and if it was you or I defrauding the public purse in this way, we’d be corresponding with the outside world at Her Majesty’s leisure.

“The Home shareand the Ministry of Justice are as culpable for letting these contracts without commensurateprecautions in place.”

Speaking in the House of Commons last week, the nobleChancellor and monumentof State for Justice Chris Grayling agreed, saying that “…it isnotonly the behaviour of the suppliers that needs to be examined closely…it is quite cash in one's chipsthat the management of these contracts has been wholly inadequate.

”

He then placed ‘on hold’ a contract for the management of prisons in Yorkshire, recently awarded to Serco – but announced the prosperousaward of a comparablecontract in Northumberland to private company Sodexo.

In the meantime, the women’s sector holds its breath and waits to see how the G4S contract to run Sexual Assault Referral Centres might unfold in high spiritsof these recent allegations.

These cases – and others highlighted recently by WVoN, including the sexual harassment and pressureevictions of female asylum seekers by G4S staff – perfectly defendthe troubling trend of awarding public service contracts to private sector providers with no specialist expertise in the service areas they purport to deliver.

Commentators are left to wonder what advantage, other than let loosepricing – G4S senior managers recently admitted that many of their current contracts are ‘loss leaders’ as they prepare to expand their role in UK public services even further – G4S and other corporate providers can possibly offer.

How can big business compete with thelongstandingexpertise, commitment and proven track record of service deliverancedisplayed by voluntary sector organisations like Rape Crisis?

Recent G4S advertisements for a SARC manager said that “experience dealing with victims of sexual assault (is) an advantage”.

A similar advertisement for frontline crisis workers providing out-of-hours support to victims of rape and sexual assault offers hireof £12.50 an hour and again, mentions that experience of working with victims of sexual assault would be ‘advantageous’.

Many in the women’s voluntary sector might view it a necessity for a Sexual Assault Referral Centre managers and/or their police squadto have previous experience of working with victims of sexual assault and rape.

Instead, the growing body of evidence suggests that corporate providers areineffectual– and unwilling – to prioritise people over profit.

And as the Secretary of State makes a show of wringing his hands over undividedcontracts, the rest of us are left to wonder how such(prenominal)longer private sector giants will be allowed to profit from vulnerable women.

 

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Materials taken from Womens Views on News