Finally, some resistance to disaster capitalism masters G4S

Via the Guardian:

The private security firm… G4S… should be the first name on a government blacklist of “high-risk” companies that have failed to deliver public services, a cross-party investigation into the… Olympic security shambles… has concluded.

The Commons home affairs committee says G4S should forgo its …£57m management fee for the contract that it still insists on claiming and has a “moral duty” to pay those people whom it trained but failed to use as venue security guards.

Keith Vaz, the committee chairman, said: “Far from being able to stage two games on two continents at the same time, as they recklessly boasted, G4S could not even stage one. The largest security company in the world, providing a contract to their biggest UK client, turned years of carefully laid preparations into an 11th-hour fiasco.”

He said the government should learn from the experience and establish a register of “high-risk” companies that had failed in the delivery of public services.

The MPs’ recommendation brought an immediate response from the Cabinet Office, which said that since June it had had a policy of taking the performance history of suppliers into account when contracts were being decided.

“While we will not publicly name the companies involved it will mean that suppliers with poor performance may find it more difficult to secure work with [the] government in future,” it said.

G4S has announced a …£50m loss on the Olympics contract, which saw nearly 5,000 troops drafted in just before the start of the Games when the company failed to provide enough security guards. Investment analysts have warned that the damage to G4S’s reputation is a “critical medium-term driver” of its fortunes, with rehabilitation likely to take some time.

The damning Commons inquiry says the company itself agreed that the blame for the debacle lay “firmly and solely” with G4S.

Text and images ©2024 Antony Loewenstein. All rights reserved.

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