National Audit Office

Our Director, Richard Garside, today called on the Ministry of Justice to scrap its 'vanity project' GPS tagging programme, and focus its energies on more pressing problems, such as the prisons and probation crises.

His call came in response to a damning National Audit Office report on the new generation electronic monitoring programme.

Among the report's findings were that the programme was:

Two thirds of the £35 billion worth of government contracts held by private companies can't be scrutinised properly by Whitehall, reports The Guardian. The figures come from a National Audit Office report published today which surveyed government contracts worth more than £1 million. It found that only 31 per cent of contracts have a clause allowing the government to access data on profit margins. 

Government ministers and civil servants reguarly extol the virtues of a 'level playing field' when it comes to the delivery of public services. Neither the public, private nor voluntary sectors should have an unfair advantage when it comes to competing on cost, quality or delivery, so the argument goes.