Spanner in works of search and rescue sell-off
You could not have made it up! It reads like an item in Private Eye. The Government, in the full spate of selling vast amounts of public silverware, which seems to include the kitchen sink, comes a cropper whilst trying to sell the search and rescue service. The military police are on the case.
It’s a £6bn pound “business”, and some of the biggest names in helicopters and the rest are in the bidding consortium. To some the idea of selling such a service that provides lifelines from John O’Groats to Lands End has appeared somewhat fanciful.
It’s tricky finding any detail to this scandal. But there’s enough stuff knocking round the official account to finger a “former civil servant” in the Ministry of Defence who, it is believed, passed sensitive information to the winning bidder. Yes it’s that juiciest of revolving doors that swing between Whitehall and some of the biggest arms dealers in the world. You meet them in Saudi, you meet them in Egypt, Nigeria, India and now it seems, John O’Groats.
Today’s news is going to throw a spanner beyond this selloff. Too much money can be made in these deals. Will we even ever know how many millions this foul-up has cost tax payers? Oh, and is anyone going to be detained at Her Maj’s pleasure? Answers on a virtual postcard please!
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There are 24 comments on this post
Talk about Antiques Roadshow.. no! lets not talk about Antiques roadshow .lets talk about selling everything off in the house to meet the bills , because some other ineffectual manager has made a cock up of the system and probably hidden mountains of money away prior to being token sacked.So many deliberate mistakes :doesn’t seem worth any salt.
Margaret there is a lot of truth in this.I wonder what Blair ,Brown and their cronies salted away in foreign bank accounts.How did an ex lawyer and his lawyer wife become multi millionaires???
Talk to me Adrian , Jon Won’t answer my tweet.Yesterday there ws a blog, I read it and thought about it during the day with the intention of commenting later in the day. When I decided to post a reply the blog was not there. Did you see it or is it a figment of my imagination ?
It’s more likely that the civil servant (let’s not argue whether competent or not (just worry about the person’s ethics) received an offer he/she couldn’t refuse from the bidder – i.e. a very well paid job with them & possibly a “golden handshake”. The mistake was made by his/her superiors who appear to have allowed this to happen (a) at all or (b) failed to spot that it was highly suspect. If they’d acted sensibly/responsibly/alertly, the problem should have been prevented. All they had to do was to forbid the person taking up the job with the bidder under civil service rules.
Margaret there was one that for some reason was removed
Hang on; a lot of our SAR helicopters have been private for years surely? The ones near me on South coast are. I’ve not seen anyone with a problem with that.
Mary i agree ,but it is a little bit of left wing bias.They need their fun,especially as the economy seems to be improving
This is a nice little left wing propoganda article.If the sale has been stopped because of insider dealing ,that is absolutely the correct action .Where it will be incorrect is if there is evidence of insider dealing and there is no prosecution.
The sell off (of the countries silver ware)is nowhere near being on a par with GB selling off our gold reserves.
This country is in hock to its eyeballs .The only way is to live within its means.That means cut backs and sell offs.
the comment”You could not have made it up! It reads like an item in Private Eye”
Adrian, as there is a 1200 character limit on this blog I think from now on you can omit the words ‘left wing conspiracy’ from your responses. We will take it as read that you think that everything Jon writes is a conspiracy aimed at bringing communism or worse to the country.
Gordon Brown sold all the gold reserves because he could. He did it and got away with it. This is exactly the same as the current sell-off. Assets are assets, regardless of whether they are public services (Thatcher’s Tory government did this particularly well) Loans and gold (under the last Labour Gvn.) or even contracts.
Again Adrian, we get back to the dispute that the legal system would disregard the attainment of stolen goods in court as a grounds for prosecution. Wouldn’t the people call the legal system into similar disrepute for its basis of validity? Surely the reform of a system that was implemented by numerous dictatorship-autocracies and kept in place by those very well connected mafia is one of the aims of wikileaks? The corpus juris and Napoleonic code are no ‘basis’ for ‘justice’
I’m sorry Saltaire,and tthurts my answer to you both which was on earlier appears to have been removed.
Saltaire,a sort of repeat of my yesterdays answer.Of late i have been rather complementary of Jons lack of bias towards the coalition.I was almost impressed last night when he had a go at the Leeds exec for closing toilets and swimming pools and made a fair suggestion that they be offered to private enterprise.He didn’t push quite enough but it wasn’t bad.
Tthurts i didn’t quite follow your legal argument and wasn’t sure whether it related to this blog or to hacking ,though both to me are crimes of theft and yes the party who uses the information is technically guilty of handling stolen goods,not that i expect the users to be charged
correction , it was Manchester
All this selling off seems a little partial. Haven’t noticed the selling off of any ministerial cars yet, or what about some of those grace and favour properties they enjoy living in?
Should raise a million or two, enough to save a few libraries.
As tot he helicopter story, I wonder how many others are getting back handers and consultancy fees to advise on how to make the most of NHS privatisation?
Jon,
Somebody should tell an ex public schoolboy Sid. If you can find one
Anyone would think the Al Yamamah/Mark Thatcher deal had never been heard of. Or the British Aerospace “slush fund.”
To paraphrase Gore Vidal, mainstream media in this country is rapidly making it the United Kingdom of Amnesia. But perhaps that’s the idea.
Now, what was it Eisenhower (of all people!) warned about the military/industrial complex? Then again, that was fifty years ago and way beyond the cultural memory of, say, the Sun and Daily Mail.
“Will we even ever know how many millions this foul-up has cost tax payers?”
maybe you will find the answer in Vanity Fair, Mr Snow.
There is little evidence that non-governmentally run rescue services are bad. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution does an amazing job without a penny of government money – pure charity (so more efficient probably). Enterprise might be something else. Shame the RNLI don’t want it really.
I think it’s the dirty slimy-ness of this insider knowledge (unfair advantage to one bidder against the others) that is causing the storm. Similar charges have been privately made where I work (RAF Spadeadam) where a certain upstanding RAF officer allegedly gave information to the now incumbent contract managing company. It isn’t just the tax payers getting ripped off, it’s other companies, the customer and the poor staff which the cheating company takes over (of which I’m one). If they have no ethics, these cheats aren’t going to treat anyone well are they?!
Kes to the contrary.Any organisation not having the hand og government or public body on it tends to work better.
I don’t understand how a search & rescue service can be run as a private enterprise. Someone has to pay – are they going to charge unfortunate walkers who fall down mountains for the cost of a rescue (plus profit margin presumably)? I dread to think what the cost of running a helicopter, pilot and paramedic would be for an afternoon. I shall have to avoid mountains! Or do they sell the service to the NHS? That captive audience with all those lovely public funds waiting to be syphoned off into private bonuses. Private companies who have a monopoly selling into public bodies often dont work better than when the function was performed by the public body. Once they are tied to a contract its often a worse service for higher cost.
There is something very fishy about the civil servant being allowed to join a consortium like this, so soon after he/she was involved in the work. There used to be rules against this sort of thing. So it’s not just the individual, but their seniors who would have had to approve his appointment who should be dealt with.
It isn’t just civil servants in my opinion. A well planned retirement date to coincide with a certain contract bid on a MOD base… God alive, it happens all the time. Half or all middle to top management of these defense companies are ex-MOD. Not saying they ALL slime information to would-be contract bid winners in the hope of getting a job with them, just saying it isn’t just civil servants in that tempting position.
Just so any would be insider-trading-of-knowledge slime who might be reading this know, it doesn’t always work. You prove to be too untrustworthy, ha ha.
Having worked within government operations where very large outsourcing contracts were being let, I can confirm that the ‘positioning’ by many civil servants involved is endemic, particularly the more senior ones, closest to the bidders. It was clear that often their real aim is to secure beneficial personal reward from the contractors rather than the best deal for the organisation.
Clearly, the current rules on post-CS employment are not working to deter such inducements (because those who approve them are also at it ?).
It should be a requirement of any official in any way involved in the tender process to have signed an individual binding agreement not to accept any form of employment or reward from any bidder from the date of signing and for at least 10 years after the contract is let, under penalty of loss of all pension rights etc.
Providing the civil servant signs that agreement willingly, it should be enforceable in law and may put an end to this disreputable practice – few bidders would be prepared to cover the lifetime pension values of such senior state employees and very few senior civil servants would put that generous pension at risk. Game over.
Off topic but kinda related
Jon, is it possible to find out how much of the public purse is spent on chauffeur driven cars for MPs, judges, civil servants, local mayors etc etc.
It must run into millions, money that I for one would prefer to be spent on services like libraries, Sure Start and paying nurses a bit more.