The corporate outsourcing parasites that are already cashing in on Brexit

A bunch of parasitical outsourcing corporations are already becoming major beneficiaries of this Tory administered Brexit shambles because they are having their rip-off contracts extended because civil servants are too busy dealing with Brexit to conduct competitive tenders for the work, so they're just allowing the contracts to roll over indefinitely.

The National Audit Office have found that 54% of the government outsourcing contracts up for renewal in 2016-17 have been automatically extended rather than put out to tender.

The problem isn't just that civil servants are being diverted into sorting out the Tories' Brexit shambles, government departments had already had their staff cut to the bone by Tory austerity with a 26% decline in the number of civil servants since the global financial sector insolvency crisis of 2007-08. So now we have the scenario that already overstretched government departments are having their staff poached to deal with Brexit, meaning these departments don't have the slightest chance of ensuring that taxpayers get anything like value for money on the £billions in corporate outsourcing contracts they're lumbered with.

The National Audit Office also revealed that an astounding 31% of government spending now goes on procurement from external providers. This means that the government are now spending an astounding £242 billion on outsourced goods and services (which is more than double the cost of running the entire NHS), but now the Tory government are not bothering to even pretend to be getting value for taxpayers' money by conducting competitive tenders for this work. They're just letting companies keep their lucrative contracts no matter whether anyone else could do the work cheaper.

The beneficiaries of these contract extensions include Serco and G4S who robbed £180 million between them on outsourced electronic tagging contracts by fraudulently claiming to have tagged prisoners who were dead, still in prison, or entirely made up.

Another beneficiary will be Capita who has had its contract to run PIP disability assessments renewed for two years until 2019.

Tom Gash from the Institute of Government said that "it's a damning sign that the government is letting Brexit distract from the core job of ensuring taxpayers’ money is being well spent ... Extensions should be the exception not the rule, as they represent a missed opportunity for finding better ways of designing services, reducing costs and increasing competition". [source]

It was always beyond obvious that a Brexit administered by the hard-right fringe of the Tory party was going to end up handsomely benefiting their corporate mates at the expense of the taxpayer, but few could have imagined that parasitical outsourcing corporations would end up cashing in quite so quickly from the Tory Brexit chaos.

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