Serco awarded commercial management contract

Despite PCS objections since the start of the process last summer, Serco have been awarded the contract to provide the commercial management of DBS. Despite several delays in the tender process, it appears that the contract has been finally signed in haste after PCS discovered that Serco were recruiting via their own website for an Interim Service Delivery Manager for this contract before the contract was even signed.

PCS believes the tender process has been flawed from the start and whilst the minister may now have signed on the dotted line, there are still questions to be answered –

• Why award a contract to the value of £36M to undertake work that senior civil servants are competent to undertake?
• Why has this contract now been signed when it allows Serco to now dictate MoD business output while the associated business risk remains with MoD?
• Why are a commercial management team being allowed to manage public funds when they are not accountable to the public purse, only to the contract they have been awarded?
• Why has TUPE been written out for those senior managers posts that clearly continue under the commercial management such as the Chief Executives?
• We believe the contract breaches fair commercial contract practices as it enables Serco to outsource transactional work to themselves (as this is not precluded from the contract). Why was this not prevented from happening?
• Why when the DBS under Transformation detailed that it could produce PR12 savings that brought the organisation under control targets is a commercial management needed (DBS was going to achieve the departments savings wedge allocated to it)?
• Does the Transformation reductions sit within the £71M contract savings or is it in addition to the contract savings?
• Is the decision to bring in commercial management on a dubious contract in our opinion, confirmation that our members working in DBS are being impacted by a political decision based on the public sector should be moved into the private sector whatever the cost or impact?
• Though PCS have asked for a meeting with the Minister prior to any decision being made on the DBS commercial contract to put forward our concerns, no meeting was forthcoming. Why would the department not want to have a sensible and grown up conversation with its members of staff representatives when we and our members have valid concerns?

General secretary Mark Serwotka said: "It's outrageous that the first we knew that this contract had been awarded was when the company advertised to fill a post. This appears to confirm that this was a politically driven decision that does not take into account what is best for the department."