Public services are overseen by government and they're paid for by taxes.
Traditionally they're run by civil servants but increasingly they're being tendered out
to private companies.
One of the biggest of those companies is Serco although there are loads of them including
G4S and Capita.
Now Serco is everywhere.
If there's a government department for it there's probably a Serco service for it.
Except Serco call them markets but let's try and give you a sense of the scale of this
thing.
Serco does everything from training helicopter pilots and national security personnel to
managing naval bases, transporting people and mmunitions to providing logistical support
to maintaining military aircraft.
They also manage the UK Atomic Weapons Establishment with Locheed Martin and Jacobs.
They maintain the Trident System and developing materials for it, they also run the anti-ballistic
missile warning system, nuclear waste management, nuclear safety program and they inspect nuclear
plants.
They're space and security specialists support Skynet 5, the UK military's secure satellite
communications network and they're involved at RAF Menwith Hill, the secretive signals
intelligence gathering centre that's thought to be involved in GCHQ's Tempora Dragnet project.
So it could be that they're helping the government collect data on you.
Outside of defence they manage prisons, they run electronic tagging systems, prisoner transportation,
they run immigration centres, community payback programs, Serco are involved in refuse and
recycling, street cleaning, vehicle maintenance.
They have occupational health services, out of hour health services, prison health services
and more.
They designed, built and maintain Boris bikes for Transport for London.
They have 70 leisure facilities, scientific research facilities, transport facilities,
welfare programs designed to get people back into work and they set Greenwich Mean Time,
and they're the largest air traffic controller.
And there's a hell of a lot more but lists get boring.
Now back in 2009, Serco CEO Chris Hyman told the Telegraph...
Now they still don't set policy but there might be other reasons to be concerned and
these are just some of the problems that have cropped up recently.
The government themselves have referred Serco to the serious fraud office alongside G4S
for overcharging on their electronic tagging contract and it's not a small amount.
They're accused of charging tens of millions of pounds too much.
It's alleged that 1 in 6 tags didn't even exist.
In Bradford they were running the state school system for ten years but the regional head
of the National Union of Teachers accused them of breaking contractual promises and
offering very poor value for money but they earnt a reported five million pounds in bonuses
at the end of the contract.
In Cornwall they run an out-of-hours doctors service which MPS said wasn't good enough
and didn't provide enough staff and failed to meet national quality requirements.
And the problems in Cornwall only came to light after whistleblowers revealed Serco
staffers were falsifying data to make it appear like they were performing better than they
were.
In response Serco went through the employees lockers to try and identify who leaked the
information.
That led the accusations that the company was bullying its staff but they still have
the contract.
Then there are the community health services in Suffolk which have been run by Serco since
October last year.
Already there are accusations that new staff are getting less pay, fewer days holiday,
and less sick pay, allegations that the care is getting worse and that staff are having
to work longer hours.
Serco says that all of their staff in Suffolk are on standard contracts but in 2011 their
CEO Chris Hyman reportedly earnt just under 2 million pounds and it doesn't end there
either.
In the prisons, in-mates are being found being forced to sleep in toilets during more than
one inspection and at the Thameside prison in Belmarsh the inspectors found that 60%
of prisoners were locked in cells for 24 hours a day.
Margaret Hodge, the MP that chairs the Public Accounts Committee told the Guardian that
the government is incapable of protecting taxpayers while it outsources.
She's also said that many of these public service companies are great at winning contracts
but not at delivering them.
Now Serco themselves say that they're improving services in Cornwall, and that they've implemented
new systems in the prison in Thameside.
The CEO also says that ..
Now if you thought Serco were just a British company, you're wrong.
They operate in North America, Australia, Asia Pacific, Europe and the Middle East.
They're truly a global operation and they operate in a dizzying amount of industries
and there specialty is soaking up public service contracts.
In the United States just as one example they have employees working at the NSA, along with
dozens of other defence departments.
Now many people haven't even heard of Serco but unlike most companies that isn't a problem
for them.
The CEO Chris Hyman once said this...
And maybe that's just the point.
If taxpayers knew exactly how much of their money they were paying for public services
actually went to private companies and private salaries then maybe they might be a bit more
concerned about who was running them.