Competitive advantage

Scambusters is the name of a government initiative to prevent householders falling victim to rogue traders who use high-pressure sales techniques to flog lousy and vastly overpriced goods and services. It would be more convincing if the government did not so frequently allow itself to be ripped off.

At his appearance before the home affairs select committee this week, G4S chief executive Nick Buckles had the air of a cowboy plumber standing amid a bathroom full of leaking pipes, and demanding, in spite of the havoc he has caused, that his bill be paid in full. To astonished MPs he agreed that the reputation of his company was in ‘tatters’, and doubted whether it could provide even its lowered target of 7,000 security guards for the opening day of the Olympics. He went on to say that G4S would be charging the government its full £57 million management fee (which forms part of an overall contract of £284 million).

We know from PFI scandals what to expect next. Ministers will huff and puff about not paying but in the end will meekly hand over the money, having discovered that they have managed to sign a contract heavily weighted in favour of their contractor.

For some on the left, the G4S fiasco confirms the theory that capitalism promotes greed and incompetence, and that only the public sector can be trusted to run public services. But if the public sector were handling Olympic security, it is not difficult to imagine a crisis just as severe. G4S has failed miserably, but no more so than the UK Border Agency, which failed to provide sufficient staff to manage queues at Heathrow. Moreover, if G4S guards were in the public sector, their unions would, like those of bus and tube drivers, be demanding huge extra payments under threat of an all-out strike.