Jeremy Hunt has given an interview to House magazine this week which is well worth a read, not least because he deals rather graciously with the failure of his Liberal Democrat colleagues to support him when his back was against the wall over Murdoch. Even though Lib Dem ministers and MPs abstained on a vote calling for him to be referred to the independent adviser on ministers’ interests over his contact with News Corp during its takeover bid of BSkyB, the Culture Secretary says:
‘I never interpreted it as a personal thing. I think the Lib Dems wanted to make a political point that as a party that hadn’t been in power for many years, they had not got into the business of having to court media barons in the way that Labour and the Conservatives have and they wanted to find a way to make that point. That was really behind what they did.’
But it’s his words on G4S’ handling of the Olympic security that will make readers sit up. Asked whether the firm might be granted government contracts in the future, Hunt says:
‘I think G4S’ attitude to this problem will be very decisive in that. Because I think the fact that they admitted quickly as soon as their senior management knew there was a problem, they admitted the scale of it, the fact they they’ve co-operated with us since then is very important. But I don’t want to speculate about what will happen… I’m sure there will be lessons drawn about giving big contracts to big companies, but now is not the moment to do that… And actually we want to see the best of G4S, they are a British company, the biggest security company in the world and we want to see what they are capable of delivering.’
It’s strange that Hunt feels G4S was good at admitting the scale of the problem they were facing in a timely fashion. Theresa May admitted yesterday that the firm had mentioned it was struggling on 27 June, but did not tell the Home Office about the ‘absolute gap in numbers’ until 11 July. Neither of those dates are particularly far from the games, and there was a gap of 14 days between the meeting in which G4S management warned of a ‘temporary shortfall’, and their admission on 11 July that they could not meet their targets. That doesn’t seem all that quick, really.
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