Recommendation 15

Following Carillion’s collapse in January 2018, the Ministry established Gov Facility Services Limited (GFSL), a not-for-profit government company, to assume responsibility for its work.29 The Ministry told us that its contract with Carillion was “a mess” and badly managed.30 It explained that it had known that its contract with Carillion was going “badly wrong” and it had looked at whether it could exit. It explained that it had been locked into 24 C&AG’s report, para 2, 2.2–2.3 25 Q 63 26 Committee of Public Accounts, Transforming Rehabilitation: A progress review, Ninety-Fourth Report of Session 2017–19, HC 1747, 3 May 2019 27 Qq 53, 63, 65 28 Qq 63, 65 29 C&AG’s report, para 2.3 30 Qq 63, 77 Improving the prison estate 13 the contract and it would have been very expensive to exit and bring the services in-house. The Ministry told us that it now had a much stronger commercial function, with skilled and capable staff, and that the Crown commercial function was also stronger, so it was confident it was now much better at outsourcing.31