Simon calls for council crackdown on contractors

CITY mayoral candidate Siôn Simon is calling for Birmingham City Council’s major outsourced contracts to be independently audited.

The former government minister and MP for Erdington argues such a move would avoid repeat of the “offshoring fiasco” with Capita.

The council is due to pay £2.176m to outsourcing giant Capita after changing its mind about ‘offshoring’ up to 100 ICT jobs to India last year. In addition, the council will forfeit £1m a year in planned savings over the next ten years.

The council agreed to a contract extension with Capita in January 2011, which included a clause allowing the firm to transfer up to 100 highly-skilled ICT jobs to India.

Capita runs the council’s ICT systems as well as its call centre and revenues and benefits service.

Simon said: “The revelation that the council taxpayers of Birmingham will be forced to shell out more than two million pounds in compensation to Capita after the council leadership changed its mind about offshoring jobs to India disgraces both parties.

“First, the council should never have signed a contract extension with Capita which allowed the export of council jobs to India. Councillors and senior officers were, quite frankly, asleep at the wheel during these contract negotiations and were either too reckless or too naive in agreeing to such a move. Either way, it is an utterly unacceptable way of running our city.

“But Capita does not get off scot-free. We need a full cost breakdown to see exactly what we are supposed to be compensating them for.

“I propose having all the council’s major outsourced contracts independently audited to ensure we are genuinely getting value for money. They should be periodically reviewed too. We need to crack the whip a lot harder with big contractors who are often making vast sums of money on the public purse.”