Select Committee on Justice

Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 1:31 pm on 28 June 2018.

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Photo of Bob Neill Bob Neill Chair, Justice Committee, Chair, Justice Committee 1:31, 28 June 2018

One problem that we have, to which we refer in the report, is the lack of transparency around the contractual terms. One would expect, if there were a complete failure of performance, that there ought not to be significant payments, as with any contract, but we do refer to the tendency—it is not unique to the Ministry of Justice; it is across Government—for the excuse of commercial confidentiality to be used almost as a blanket bar to examining terms. That is why we recommend in the report that there be much more transparency around the letting or re-letting of contracts. We should certainly have more transparency about the matrix on which they are based, the financial model, the performance criteria that are built into them and the means of performance measuring of the CRCs themselves. We do not have adequate information on any of that, and I think the public are entitled to it.