MPs pan new electronic tag scheme for monitoring prisoners as ‘catastrophic’ waste of money
A damning report said the Ministry of Justice had blown at least £60 million on a scheme that was overly ambitious and weak
A NEW ELECTRONIC tag scheme for monitoring prisoners was panned as a “catastrophic” waste of taxpayers’ money by MPs last night.
A withering report by a Commons Committee said the Ministry of Justice had blown at least £60 million on a scheme that was overly ambitious and fundamentally flawed.
Originally planned to come into force in 2013, the new GPS tags will not be ready until at least 2019 – at least six years’ late.
The cross-party Public Accounts Committee said the MoJ had been guilty of pressing ahead with a programme without clear evidence of how it was to be operated – or if it was deliverable.
In a report it stormed: “Many of the lessons the Ministry claims to be have learned are simply common sense and should not have resulted in such a shambolic delivery of an important programme.”
The Government had used contracted-out electronic tags to supervise criminals out on licence.
But in 2011 it launched plans to introduce a world-leading ankle tag using GPS technology.
It was intended to reduce the cost of tagging and due to be rolled out by 2013 but was hit by a stream of delays and problems in developing a “bespoke” tag. Officials also chose the “highest risk” procurement strategy.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton Brown, PAC deputy chair and Tory MP, said: “The Ministry of Justice took an all-singing, all-dancing approach to what could have been a relatively simple procurement exercise.
“The evidence to support a wholesale transformation of the tagging system was weak at best but the Ministry pushed ahead anyway.
“This ill-fated adventure in the possibilities of technology has so far costed taxpayers some £60 million.”
He added: “The new tags are expected to be rolled out more than five years later than planned and, even then, the system will rely on the same form of technology that was available when the programme launched.”
The programme was expected to save up to £30 million a year. But the savings relied on an estimate that as many as 220,000 offenders would be subject to tagging orders in 2016-2017. Only 65,000 orders were issued in the year.
An MoJ spokesman said: “Electronic monitoring is a valuable tool in supervising offenders and protecting the public, but we have been clear there were a number of challenges to our expansion of the electronic monitoring programme.
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“As a direct result, we fundamentally changed our approach in 2015, expanding and strengthening our commercial teams and bringing responsibility for oversight of the programme in-house.
“We are now in a strong position to continue improving confidence in the service and providing better for value for money for the taxpayer.”