The Right has long owned ideas of government efficiency and cutting red tape, using them to carry out austerity. With the Commission on Government Efficiency (yes, COGE), Zohran Mamdani is attempting to claim the cause of good government for the Left.
Page F2From§Eachthe sunrise edition — 27 September 2026
Outsourcing firms take eleven percent of all public spending under the government that pledged to end outsourcing
As it ran on the front
You will want to know what went wrong here, and the answer is nothing. Nothing whatever. The public sector spent one hundred and twenty-nine billion pounds last year on services provided by outsourcing firms, and those firms retained an estimated six billion of it as profit. Estimated, mind you — profit on a public contract is not a figure the public is handed unbidden. Close to eleven percent of all public expenditure now goes to private firms. Eleven percent. Not skimmed, not diverted: invoiced, and paid, against terms somebody signed.
You are thinking of the pledge. Labour did pledge to bring services back in house, and the £129bn stands beside it, both true at once, which is rather the point of a contract — it outlives the enthusiasm of whoever announced it. A rentier does not need to win the argument ... the paper need only remain in force.…
…(cont) Earlier this month, executives at Humana and UnitedHealthcare indicated plans to cut benefits and exit certain plans to boost profitability. The same instrument, a different accent.
Six billion pounds. That is what delivery costs when the deliverer has shareholders.
Around the well, a fence went up. The man keeps the gate.
“Six billion quid of profit did not fall out of the sky — it came out of £129bn the public paid for its own services, eleven percent of everything the state spends, and the government that promised to end this signed the invoices anyway. And look at the Americans: Humana and UnitedHealthcare executives saying out loud they will cut benefits and drop plans to lift profitability. That is the business model, not a malfunction, and the bill lands on whoever needs the service that day.”
“Look, "profit" is a loaded — did I say profit? That is not language I would use. The private sector delivers value for money, and eleven percent is a share of spending, not a cost, which is a distinction people keep failing to make. And if a firm in another country adjusts its benefit offering, that is a commercial decision in another country, and frankly nobody here is responsible for it, and I would not have brought it up.”
The receipts
Outsourcing companies made an estimated £6bn in profit from public services last year, with close to 11% of all public expenditure going to these private firms. A new report by the think tank Common Wealth found that the public sector spent £129bn on services provided by outsourcing firms, despite the Labour government pledging to bring…
· Advocates Say Benefit Cuts by Medicare Advantage Giants Highlight 'Dysfunction' of For-Profit System from the morgue, 11 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.