Outsourcing firms clear £6bn from Britain's public services, which is what the contracts say they may do

Six billion pounds, and not one clause of it out of order. You are looking for the overcharge. Look elsewhere. The public sector spent one hundred and twenty-nine billion pounds last year on services provided by outsourcing firms, at the rates those contracts set, and an estimated six billion came out of it as profit. Close to eleven percent of all public expenditure went to these private firms — eleven pence in the pound, eleven — which is not a leak in the pipe. It is the pipe. G4S. Serco. Mitie. Sodexo. Common Wealth, reporting on the twenty-fifth of September, placed those profits "at the expense of workers' rights, accountability and service quality". A handsome rentier's margin, drawn from holding the contract rather than from anything built under it. And what does the think tank propose be done about the six billion? ... Ending outsourcing. Ending. You were promised otherwise. Rachel Reeves, from opposition, promised "the biggest wave of insourcing in generations". Parliament wrote the arrangement that permits the margin; the margin is what the arrangement produces. The contracts have performed. Eleven pence in the pound. Public money, all of it.