parliamentary information office: It is rather clear that this was a mess from the centre of government. Senior ministers with fingerprints all over it. Lets see if they stay in post.
The whole issue raises a deeper question. Is any public body actually capable of running a proper contracting process? Obviously most government bodies can deal with contracts, but can they really handle the complexities of large long term service contracts while keeping the interests of the poor tax payer and service users in focus. I don't think so.
My view is that public tendering for these kinds of deals should be always in the public domain. A kind of crowd sourcing.
This means that when public body X wants to get somebody to provide service Y for Z years, the request for services is made public. After the deadline for bids, all tenders are made fully public. All can then see what is being offered.
The selection criteria, that is publicly known, is applied and results are published. Anybody can raise issues with it, including the competitors.
Any negotiations that change the contract terms after the selection of the winner are to be made public before signing, to ensure that there are no sneaky deals, stupid contract clauses, or changes in prices that are not acceptable. It could also be that there are improvements in the contract texts during this process, that all could see.
In this way, large scale contracts can be more secure as many will have looked at them (not least the loosing competitors)
One additional thing with contracts for things like rail services. It does appear that the UK government is OK for a company that has a contract that is failing to create a new daughter company put the bad contract in that company and then push it out with all the debts, so the government needs to rescue it. The way to stop that is something called a parental guarantee. We may think that service companies are all bad, but it is also the stupidity of government bodies that allows failures in service contracts.
parliamentary information office: I'm pleased that the DfT has now been recognised for the incompetent dysfunctional department that it is. Time and time again, the DfT supplied erroneous information and answers to valid questions and that should have warned the ministers that there was something seriously wrong.
The InterCity Express Programme - new trains to replace the IC125s - have been designed by civil servants and despite a daming report, nothing has changed. Some of the information they supply suggests that thes trains will defy the laws of physics. They were designed to a departmental dogma such that they will be hugely more expensive than necessary (despite the huge electrification programme, many will have diesel engines and electrical power - whereas coupling to diesel locomotives where the wires finish would be much cheaper and quicker overall)
The DfT's rolling stock policy (if indeed there is one) is an utter shambles and should be torn up
The irony is that under privatisation, the UK railway system is actually more closely managed by Government than it ever was in BR days, and spends vastly more money. Franchisees have little or no ability to use their abilities and just get the blame for anything that goes wrong (obviously the credit for the few things that go right is purely due to the DfT).
Either let go and give the private sector long franchises and the responsibility to innovate and invest or take the whole lot back into the public sector and let them do the same, with Government just setting the broad framework for the national system and the local communities specifying what they want and working in partnership with the railways.Whatever they do, stop the clueless DfT micro-managing the railways.
The whole issue raises a deeper question. Is any public body actually capable of running a proper contracting process? Obviously most government bodies can deal with contracts, but can they really handle the complexities of large long term service contracts while keeping the interests of the poor tax payer and service users in focus. I don't think so.
My view is that public tendering for these kinds of deals should be always in the public domain. A kind of crowd sourcing.
This means that when public body X wants to get somebody to provide service Y for Z years, the request for services is made public. After the deadline for bids, all tenders are made fully public. All can then see what is being offered.
The selection criteria, that is publicly known, is applied and results are published. Anybody can raise issues with it, including the competitors.
Any negotiations that change the contract terms after the selection of the winner are to be made public before signing, to ensure that there are no sneaky deals, stupid contract clauses, or changes in prices that are not acceptable. It could also be that there are improvements in the contract texts during this process, that all could see.
In this way, large scale contracts can be more secure as many will have looked at them (not least the loosing competitors)
One additional thing with contracts for things like rail services. It does appear that the UK government is OK for a company that has a contract that is failing to create a new daughter company put the bad contract in that company and then push it out with all the debts, so the government needs to rescue it. The way to stop that is something called a parental guarantee. We may think that service companies are all bad, but it is also the stupidity of government bodies that allows failures in service contracts.
parliamentary information office: I'm pleased that the DfT has now been recognised for the incompetent dysfunctional department that it is. Time and time again, the DfT supplied erroneous information and answers to valid questions and that should have warned the ministers that there was something seriously wrong.
The InterCity Express Programme - new trains to replace the IC125s - have been designed by civil servants and despite a daming report, nothing has changed. Some of the information they supply suggests that thes trains will defy the laws of physics. They were designed to a departmental dogma such that they will be hugely more expensive than necessary (despite the huge electrification programme, many will have diesel engines and electrical power - whereas coupling to diesel locomotives where the wires finish would be much cheaper and quicker overall)
The DfT's rolling stock policy (if indeed there is one) is an utter shambles and should be torn up
The irony is that under privatisation, the UK railway system is actually more closely managed by Government than it ever was in BR days, and spends vastly more money. Franchisees have little or no ability to use their abilities and just get the blame for anything that goes wrong (obviously the credit for the few things that go right is purely due to the DfT).
Either let go and give the private sector long franchises and the responsibility to innovate and invest or take the whole lot back into the public sector and let them do the same, with Government just setting the broad framework for the national system and the local communities specifying what they want and working in partnership with the railways.Whatever they do, stop the clueless DfT micro-managing the railways.
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