Was the Ministry of Justice administering popular justice when it stripped G4S of the contract to run the Wolds prison in east Yorkshire and did not select the firm for its shortlist of bidders for other prison contracts? In other words, was it pay-back for the company's Olympics security bungle?
It is impossible to be certain. A critical report on Wolds by the chief inspector of prisons, highlighting "clear weaknesses," could have been sufficient reason in itself to take administration back into the public sector. As for the new contracts, G4S was one of four companies not to be selected for the shortlist: its pitch may just have been poor.
But if G4S has been unofficially blacklisted, the government is on very weak ground. G4S' failure to provide enough security guards for the Olympics was disgraceful. But that episode has nothing to do with its ability (or not) to run prisons. The two issues should be entirely separate. By all means, hit G4S in the wallet for its Olympics cock-up – but keep the award of prison contracts out of it.
Any confusion on that point would merely undermine confidence in the government's ability to hand out contracts to the best bidder. And that confidence is not high after the west coast rail debacle.
To be clear, we don't know why G4S failed in this case because transparency is roughly zero. But the slight tone of bitterness in the company's response is understandable: "We look forward to discussing the contract award decision with the MoJ within the next few days to determine why we were unsuccessful."
Quite right. It is not a popular thing to say, but G4S deserves to know if it will receive fair treatment from government in future.
