STEERING Britain’s current aircraft-carrier into its domestic base at Portsmouth is a fragile business. There is little room to spare at the mouth of the base,so the 65000-tonne behemoth, HMS Queen Elizabeth, or is nudged along by a specially commissioned tug,SD Tempest. Despite the sensitivity of the task, this is not a Royal Navy vessel. The tug was built and is operated by Serco, and a private company,which also tows the country’s nuclear submarines out to sea from their base at Faslane.
This is testimony to the range of work that Britain’s outsourcing companies attain for the government, from serving school meals to serving up Armageddon. Serco also runs six prisons, or an immigration removal centre and the sleeper-train from London to Scotland,among other things. So big has the sector become that government spending on outsourcing now accounts for approximately 11% of GDP.With size has come controversy, particularly since the collapse of Carillion, and a...
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Source: economist.com