The company responsible for tagging prisoners released early missed its contractual targets every month for 15 months straight. Before they were miraculously met as Labour’s early release scheme kicked in…
Serco holds the one national contract for all field and monitoring services, worth up to £329.9 million and running to April 2030. It took over from Capita in May 2024. Handily, the MoJ paused its official tagging statistics from June 2024 to June 2025 during the handover. New figures show Serco missed most of its tagging targets every month for 15 months straight, hitting two out of 13 in some months…
The new figures show Serco met between two and five of its targets every month from August 2024 to October 2025. It only hit all 14 in March this year. For 18 months, the MoJ formally judged it against a reduced set of four targets. The MoJ now says Serco has hit all of its KPIs from March to August… curious…
Watchdogs also reportedly found this week that Serco counts just attempting to fit a tag as hitting its target, and that more than 5,000 offenders, including violent and sex offenders, domestic abusers and stalkers, walked free from prison untagged. Serco insists it is “consistently meeting all our contractual measures”. From six targets met to full marks in four months is something…
Incidentally, in 2013 Serco agreed to repay £68.5 million after overcharging for tagging offenders, some of whom turned out to be dead, back in prison, or abroad. In 2019 it was fined £19.2 million under a deferred prosecution deal. The MoJ hired it again anyway…
The MoJ also refuses to say how many breach alerts Serco sent to police and probation more than 24 or 53 hours after a tagging breach. It claims the data will be published in the future. Probably not before the next wave leaves the gates…
Labour is releasing 4,500 prisoners across 10 waves, with the final releases scheduled for June 2027, on the promise that all of them will be tagged. Justice Secretary Alex Norris said it was “too soon” to say how many of the roughly 700 prisoners released in the first wave had been fitted with monitoring devices. No wonder they thanked Burnham on their way out…
Krishnan Guru-Murthy asked John Healey: “Just finally, I mean Andy Burnham has been very clear he wants Britain back in the European Union in his lifetime. Do you?”
The Chancellor replied: “I’m older than Andy Burnham. I don’t expect to see that.”