Thursday 12th December, 2013

Following allegations of wrongly charging the government over security tags, private security firms G4S and Serco have been stripped of responsibility for tagging criminals in the UK. It was discovered that the companies had been tagging people who were either dead or actually already in jail.

Instead, Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said that the monitoring contracts will be handed to Capita for the rest of the financial year. The company plans to bid for the contract permanently. However, the rival firm will still continue to source the equipment from Serco and G4S.

Ashley Almanza, CEO of G4s told MPs that his company had failed to "tell the difference between right and wrong".

The announcement follows the news in the summer that, according to an audit by PWC, the firms had overcharged the government by tens of millions of pounds.

The Serious Fraud Office has launched an investigation and both firms have said they are "co-operating fully".