Watchdog raps MoD over Qinetiq sell-off bonanza

Oh what's the point ?

The Civil Service and MP's are never held responsible for their actions. What's the worst that might happen ? A resignation ?

Might as well have saved the money this report cost. Nothing is ever learned, no-one is ever punished.

Perhaps the NAO should investigate itself and the lack of benefit that its futile activities bring to the public.

So the sell-off was politically motivated rather than cost motivated. What are you going to do about it ?

Title

Private Eye has been banging on about this for years, pretty much ever since it was first mooted. The Eye should be compulsory reading for the entire electorate.

I Will NOT resign

Nobody will ever take the blame for their actions or inactions because the standing excuse is "it's my job to fix this mess and I will stay in position and do that."

Of course if they had done their jobs in the first place, there wouldn't be a mess to fix. Yes from that point of view the report was a waste of money but hey, the blogosphere needs these reports, it confirms our beliefs that Government is a mess, regardless of which side you don't vote for.

Well...

.. John Bourn knows a thing or two about fleecing the public purse, so he'd know it when he sees it, I suppose.

Why on earth do the government persist with these sell-offs and PFI/PPP deals, when all the evidence (as handily compiled by Private Eye a year or two ago) is that they are significantly more expensive than the public equivalent (when one removes the handy "optimism bias" adjuster that the private sector consultants add to the calculations to show how much better value the PFI solutions are. No conflict of interest there eh?).

PFI policy is controlled by a PFI unit under a chap who is a partner on secondment from PwC - and PwC just happen to be the largest PFI financial adviser to the government. Ace.

Nothing new though, is it?

Since Brown and Blair cooked up the PFI fiddle (very useful for Gordo to stay in line with his Golden Rules) and also decided to continue the Tory policy of privatising everything in sight (because the private sector knows best, oh yes), it's been one long catalogue of projects being late and over budget.

Note to mods - I'm confused as to why none of my comments over the last day or two have been posted? Have I done something to offend the mighty El Reg staff?

Between the li[n]es

So, the Carlyle Group, which is in no way related to George Bush and Saudi oil money is making money from governments.... again..... this is not a story about PFI this is the prologue to another documentary by a fat beardy american.

Mr Chris, you are right - but this is facilitation, with the risk of calls of "consipacy theory" are the government a) Stupid or b) Up to something that we don't fully understand, not sure which one I would prefer.

employee shares

QinteiQ employees earned more than 80 quid. That 40 pound share option converted to 1750 shares, about £3700 when I sold mine! Not quite as good as Chisolm and Loves 20 odd million though! Fortunatly I don't work for them any more.

@Gulfie

>> When is the government going to see sense over PFI? (or, in long hand - Public F****d by Industry). We the UK taxpayers are funding obscenely long gravy trains for large UK and foreign companies to make the Government balance sheets look good.

The opposite point of view says the government knows exactly what is happening. The USA has its corporations profiting vastly and unaccountably in Iraq and Afghanistan at cost to their taxpayers. The UK, having been told that no way is it going to get a share of this action (remember BP started in Iraq), has, by some bizarre coincidence, entered into schemes which likewise cost their taxpayers vast and unaccountable sums, such as PFI and IT contracts. It could be argued that in both cases the vast debts from these government arrangements produce results which were either unnecessary or could have been achieved at less cost differently. (The UK example would require an understanding of the specific accounting rules of the IMF).

Except that is is not really coincidence. It is a way for the central banks (which supposedly stump up the money for governments to be able to pay for things) and their private operators to ensure massive recurrent revenues for the future, in the US from interest, in the UK from renting hospitals back and paying for their "management".

Dated ....Past Sell By Date

"Not quite as good as Chisolm and Loves 20 odd million though" If they are of any value to Qinetiq that will be Qinetiq Funding to Spend on Employee Programs/Inward and Onward In-House Investment. I try not to think of Carpetbaggers...that is just so Harold Robbins kitsch.

Business types running rings round Whitehalls politico's & mandarins ?

In the article you wrote:

"Three other executives are specifically named by the NAO: Graham Love, Hal Kruth and Brenda Jones, who made £20m, £13m and £11m respectively."

These three joined QinetiQ in 2001. Would it be unfair to assume that the civil service types they replaced might have been uncomfortable with setting themselves up for such a gargantuan windfall ?

Their leader, Sir John Chisholm, also has a business background, and was brought in by the MoD in 1991 to consolidate their research organisations, and ended up running the lot.

Speaking on Radio 4's Today programme this morning, Lord Gilbert said that Chisholm had misled him with regard to the possible benefits accruing to senior management following the privatisation. At the time Lord Gilbert was the minister at the MoD responsible for this matter. He presumably remains a relatively poor man.

These were the relative returns on investment:

Top ten - 200 fold growth (4.0 % of the shares)

Next 245 managers - 145 fold growth (3.1 % of the shares)

Staff 8000+? - 9 fold growth (3.4 % of the shares)

Why was it deemed reasonable that the top ten managers needed to be "Incentivised" at over twenty times the rate of incentivising the staff? In the outside corporate world, when staff, management and directors are awarded share incentives, they are usually at the same price discount at any one time, and the relative importance of the people being rewarded is accounted for in the number of shares made available to them. However in this case, QinetiQ's top management awarded themselves shares in large quantites, which would possibly be fair enough, but then they really gilded the lily by charging themselves less than a twentieth the price per share that the rank and file had to pay !!! A moral crime of the first order.