The House | The outsourcing injustice at the heart of government is finally coming to an end

Members of the PCS Union employed by G4S as security officers, receptionists, cleaners, caterers and porters at the Department for Business and Trade, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the Cabinet Office, on strike over pay, terms and conditions in London, November 2024 (Karl Black/Alamy Live News)

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They do that by driving down the pay and conditions of workers and by providing a lower level of service to the public.

About a third of government spending – some £341bn – is spent on private companies, enabling shareholders to cash in at the public expense. It’s wasteful, inefficient, and leads to worse public services for all of us.  

When Labour was elected in 2024, they pledged to undo this scandal with the biggest wave of insourcing in a generation. And this week, Rachel Reeves announced the critical first step in this journey. From 2028, when government contracts with outsourcing companies come to an end, thousands of staff working in government buildings will be brought back in-house. 

It might surprise you to learn that you can work in a government building where all of your colleagues are civil servants – and be entrusted with keeping the nation safe – but be employed on an insecure private sector contract.  

We met a security guard who puts his own safety on the line protecting the people working in a government department. But unlike his colleagues inside the building, he isn’t entitled to a decent pension or flexible working to enable childcare – in fact, he’d been disciplined by his employer for taking time off to care for his kids.  

For most of his time working for the government, he wasn’t even entitled to decent sick pay – but alongside his colleagues, he went on strike and won that right last year.   

Put simply, there’s a two-tier workforce in the public sector, where outsourced staff are on worse pay and conditions than their directly employed colleagues. That means many people delivering public services are forced to choose between eating and heating their homes in the winter – or going straight from work at a government building to a foodbank.  

Caterers, security officers, cleaners, porters, engineers, plumbers, electricians, receptionists, handypersons and messenger service workers have been denied the dignity and security afforded to white-collar civil servants who work in the same building as them.

The sheer injustice is compounded when you consider that these staff are disproportionately women, Black or from other ethnic minority backgrounds.  

And these contracts are often inflexible and bad value for the taxpayer – with even minor changes to the way services are delivered hampered by complex and costly contract negotiations.  

The scourge of outsourcing can be felt all the way through our public sector. That’s why today’s announcement should represent a signal of intent – and kickstart a serious programme of insourcing contracts across the public sector.  

Enough is enough. The big outsourcing companies trying to squeeze a profit from the public purse are in the Chancellor’s sights. Today must be the beginning of the end of the scourge of public sector outsourcing.

Paul Nowak is TUC general secretary and Fran Heathcote is PCS general secretary