Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether her planned expansion of tagging capabilities will be managed under the current tagging contract.

The current contracts for the delivery of the electronic monitoring service have the capacity to manage the proposed increase in demand.

The Procurement of Electronic Monitoring was conducted by the previous Government in 2023. It was conducted in line with Public Contracts Regulations 2015 and the Cabinet Office Sourcing Playbook (version May 2021) where all bids were fully and appropriately evaluated, including capacity, resulting in Serco being confirmed as the winning bid for the Field and Monitoring Service contract.

The Public Contracts Regulations allow suppliers to be excluded from bidding for new contracts in certain circumstances, such as certain criminal offences and previous poor performance. Serco and Allied Universal (G4S) complied with all of the requirements and standards set out in legislation and on that basis, they were entitled to bid for this contract.