The Ministry of Defence will come under furious assault from CS unions over concerns that its £19bn plan to overhaul the training of the armed forces puts service personnels security at risk.
The government is in the midst of selecting two private-sector contractors to take over training as part of the £19bn Defence Training Review. It is one of the largest private finance initiatives ever.
Vying for the first contract is the MC3 consortium consisting of BAE Systems, VT Group, Carillion and Flagship Training. It is pitted against Metrix, which consists of Qinetiq, Land Securities, Raytheon and EDS.
Bids for the second package - for training in logistics, policing, languages and photography - see Metrix, again, against Holdfast, which includes Babcock, Mowlem and TQ Education.
But civil servants union PCS believes that with only three consortia bidding for the two contracts, there is insufficient competition for a meaningful contest. The union also believes that outsourcing tens of thousands of staff to the private sector will leave the MoD in a perilous position should the contracts go awry.
PCS national officer Paul Barnsley said: Im not just concerned about increasing costs; I think the contractors will have the government over a barrel. He added that two months ago a component of a 10-year, £1bn IT infrastructure contract had to be taken in-house and said the MoD refusal to allow staff to bid for contracts beggars belief.
The PCS will outline its concerns to MPs at a Defence Select Committee hearing, which will investigate MoD procurement minister Lord Draysons plans to put relations between contractors and the government on a new platform through the training review.
A spokeswoman for the MoD said: The MoD will always choose the best value for money option in the procurement process. Sometimes this will be an in-house solution, sometimes this will be external to the MoD. In this case, an in-house bid was not a feasible option as the significant capital investment required to transform future specialist training means that this is not affordable.
GengisK
