15. We announced our inquiry into Strategic Suppliers on 24 May 2018. We took evidence from John Collington,6 Baroness Ruby McGregor-Smith CBE,7 representatives of Interserve, G4S, Serco, Sodexo, Atos, Capita,8 and the Cabinet Office.9 We held a joint session with the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee to hear evidence from former executives from Carillion.10 We received written evidence from most of the Government's current Strategic Suppliers and from other interested parties. We are grateful to all those who have assisted the Committee in this inquiry. We have drawn on this Committee's and the National Audit Office's (NAO) previous Reports on public-sector contracting, and recent work by Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs, Work and Pensions, and Business, Enterprise and Industrial Strategy select committees.
16. This Committee's principal purpose is to hold Departments to account for the way that they spend taxpayers' money. Most of our work focusses on individual projects or programmes that are of concern. We are therefore familiar with individual public-sector contracts that have run into difficulties. In this inquiry we have had the opportunity to consider the contracting landscape across the whole of Government to identify how Government departments and the Cabinet Office might improve their performance.
17. This Committee is part of the established accountability regime for Government Departments as set out in Managing Public Money.11 That regime requires Accounting Officers and Senior Responsible Officers to appear before the Committee. Companies that contract with Government have become increasingly familiar with being called to account for their actions in front of Parliament's select committees. Those companies have a different relationship to Parliament and a different set of priorities and pressures to civil servants, but are ultimately funded by taxpayers and provide a public service.
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6 Sector Director, Public Sector, Alexander Mann Solutions and former Chief Procurement Officer at the Cabinet Office
7 Former Chief Executive Officer, Mitie
8 11 June 2018: Peter Neden, Chief Executive Officer, Care and Justice Services and Public Sector, G4S, and Debbie White, CEO, Interserve; 13 June 2018: Rupert Soames, Group Chief Executive Officer, Serco, Philip Chalmers, Senior Vice President, Public Sector and Health, Atos, and Sean Haley, Regional Chair, UK and Ireland, Sodexo; 18 June 2018: Jonathan Lewis, Chief Executive Officer, Capita plc, Stephen Sharp, Executive Officer, Capita Government Services
9 John Manzoni, Chief Executive, Civil Service and Permanent Secretary, Gareth Rhys Williams, Government Chief Commercial Officer, and Coleen Andrews, Director, Markets and Suppliers, Cabinet Office
10 Oral evidence taken on 27 February 2018, HC (2017-19) 851
11 Managing public money is the UK Government handbook on the handling of public funds and sets out department’s responsibilities in respect of parliament. See HM Treasury, Managing Public Money, July 2013 (with annexes revised as at March 2018)