WHETHER it was “contracting-out” in the Thatcher era, the rebranded “Best Value” of the New Labour era, or the “Big Society” of the Cameron era, outsourcing has consistently been a disaster for workers and service users alike.

Outsourcing has driven down workers’ pay, pensions, terms and conditions, and created a two-tier workforce, while allowing private companies to profit from public money. It has meant worse services for the public as private companies have prioritised profits over delivery.

The Labour government promised “the biggest wave of insourcing in a generation” in 2024. One current outsourcing shambles above all demonstrates why that is necessary.

Under the coalition government, the administration of Civil Service pensions was outsourced. The Conservative minister called it a “mutualisation,” but it was no such thing. The Cabinet Office soon sold its stake and the service was wholly transferred to a private company — whose performance declined.

In the past year, the contract to run Civil Service pensions passed to Capita — a company synonymous with poor delivery and failure. Capita inherited a mess, but it has since made matters worse — and is now having to be bailed out by civil servants seconded from HM Revenue & Customs and from the Department for Work & Pensions.

It’s the same story time and time again with outsourcing and privatisation — dedicated public servants bail out private failure. The public is always left carrying the can because these public services are too important to fail.

We have members who after a lifetime of public service have retired and been left with no income for months.

Others like our member Karen, with decades of service, have delayed their retirement “due to the mess created by Capita and the failure to provide me with a quote … I just don’t have the savings to keep me afloat while there is so much uncertainty around when — or if — my pension will be paid.”

No worker deserves to be left in this limbo as they approach their well-earned retirement.

And our members who have been transferred into Capita tell a miserable story with 75 per cent responding to a recent survey that they are considering leaving their roles. As one member put it, Capita needs to “have a think about this as they are losing very important staff with years of knowledge and they are going to stress-free jobs and probably more money.”

The government did recently act to strip Capita of the Royal Mail pension scheme, with the minister telling the House of Commons: “Capita had an 18-month planning window to prepare for the transition. They failed to deliver numerous milestones, including a failure to implement the required IT automation.”

Exactly the same could be said of the Civil Service pension scheme — and yet Capita’s failures are being tolerated, and bailed out.

And it gets worse, despite its abysmal performance Capita has been handed a near-£1 billion contract to manage the payroll of a quarter of a million civil servants. What could possibly go wrong?

Under pressure from PCS, the government has already provided millions of pounds in interest-free transitional support loans to thousands of our retiring members who have been left without an income. Now Capita will be let loose on civil servants’ pay packets.

Whether it’s Capita failing on pensions or the decades-long failure of privatised water, our members and the public are fed up to the back teeth of successive governments tolerating failures when services are outsourced or privatised.

We’ve heard some tougher rhetoric from the new Prime Minister, which is welcome, but the biggest wave of insourcing has barely been a ripple so far.

That’s why PCS is working with other like-minded unions, including Unison and RMT, whose members’ working lives are blighted by outsourcing failure to call on the government to return public services in-house.

We want public services run in the interests of the public, not private profit.

Fran Heathcote is general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services union.