A dodgy record

Commons public accounts committee chairwoman Margaret Hodge is correct to insist that all A4E contracts with government departments should be suspended until police investigations are complete.

As Hodge has noted, problems with A4E are not restricted to the current criminal inquiry into members of staff.

Its record does not justify the award of contracts worth £180 million, providing Harrison with an income of £8.6m last year but with a less positive impact on the lives of claimants seeking to move from welfare to work.

Civil Service union PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka points out that the obsession with handing over public finance to A4E to carry out tasks proper to the public sector is not peculiar to the Tories.

New Labour shared this addiction and, despite A4E being investigated for fraud and bad practices over contracts in 2009, no brakes were applied to the gravy train.

It is pleasing that Hodge and shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne appear, at the very least, to be questioning this leeching of hard-pressed government finance.

Should criminal behaviour be uncovered, ministers must strip A4E of its government contracts, but, irrespective, Labour should pledge that, when returned to office, it will stop undermining the public sector by handing contracts to profits-obsessed privateers.