Home Office ordered to pay £224m

[Taf]

The Home Office has been told to pay £224m to a major US corporation it sacked for failing to deliver a controversial secure borders programme.

The e-Borders programme launched by Labour in 2003 was a £1bn attempt to reform border controls.

In 2007 Raytheon won a nine-year contract for the programme.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28840966

Raytheon was a year behind, and the UK government (i.e. our money again) was found at fault?

It's not clear from the article why the judgement was made. It could be that the Government, the previous one, failed to ensure the contract would allow termination if targets where not met or if the current Government checked the contract. Either way another example of the outstanding competency of our elected officials.

---------- Post added at 20:00 ---------- Previous post was at 19:51 ----------

Can you be outstandingly competent?

[richard s]

Labour introduced this contract in the first place and the Tory's ended it... Private enterprise FAILER. Now we the Taxpayer have pay for it. What a bunch of incompetent MPs with have in all partys.

[TheDaddy]

Don't contracts work both ways anymore, if they weren't fulfilling their end of the deal wouldn't they be in breach of contract. Why we put up with these shysters in business or politics I don't know

[Uncle Peter]

Originally Posted by TheDaddy

Don't contracts work both ways anymore, if they weren't fulfilling their end of the deal wouldn't they be in breach of contract. Why we put up with these shysters in business or politics I don't know

Depends on the term of the contract. Common sense would dictate that there should have been some degree of penalty clause for late delivery where the supplier is culpable but you never know!

The supplier could have argued that HO were to blame or partially to blame for any delays in delivery by say: altering project plans, designs, requirements or any multitude of other reasons.

Raytheon weren't the only contractor involved in this project. I know a couple of people who went off to work on this project via other entities and their contracts were rather lucrative to say the least.