Taxpayer pays £90m to bungling Olympics
contractor

Security firm G4S has not been paid since July 13, Locog chief executive Paul Deighton has told MPs.

The firm has so far been paid £89 to £90m by organisers but the rest is “up for negotiation”, he told the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee.

G4S told organisers on July 11 that it would not be able to provide enough security staff for the Olympics – just over two weeks before the Games started. Troops and police were drafted in at the last minute to plug the gap.

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Mr Deighton said the whole contract with the company was worth £236m, including a £57m “project management fee”.

This included 15 per cent profit, and the rest was mainly the wages of a team who were in charge of recruiting and training staff.

He was asked by committee chairman Keith Vaz: “You have paid £89 to £90m, all public money, and the rest is up for negotiation, which you will have with them?” Mr Deighton replied: “Yes.”

Nearly two-thirds of venues saw a shortfall of more than 15 per cent, although they were up to capacity during the transition period and the Paralympics.

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London 2012 chairman Lord Coe told the committee: “It is difficult to look beyond their inability to deliver on the contracted number of security personnel that we were consistently assured by them that they would be able to deliver.”

Charles Farr, Home Office head of security and counter-terrorism, said G4S gave no indication that it would struggle to meet the contract before July 11, and claimed the company “weren’t completely open” with organisers in the lead-up to the Games.

Mr Farr said: “The data was clearly misleading at the very least.”

G4S will donate £2.5m to service charities to try to make up for the fact that service personnel had to step in.

The firm will make a £50m loss because of the fiasco.

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G4S fulfilled only 83 per cent of contracted shifts at the Games, and provided 7,800 staff out of a contract that demanded 10,400.

It has already ruled itself out of bidding for the Rio 2016 contracts.

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