Ministers have refused to tell MPs what up to £48 million in extra payments to Serco, the company that fits offenders’ electronic tags, are for, or how much it has been fined for poor performance.
The Ministry of Justice says the details are commercially sensitive. It also says it cannot afford to count how many untagged offenders went on to commit serious crimes.
In written answers published on Friday, the justice minister Catherine McKinnell said the information ‘remains commercially sensitive’ and that ‘on balance, the Department considers that the information should continue to be withheld’. She gave the same answer when asked how much Serco has paid in financial penalties and service credits since May 2024.
The £48 million figure comes from the National Audit Office. In July the watchdog reported that, as at June 2026, the Ministry had agreed up to £48 million of additional payments to Serco over the life of its contract. That includes up to £6 million to keep staff on to cope with rising demand under the Sentencing Act 2026. The NAO said the payments covered some delays outside Serco’s control and some work not covered by the contract. By March, £10 million had been paid.
Serco won its £330 million contract in 2023, under the last government, and took over from Capita in May 2024. The NAO found it reached full operational status 11 months late, and that the backlog of visits to fit, check or remove tags rose from 1,200 in May 2024 to 7,000 that October. In February this year Serco met its 95 per cent target for visits on time, but fitted tags on only 62 per cent of the people it visited within two attempts.
Ministers say performance has since improved. Ms McKinnell said Serco had met all its contractual requirements consistently since March 2026, and that fitting tags at the prison gate, piloted in six prisons, is now being expanded.
The questions were tabled by the Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy. Ms McKinnell also declined to say how many field staff Serco employs to fit and maintain tags compared with 2024, although she said the current assessment was that there is ‘sufficient field resource’ for the extra demand. On 27 October she refused to publish reviews of electronic monitoring commissioned by the department and by Serco, for the same commercial reasons.
Other answers could not be given at all. Asked how many Serious Further Offence notifications since September 2024 involved someone who should have been tagged but was not, the minister said the information ‘could only be obtained at disproportionate cost’. She gave the same reply when asked what happened to prisoners released early in autumn 2024 who were not tagged within a week.
The demands on the system are growing. Since 1 October, some prisoners have been released earlier under the Sentencing Act 2026, and the department has estimated that up to 22,000 more people a year will need to be tagged from 2027.
The department’s own figures show the gaps. On 30 September, 5,041 people with an electronic monitoring order had no equipment fitted, 15 per cent of everyone with an order. Some were in custody or still inside the two days allowed for fitting, but the most common reason was that they were not at home when staff called.
A further 1,557 people had equipment that had sent no signal for 14 days or more. Ms McKinnell told MPs that 1,309 of them had been out of contact for 28 days or more. She said the reasons range from technical faults and power cuts to people failing to comply or damaging their tags, in which case a breach is raised and enforcement action taken.
The NAO warned in July that tagging ‘is not working as intended, creating public protection risks’, and that expanding a system which is not yet working ‘heightens risks to future performance and, ultimately, to public protection’. It asked the department to set out a system-wide approach to managing those risks by September 2026.
Asked whether that approach would be published, Ms McKinnell said the department was still developing it with partners, and that internal risk thresholds are not routinely made public.
Commercial confidentiality has its place in any contract. But this is public money, spent on a service meant to protect the public, and ministers will not say what the extra payments bought or what penalties have been applied.
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