‘Message from UK Border Agency. You are required to leave the UK as you no longer have the right to remain. Please contact us on 0844 3754636 to discuss.’ – Test message sent to thousands of people by Capita Plc.
In September 2012 the private company Capita was awarded a £40 million contract to help the UK Border Agency locate 170,000 people who were thought to be in the country illegally and assist UKBA in their deportation. Capita is now delivering this contract through an indiscriminate campaign of harassment, with some people reporting phone calls and text messages several times a day. Those contacted include people who left Britain years ago and people who have been granted British citizenship. This represents a sweeping campaign of intimidation against black people, and the outsourcing of another element of racist state repression alongside the immigration detention and transportation functions already outsourced to companies like G4S, Serco and Reliance.
Capita’s bounty hunter contract for UKBA is just part of a massive and lucrative business. Capita is the largest ‘business process’ outsourcing company in the UK, employing 46,500 people and delivering services in local government, central government, education, transport, health, life and pensions, insurance, and private sector organisations including financial services. The company was formed in 1984, but saw its main growth under Labour, with pre-tax profits growing from £12.3 million in 1996 to £309.8 million in 2010. In March 2006 Executive Chairman Rod Aldridge resigned after it was alleged that government contracts to Capita had been influenced by his loan of £1 million to the Labour Party. Capita describe themselves on their website as having a ‘transformational’ agenda, focussing on ‘emerging markets’, and suggest that the potential UK market for outsourcing is £117 billion per annum, only 7% of which has been outsourced so far. This is just the beginning.
Tom Vickers
