An inquiry after the Games into the G4S contract guard shortfall is necessary, it is claimed. Valentina Soria, Research Fellow at RUSI, said that an inquiry – as mooted by Margaret Hodge MP, the chair of the Committee of Public Accounts – is necessary ‘not only for the sake of transparency and accountability, but also in order to restore overall confidence in the UK’s ability to think through, plan and deliver security on such a grand scale’.
She pointed to how the organisers LOCOG and the Government should have controlled the contract better; but she suggested that G4S was the main body culpable and, accordingly, the biggest loser.
As for whether anyone could have seen the shortfall coming, she recalled – lthough clearly on a smaller scale – the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, where the stewarding contractor was Showsec, when the Games ‘presented challenges that would appear rather familiar to anybody now looking into security for London 2012’. Or, the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics saw a consortium of three companies recruit and manage contract guards. For the article in full visit the RUSI website.
