Outsourcing giant Serco has unveiled a £400million boost from Covid contracts and handed its shareholders a major reward. Labour said the news will “outrage taxpayers” after the Test and Trace giant celebrated a 75% boost in operating profit last year.
Test and Trace - run mostly by Serco and Sitel - was plagued by controversy for months after failing to reach hundreds of thousands of contacts of people with coronavirus.
Today Serco chief executive Rupert Soames admitted the system took “quite some time” to work effectively. But the firm today issued a profits upgrade for 2021 and said now is the time to make the 1.4p-a-share payments to investors, its first since 2014.