SERCO runs everything in Britain, and increasingly abroad, from school inspections to Yarl’s Wood via massive cleaning contracts and refugee housing.

The outsourcing giant also operates the Caledonian Sleeper between London and Scotland, despite its branding being more familiar on the prisoner transport vans I’d see every day when I lived across the road from a magistrates’ court.

Its boss clearly enjoys having this feather in his hat. 

“I see young Soames is on board this evening,” I heard an elderly aristo observe to the lounge car steward on a recent trip south. I stress this tweedy passenger’s age as Serco chief executive Rupert Soames, grandson of Winston Churchill, is in fact 59.

So it’s fair to say Serco has a consistent track record in delivering public services. By consistent, I mean consistently disastrous.

In 2013 the company agreed to repay £68.5 million to the government, after it emerged it had charged the public purse to tag criminals who were either dead or in jail. The company was cleared of fraud charges, but it was far from the only time it has been accused.

The Paradise Papers published last year revealed that law firm Appleby regarded Serco as a “high-risk” client, with a “history of problems, failures, fatal errors and overcharging.”

Appleby cited cases including Serco’s part in a consortium accused of failing to properly handle radioactive waste. The Guardian reported that Appleby’s compliance team also warned of the company’s record of presenting false data to the NHS 252 times.

This week there’s been a heartening outcry across Scotland at the firm’s plan to change the locks on the homes of unsuccessful asylum-seekers.

Serco argues that it’s been more than generous already in letting asylum-seekers stay in their flats beyond the rent they suck out of the Home Office for them. Saying this turns Soames from a bog-standard fat cat into a cartoon villain.

But laying the blame with his shambolic outsourcing outfit lets the real culprits off the hook. Why should we expect a massive private-sector firm to show compassion? Indeed, why should we expect it to pursue any other interest than its profit margin?

What is unforgivable is the radio silence from Home Secretary Sajid Javid who appears content to unleash a “humanitarian crisis” (the words of Glasgow City Council). 

He appears to think he can outsource not only the shelter of refugees but every ounce of his public duty and moral responsibility.

Glasgow MP Paul Sweeney has given his backing to “pickets and occupations” to resist the evictions. 

“They’ve denied us the chance to raise this in Parliament by announcing this policy over recess,” he told me.

He’s not the only one advocating steps that could conflict with the law. Glasgow council leader Susan Aitken said yesterday that her lawyers are looking at ways to help evicted refugees, in spite of a ban on councils supporting those who have exhausted the asylum system. 

On BBC radio yesterday, Aitken voiced her fear that the council could face legal challenges from the Home Office over its actions.

This would heap shame on disgrace, but it would lay bear the government’s hypocrisy. Like the other big outsourcing giants, including Carillion, until the bubble finally burst, Serco continued to win public contracts in spite of fleecing the taxpayer and running national assets into the ground.

Anyone who resists these shameful evictions is heroic and it’s the government’s encouragement of the outsourcing racket that’s criminal. Mrs May and Mr Javid, j’accuse.