Greater Manchester Police has clawed back about £5m from the contractors who built its discredited iOPS computer system, Andy Burnham has said. The Greater Manchester Mayor revealed the figure during a heated Q&A where he was forced to deny a suggestion he had shirked responsibility for the IT scandal at GMP.
He said the contracts for the Capita-built computer system were signed in 2015, two years before he was elected mayor, and he stressed his role was to hold GMP to account rather than run the force on a daily basis.
Mr Burnham said he had been aware of problems at GMP from the moment he was elected in 2017, and insisted that once he learned of a damning report by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary in late 2020 he wielded the one power he had - to remove the then chief constable.
