What is the financial value of public services to the private sector and who are the chief beneficiaries?

Welfare

Current value to the private sector

Around ?5bn over the next seven years

Beneficiary

Therese Rein, managing director of Ingeus, whose company paid ?3.8m in dividends last year ? Rein holds around 97% of its shares.

The big financial winners of the work programme range from Emma Harrison, the multimillionaire entrepreneur, to Therese Rein, the wife of the former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd.

Contracts worth billions have been distributed to private firms in what was billed as a radical move to get people back into work, but which is but the latest manifestation of "workfare", where benefits are conditional on a jobless ''client" undertaking some training or work experience.

Under Labour, the public-private hybrid solution was called the New Deal, but it received heavy criticism, not least from the Conservatives in opposition, for being expensive and rewarding private firms even when they failed to get people into work.

Under the coalition government's model, it is supposed to be different with the private providers being paid by results.

Harrison was a big winner when A4E won five contracts valued at ?438m. She lives in Thornbridge Hall, a 20-bedroom mansion, with 11 close friends and their six children.

The Work Programme is just one part of A4E's public sector empire. Last year it enjoyed revenues in the region of ?180m from contracts including the government's Money Advice Service.

Other private sector winners from the Work Programme include Seetec, whose turnover last year was ?53m. Its largest shareholder and chief executive, Peter Cooper, was paid nearly ?2m in salary and share dividends.

However it is Ingeus, an Australian firm with a global turnover of around ?130m, that won the largest haul ? seven contracts worth ?727m. Rein, the company's managing director, holds about 97% of its shares.

Schools

Current value to the private sector

Around ?7.2bn

Beneficiary

Marjorie Scardino, chief executive of Pearson, had a base salary of ?969,000 in 2010 and took home a bonus of ?1.6m.

Private firms are yet to own and run publicly funded schools for profit, but under Labour and this government their role in every aspect of education has become more prominent. They routinely provide supply teachers, ICT, grounds maintenance and, in the case of a handful of schools, day-to-day management.

Breckland free school in Suffolk will be managed by Swedish company IES when it reopens in September. As the groups of parents behind other free schools come to realise that managing schools is harder work than they imagined, a range of companies are lining up to offer help, including Zenna Atkins' Wey Education, who said last December that it saw an opportunity brought about by "the deconstruction of the education function within local authorities".

Education is big business and getting bigger as local authorities lose their role under the government's academy programme, leaving head-teachers seeking help from the private sector. Security software provider Corero revealed last week it had more than tripled its revenues, citing UK schools as a major growth market. The London-listed software group recorded revenues of around ?11m ? up from ?3m in 2010 ? in its recent financial results through winning contracts from 192 academies. Pearson, the Financial Times publisher, said that it expected to soon announce a 10% rise in earnings, with ?2bn of digital revenues and ?600m of revenues in emerging markets.

It has subsidiary companies providing educational services, including the exam board Edexcel, and insiders admits that Pearson sees opportunities to offer further services which it hopes schools will embrace amid the "shifting terrain" from the "austere financial climate and the changes to schools' relationships with local authorities".

Health

Current value to the private sector

Around ?24.2bn

Beneficiary

John Griffith-Jones, co-chairman of KPMG, paid ?2.62m.

The management of Hinchingbrooke hospital was transferred to Circle Healthcare this month, making it the first private firm to run and deliver a full range of NHS hospital services. But while the ?1bn deal was the first of its kind, the private sector has long encroached on the NHS. In the last year of the Labour government, the NHS in England spent ?313m on management consultants, almost the same as the amount spent on skin and lung cancer services combined and the equivalent of the annual salary of 10,000 nurses.

The widespread criticism of the payments prompted health secretary Andrew Lansley to undergo a purge of many of the contracts. The latest freedom of information release shows that just ?9m was spent on consultants by the department of health in 2010-2011.

But that is only half of the story. Large amounts of money handed out by the NHS to private firms has been for clinical work carried out on behalf of the state as the health service struggled to deal with growing waiting lists and groaning wards. NHS spending with acute private hospitals rose by 466 per cent in the seven years to 2010.

NHS London recently agreed contracts worth ?6.3m, with consultants offering to train GPs how to use their proposed new powers to balance their budgets. The highest-earning firms were: PricewaterhouseCoopers (?1.61m), KPMG (?1.47m) and McKinsey (?1.27m).

In 2009 KPMG hired Mark Britinell, the department of health's director general for commissioning, as head of health. He was responsible for a policy encouraging more private sector involvement in health and drew up plans that allowed a shortlist of firms ? including KMPG ? preferential access to lucrative NHS contracts.

Prisons

Current value to the private sector

Around ?4bn

Beneficiary

Nick Buckles, chief executive of G4S, earned ?1.42m, comprising his base salary, benefits and a perfomance-related bonus.

The UK has a greater proportion of prisoners in private hands than anywhere in the world. Twelve prisons have been taken over in recent years, making up 15% of the prison population. A further nine have been recently put out to tender by justice secretary Kenneth Clarke, including the Wolds, which is run by security company G4S ? in what is potentially the largest single privatisation programme in the history of the prison service in England and Wales, although some jails may remain in the public sector after bids are invited this autumn.

The last round of competition in March saw four prisons put out for tender and one, Buckley Hall, staying in the public sector. The largest, Birmingham prison, is to be taken over by G4S, which made ?547m in pre-tax profit in 2010 and whose chief executive, Nick Buckles, earned ?1.4m.

The privatisation of the UK's prisons is likely to rumble on, and this will prove to be just the start of the process, with two companies in particular, Serco and G4S, seeking to in
crease their holdings.

The justice ministry revealed this month that it was seeking private firms to bid for an electronic tagging contract worth up to ?3bn to allow them to monitor 25,000 prisoners in the community.

Meanwhile, Serco, which made ?226m profit in 2010, says in its latest company report that the drive towards outsourcing public sector services was "paving the way". Serco, which has a 26-year, ?415m contract for running the high-security Belmarsh prison, is headed by chief executive Chris Hyman, who earned ?1.8m in salary, bonuses and allowances in 2010.

Higher education

Current value to the private sector

?33m

Beneficiary

Carl Lygo, chief executive, BPP, was paid ?435,000 in 2010.

Staff in the UK's public universities fear that their workplace will be the next to be revolutionised by private money and institutions. In the last four years the amount of taxpayers' money paid to private universities and higher education colleges has doubled from ?15m to ?33m as governments have made it easier for them to coexist with public institutions. The amount will rise again this year as the government allows students taking courses provided by private institutions to borrow ?6,000 a year from the student loans company. The University and College Union believes the amount paid to the private sector by 2014 will be ?132m, with recruitment in that sector looking strong in the latest Ucas analysis. BPP, the owner of BPP University College, one of only two private universities in the UK, accessed ?419,896 in loans in 2009. In 2010-11 that figure rose to ?1,972,000 and they have a further 74 courses next year in an illustration of the potential growth in numbers. BPP chief executive Carl Lygo earned ?435,000 in salary, bonuses and share options.

Of the ?33m of taxpayers' money accessed by providers of courses on 2010-11, more than a third (?11,488,000) went to a combination of the private equity firm Sovereign Capital, which runs Greenwich School of Management, and Apollo Inc, the American owner of BPP University College.

Meanwhile, universities are increasingly looking to the private sector for funds as the state clamps down on funding, including an 80% cut to teaching grants. The College of Law, a registered charity, is in the midst of a takeover by Montagu Private Equity, a firm which specialises in management buyouts of companies in northern Europe.