‘Scandalous’ £3.4bn UK state spending on private consultants last year

6 comments

1. Surprised the Tory ‘consultants’ bill from last year is so low…

2. This may or may not be bad.

   Reality is, the civil service simply can not have the skillset it needs within its ranks, and that is perfectly acceptable and frankly good. You’re creating a new IT system. You’re going to want the best people available to do that. They will not be working for the civil service, because their skillset is worth far more than the civil service can afford to keep on staff.

   So you bring in contractors to work the 18 month project. You have to pay near market rate (lol jk, pay is shit and they don’t get the best contractors), and boot them when the project is complete.

   We all need plumbers and electricians at some point. We don’t have them on retainer, we hire them when we need them.

3. It’s August. Many reporters are on vacation. Publications are desperate for hits. The easiest way to get hits right now is to stretch ordinary boring government math to make people who are flawed but reasonably well meaning sound like the worst people ever.

   Whatever those people are actually doing wrong is probably a lot too complicated to be good August vacation week clickbait.

4. I’m not surprised. You need consultants to fill the gaps. The public sector is huge.

5. The issue here is that the way the state has structured itself means it is permanently dependent on consultants which represents a poor use of resources.

   The article highlights the Home office spending almost double last year on consultants to clear the asylum backlog. The reason there is a backlog is because they have been cutting staff levels. Consultants cannot replace the ingrained institutional knowledge permanent staff bring so, as the peer points out, there are merely temporary fixes that leave you no better off long term.

   Yet again it needs repeating – austerity doesn’t save money, it costs you more in the long run. This idiotic neo-liberal idea that you can cut something down to the bone and expect the same level of service has a lot to answer for, you end up paying far more in the long term trying to fix the problems it causes, and the fixes are never as good as having the necessary knowledge, infrastructure and resources to begin with.

   As the saying goes – buy cheap, buy twice.

   Thankfully the current Labour government has recognised this fact and had abandoned austerity, because to do otherwise is to just setting us up for even more costly failure in the future…. Oh wait 🙁

   Edit to add: of course it’s not just about austerity. Consultants are private profit making businesses so cutting permanent staff and hiring private companies to profit of state spending is consistent with their dogshit neo-liberalism. Again, it’s a good job Labour has abandoned this ideology (looks at Wes Streetings plans for the NHS… Oh no)

6. I am a consultant. I get used for 2 reasons

   1: Government or companies didn’t pay people enough to retain the knowledge and experience, now they have to buy it back.

   2: It’s quicker and easier to get me to do it than to navigate the internal bureaucracy.