Scandal of £4bn bill for Labour advisers
THE Government was yesterday condemned for squandering taxpayers’ cash after plans to spend up to £4billion on an army of management consultants for the public sector were uncovered.
Conservatives said it showed the Government’s claims to be seeking billions of pounds of savings were a sham. And David Cameron urged ministers to start cracking down on public spending now, saying Britain needed a “massive culture change” to tackle the mountain of debt racked up by Labour.
The plans to hire management consultants were revealed on a European Union database, where public sector contracts have to be advertised.
The “framework agreement” outlined management consultant tasks that would be available across the public sector in the UK.
It envisaged the total value of the contracts would be £4billion over three years. Work on offer includes “stakeholder management”, “customer profiling”, “taxation advice on policy”, “culture change”, “equality and diversity”, “naming, branding and positioning” and even a “Channel Migration Strategy”.
Shadow Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude said: “All the management consultants in the world cannot put this broken Labour Government back together.
“At a time when Whitehall needs to tighten its belt because of the nation’s ruined public finances, Labour ministers are burning £4billion of taxpayers’ money on consultants to tell them what to do. This is another sign of a Government that has completely lost its way.” The public sector has ballooned
under Labour, with the number of state jobs rising to 5.7million and still growing at a time when private sector jobs are being lost in the recession.
Matthew Elliott, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “These figures undermine the Chancellor’s rhetoric about efficiency savings. An outrageous amount of taxpayers’ money will be squandered under these proposals.”
Suppliers are invited to tender for the work by a notice on the European Commission public sector procurement database. The “framework agreement” was advertised by OGC Buying Solutions, which is the trading arm of the Treasury’s Office of Government Commerce.
A Buying Solutions spokesman said: “It is wrong to consider that £4 billion will actually be spent as a result of this framework, as this figure is notional.
“This framework has been set up to save money by providing a simple to use facility for the public sector to access consultant services without having to go through timely and expensive tendering.
“Last year Buying Solutions generated £672million of savings for the taxpayer as a result of establishing facilities such as this framework.”