In a recent Parliamentary session, the Shadow Minister for Defence, Chris Evans, called for transparency over defence expenditure on external consultants.
Questioning the Secretary of State for Defence, he sought to shed light on exactly how much from the public purse has been spent on these consultants.
Evans requested a breakdown of the expenditure for the time periods (a) between 31 March 2022 and 30 March 2023 and (b) since 31 March 2023.
James Cartlidge, the Minister of State, Ministry of Defence, provided the response to the query.
He detailed that the Department keeps a central record of overall consultancy expenditure which is made available to the public as part of their Annual Report and Accounts (ARAC).
“The most recent available figure for the Department’s overall spend on consultancy can be found in the Annual Report and Accounts for Financial Year 2021-22. For ease of reference the value reported was £204.974 million,” Cartlidge stated in the session.
There is the real saving, consultancy should be banned across the government.
👍
I can think of one consultant, fluent in Russian, former lecturer for Staff College courses, highly networked in Central and Eastern Europe.
Should we lose him?
So happy for you. What exactly does s/he do apart from speak Russian and know people? Is s/he on the payroll?
Need to know. I’m not even on his need to know.
Good bloke though, and when payment was discussed, it went to an RAF Charity.
No issues from this c/s
It depend upon what and who are the consultants. some of these will have rare and niche skills
Silly point of view – I work as a consultant, not directly for MOD, but in the UK defence industry so MOD is the final customer.
Consultants are used because we bring skills (to any customer) that aren’t usually available ‘in house’ to a customer. So taken to a logical conclusion, if a customer doesn’t have the manpower skills, then new equipment won’t get built and brought into service with UK Forces.
Consultants build nothing.
Rather immature.
I did not make that accusation. I question whether this is either value for money, necessary or simply lazy management that never has to account for its expenditure to shareholders.
Your ‘consultants build nothing’ is immature/childish. Lots of organisations use consultants whether government departments or commercial organisations.
If an organisation needs a certain skill set to get some work completed – they either use external consultants or they employ someone to do it. Politically for the MOD, employing someone wouldn’t be popular as the civil servant head count goes up – increase government expenditure, Daily Mail readers complaining of useless, over paid civil servants etc.(your money argument and lazy management argument).
MOD pay pretty poor salaries, so they have to bring people in from outside if people won’t work for them (your simply lazy management argument)
SO how else would you get a piece of work completed? DO say – employ someone or use consultants? Or simply not complete the work.
Considering large items of defence equipment and programmes have to fulfil legal obligations for various safety cases, nuclear safety cases for example, unless MOD staff have the skills, then other resources are required (your necessity argument)
SO the main thrust of your 2nd comment – value for money, necessity or simply lazy management are simply not valid.
It makes sense to buy in consultants / specialists when and as you need them & it is cheaper just as the average family would buy in a plumber, electrician or doctor rather than train themselves up for the few occasions when the skills are needed. It is built on cooperation upon which society is founded. Obviously there have and are occasions where consultants have been brought in to do the job of permanent members of staff in which case you need to ask why that might be and go from there.
So when you buy new software for instance you’ll need consultants to train you and set it up. No one in the MoD will have used the software before so consultants are very much needed. There’s other examples where consultants add value and expertise.
The UK defence budget will be £51.7billion 2024/2025. £204.974 million spent on external consultants is a drop in the ocean – but it would be interesting to know on what this money was spent. The MoD has a lot of SME in house but this might have been for management consultants and efficency specialists
During the Covid crisis Test and Trace spent £37 billion of taxpayers money. Some of their consultants were on £1250 a day. We could have built a full-strength armoured division for that – with money left over
‘… but it would be interesting to know on what this money was spent.’
Understatement.
What on. Why? Outcomes. All of it made public.
Incidentally, what level of security applied to those with access?
What outcomes and when were they made public, do tell us
Consultants would hold defence sector security clearance appropriate for the projects they were working on and where they were based
Trusting aren’t you? Edward Snowden was a contractor.
As for outcomes, what effect have these had? Economies, enhanced capability? The sum involved is not insignificant. What work do consultants do that in-house personnel are incapable of doing? Excluding R&D research.
The N.H.S. spends a fortune on Diversity and Inclusion roles that few see as more than window dressing. Is this ‘reach for a consultant’ (not infrequently a former staffer earning more in the ‘private sector’) just very bad management where the buyer is a captured market for life and there can be no anxiety about old hat ideas such as consequences for getting it badly wrong, objective performance targets met and value for money?
Actually the diversity and inclusion roles in the NHS are needed…we do healthcare for every group in this county and it’s a very diverse nation….what you have in this nations is small groups of people who do not access the correct healthcare at the correct time and place due to funny cultural barriers ( white men aged 50+ and their prostrates are a classic group as are women who are impacted by the menopause but don’t talk about it.)…this ends up costing the NHS a fortune. The simple truth is our society is made of lots of groups and the job of the NHS is to make sure they access the correct healthcare so it’s as cheap as possible in the long run. That’s what our diversity leads do.As for a lot..well the organisation I work that oversees the health needs of 800,000 people has one person focused on this and they are paid at a band six….which is the same as a deputy ward sister…so around 35K out of a budget of over 1billion pounds.
The other side of the coin is workforce…the NHS recruits a huge number of people from across the globe, without this ethnically diverse workforce we would not have a health system…to make sure these groups come we do need to have people who’s job it is to make sure they are happy..
Essentially the job of the NHS is to ensure the population are able to keep working….diversity leads do that as much as anyone else…
honestly take it from someone whose worked in the NHS for 25 years…that whole spending a fortune on diversity leads for no reason was just rubbish media not bothering to understand what that bit of money is spent on…how it supports good holistic healthcare..saves money in the end and is actually an insignificant cost…let me put it this way…a fundamental of the NHS is to get money for any posts..you need to put in a business case and for that you have to prove how your going to both save in another place ( reduce a health need) or significantly improve something that needs improvement.
Edward Snowden did the world a favour by exposing the illegal mass surveillance activities of the NSA and GCHQ. So illegal was this that Theresa May had to push legislation through parliament to legalise the interception of the nation’s emails, the recording of phone conversations, and the collection of “metadata” Big brother is definately watching you now
They are currently attempting to force the tech companies to put a “backdoor” into end-to-end encryption on the completely spurious grounds of “counter-paedo-terrorism”. This will mean the end of communications privacy via WhatsApp, the end of secure online banking, online shopping and much else.
You will be tellling me next that “if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear”. Tell that to the 8500 miscarriages of justice that have come to light in the past 15 years – some of whose victims served decades in the slammer for crimes they did not commit
Spot on.
Snowden, like Manning also, revealed the existence of contacts between dissidents in and others with western officials. How many suffered as result? Do even you care?
I’ll put something out there.
When I interacted with a consultant, it was not long after that eFP was increased and a train(s) were run through from Germany.
No idea why, 2+2=5? Or someone joined the dots and put the case to people on a high pay grade?
Who knows? However, there is far more than a Challenger Squadron in Estonia and that happened in the Lee of Ukraine going kinetic.
I also knew a AR Major who screwed the system for as much cash as he could get.
He wrote to me that it was great being paid to watch tiffies take off and land, as well as collect his Civil Service and Army pay and get pension on both.
You seemed worried about consultants and not the waste within MoD.
‘You seemed worried about consultants and not the waste within MoD.’
The post is about consultants.
Exactly
£205 million is NOT any drop in any ocean! If it cannot be spent constructively by the MOD, maybe they should use it to help with Free School meals for kids? Or simply put it in the Education Budget.
The Government and MOD have been squandering millions in tax payers money for decades now. The whole system is either corrupt to the core, or simply run by misfits and idiots.
Million and Billion £ contracts are ridiculous, almost as ridiculous as those who laud these obscene contracts as in the best interests of the British people.
The Ajax saga, its £5.5 billion cost so far, and the claims paid out to injured ‘users’ is a perfect example of ineptitude, or even criminal activity within the Gov and Mod.
There are dozens of examples of equipment and general kit contracts, that should never have been allowed. But the squandering and theft of contract money goes on, and on, etc, and soforth.
5.5 billion fixed cost contract, not so far. Claims paid out to injured users? Numbers, details please.
Wow really? You doubt those facts??
Yup.
It is not £5.5 billion paid so far at all. It is a fixed price contract, 5.5 billion, shit bust, end of story. There are no claims paid to servicemen for injuries caused by AJAX only. If you can prove otherwise I will gladly defer.
Compensation paid out relating to the Ajax armoured vehicle (ukdefencejournal.org.uk)
The Ajax programme – National Audit Office (NAO) report
Yup, agreed. That’s the 5 bods mentioned in the report which also states that their injuries are not solely attributable to the AJAX programme. They may have had exposure to multiple noise sources (they worked at ATDU) not just AJAX, so the article, which while factually correct in stating that compensation has been paid, is slightly disingenuous in suggesting that AJAX is the cause.
Cheers
Ian
Seriously dude… read, assess and find out the real facts before commenting on my posts again! Idiot!
Hmm, read the report (again), thanks for the link. Can’t find a reference to soldiers being paid compensation for injuries sustained by working with AJAX only. There are 5 guys I think who are subject to medical discharges but the report states that their conditions can’t be attributed solely to AJAX.
Yours ever
The Idiot
Idiot!
Yup, agreed. That’s the 5 bods mentioned in the report which also states that their injuries are not solely attributable to the AJAX programme. They may have had exposure to multiple noise sources (they worked at ATDU) not just AJAX, so the article, which while factually correct in stating that compensation has been paid, is slightly disingenuous in suggesting that AJAX is the cause.
Cheers
Ian
🙄💰💰
For context, that’s 0.4% of the defence budget.
For context a fixed price Type 31 costs 250,000 GBP.
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/type-31-frigate-costs-rise-by-40-million/
Quote from the citation below:
‘Despite the rise in costs, he assured that the average production cost remains at £250 million per ship.’
My questions are demonstrate need and positive outcomes measured in real terms i.e. projects and capability enhanced.
“fixed price Type 31 costs 250,000 GBP.”
I think you’re missing three noughts off that figure 😆
Just a thought. Surely that £200m is a bargain if the consultants stop MoD civil-servants from blowing £500m or more on some ridiculous project?…
All we’re seeing is the cost here, not the benefits they do (or don’t bring). Its only half the picture.
Are you now and have you ever been a consultant (in any field) by any chance …
I see you’ve since changed your response as you made yet another arithmetic error in the email alert! 😆
I’ve hired IT consultants in that past when we temporarily needed skills and practical experience that we didn’t have in-house. Far cheaper and effective than spending tens of thousands training a person, hoping they quickly gain the experience, and then hope they don’t leave before the job is done now they’re trained.
This is just legalised corruption . Let’s say 204 expert consultants at 1 million a year ?
Its just madness .
Same as outsourcing RAF fighter jet training. Contracting just allows corruption and bad management.
Studies have shown this leads to a decline e in any business when core thinking or business parts are contracted out
Blowing £37 billion on Test and Trace was a total waste of money. Subsequently the National Audit Office determined that it had no effect on the course of the pandemic whatsoever. Even right at the end when they finaly managed to get the app to work the rightwing Tory press actualy advised the nation to delete it from their phones because it was causing a “pingdemic”
Yes many of the pandemic strategies were farcical
Yes but many were not and saved a huge number of lives…the thing about pandemics like covid is it’s not ever happened before to a modern society so we had to all learn on the go….all the while with loads of people getting sick and systems struggle to provide things like PPE.
Some of the waste was from the fact this virus was not the flu and all our real knowledge was about managing flu…as an example the vast amounts spend on ventilators and building the ventilator hospitals ( they were not actually hospitals they were designed to manage large numbers of ventilated patents en mass)..but it turned out that bizarrely for a respiratory virus,,covid goes and attacks loads of the bodies systems and is found living in odd places like the gut and attacked around 50% of ITU patient’s kidneys) this mean the ventilator only hospitals were useless…as you needed to whole ITU support every system package..it also turned out that was better to hold off ventilation until very late with covid when traditional through was vent early.
As for lock down..this is the very simple truth from a person with vast expertise in managing risk in healthcare systems and preventing them from failing….the UK could not let covid run rampant without lockdown..you would have seen unimaginable levels of death…from a multi factorial shit storm that still runs a shiver up my spine every time I think about it…Covid had likely a natural RO of 5-10..now understand this the lock down was so effective at stopping respiratory viruses that an expected flu spike turned into the lowest rate for 130 years..it reduced the flu impact by 95%…other normal winter spike respiratory diseases were the same..but covid still spiked at 250,000 new cases a day….through a set of draconian measures that stopped the flu in its tracks….as it was the NHS hung on by its finger nails…without the lockdowns covid would have sicked the whole population with a couple of weeks ( unless you have studies disease or statistics you cannot really comprehend exponential growth of a virus with an R0 of 5-10 ) the NHS would has stopped functioning at even a basic level and every individual with a long term condition that need managing or they die would have died, everyone who got another disease that would kill you without basis treatment would have dies…heart attack due..sepsis..die…appendicitis…die…diebetic keto acidosis…die….accident that causes long bone fractures…probably die….
some nations managed to navigate without a lockdown..yes…but they were nations with small populations, very dispersed and health care provision with lots of redundancy…we live in a very crowed island, there are 55 million of us..we have less Doctors, nurses and hospitals beds per 1000 population than any other western healthcare system..we are also one of the sickest populations on the planet with a lot of older people each with a number of long term. Conditions that just want a break in healthcare or a disease like covid so it can kill them.
Even with the lockdown I had to deal with cases like a poor 19 year old care assistant who was the last member of staff standing in a care home and had been living there and working day and night for almost a week….she was not the only one…by a long way…many in the NHS and social care sector Simply walked away after covid as they were driven to the ragged edge and knew how close we came to disaster.
Right at the beginning, Johnson was esconced at Chequers dealing with his marital affairs and he missed 5 COBR meetings about the virus on the trot. Finally he attended one.
Just as I got home after a visit to ALDI to get some toilet rolls and cans of baked beans (all gone, there were no cans of beans or toilet rolls) there was a banner on Sky News at the bottom of the screen
“Virus spread out of control, NHS overwhelmed, Johnson advises nation to wash their hands more often”
That about sums up the Johnson governments early response..they had a goos 2 months they pissed away…I was literally sat in meetings in early jan that year..telling my bosses what the hell are we doing..why are we not getting strategic stocks of PPE and setting up our 24/7 incident room now….central government and the DOH was simply singing lal lal lal even in February as the storm descended and we watched the health system in Italy start to crumble.
As for getting supplies to be honest I had a shower room loaded with supplies stocked by the 20th jan..it was clear at that point that it was going to be a high R0 novel respiratory virus with a case mortality rate that has already crossed national boarders….that was about 2 month before every started panic buying…it’s my job to spot trends and risk of harm to life in complex systems..so I tend to be good at calling potential shit and fan events earlier than most. But then as a standard I alway have 1 months provisions in the house…( I’ve studies the national risk register) if you can be in a position to be one less problem or mouth to feed in a crisis your doing your society a favour.
Yes that was a waste…sadly If they had given a fraction of that over the years to support local public health teams it would have made more of a difference during covid and they would have been around doing other good public health stuff..like chirdens health, women’s health, men’s health, reducing the impact of things like noro virus in care homes…The lack of public health teams was so bad the nation was struggling to manage outbreaks in critical areas like nursing homes and GP practices etc…it was so bad that they had to draft in people like me..to do public health…( my major knowledge is emergency medicine, safety systems, risk management and civil contingency..my public health knowledge is secondary)…trouble was my main role was meant to be ensuing Primary care services were safe and running properly and that was going well during the pandemic…
There will be public health textbooks out soon on how the government mismanaged the epidemic. The tory party is full of rightwingers that opposed the lockdowns as a restriction of freedom and who regarded the furloughing as “giving them two years off work on 80% of salary”
I think the word ‘sbsequently’ is important to note there.
Utter tosh.
You do realise Test and Trace covered every test that was sent out to the public, the creation of new labs to process those tests, employing people to trace contacts etc, etc.
The app only cost £35m, was one of the first in use in Europe, and was estimated by the University of Oxford to have saved over 10,000 lives in its first year.
https://fullfact.org/online/37-billion-test-and-trace-app-scam/
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2023-02-22-nhs-covid-19-app-saved-estimated-10000-lives-its-first-year-research-finds
I’m surprised they spent so little on consultants TBH.
It strikes me as the minimum spend necessary.
I know this is controversial but it may not be enough.
A lot of that will be the recently retired who really know an area and can be hired back as a consultant to help get a project over the line.
Yeah judging by some of the posts on here people have very limited understanding of what a consultant can offer and where they are must haves as no one in the MoD will have knowledge or theirs to few of them if they do.
Well with consultants is not about how much you have spent it’s about the value you get from that.
From my experience, HMG and executive agencies such as the NHS tend to use consultants for a number of reasons.
1) what they do is usually insanely complex with so many different knowledge bases and expertise needed at different times it would be insanely expensive to keep the people on the permanent payroll…and if your not doing something all the time you loss the skills. As executive agencies of HMG are expected to have lean management costs you cannot retain these niche skill sets…so it’s best to use consultants…this is a good use of consultants.
2) Major restructuring…the NHS management structures are just enough to do business as usual…so when the government decide a restructuring is needed then your only option is an management consultancy company…this is not really A useful use of taxpayers money as these Major restructures never improve anything..infact they tend to stultify improvement for around 5 years as everyone runs around trying to reconstruct all the bits that need to connect…when you have a vastly complex systems it’s best to do smaller tests and ongoing improvements so not to fuck it all up while at the same time spending a fortune( the langsley reforms of 2012 utterly fucked up the NHS and I’ve spent most of the last decade..actually doing stuff to ameliorate that one).
3) Getting a report on how your organisation is doing and what could be changed…this is the most utterly pointless use of management consultants..just ask your staff…don’t pay someone as they don’t actually know what’s happening on the ground and over the long term..what they suggest never works..they have no investment and it hacks your staff off.
So if that 200m is on number one it’s the MOD showing good sense and use of public money…if it’s number Three then not so good.
Exactly, the headline just gives the cost of consultants and not the benefits they can bring. Half of the picture.
OT a little bit but I see ‘The Guardian ‘ has an online article about the PM talking up Ben Wallace as a future Nato secretary general. Which would be a great pity in some ways to see him depart from his present position.
He’s been touted previously as the next NATO Secretary General. But the French are iffy as the DSACEUR is currently a Brit.
The French are always iffy. If they started being stand up allies that supported the wider alliance rather than just asking themselves all the time:
“what’s in it for us?”
“How can we bring this funding to France?”
“How can we get sole proprietor rights on this technology?”
“Why should we risk French lives and French taxpayers money fighting or supporting in X country?”
Etc etc then there might be a French secretary general sometime.
These days, £200 million is small change: ye gods, they are spending £100 billion+ on a useless trainset from London to Brum. What can ye buy for £100 billion smackers?
It’s a train for posh or rich folks so they don’t have to travel with the riff raff or deal with them at the stations and platforms.
How many people actually get a train from London to Birmingham for work? How does this line benefit the economy and by how much more than what can be upgraded already.
Clearly you don’t realise the entire West Coast Mainline is operating at capacity which means local services which also use the tracks for parts of their journeys are also maxed out. HS2 is about adding capacity to the rail system, not about decreasing journey times.
But is it the best use of the money? I think that’s most people’s view. Is it still operating at capacity since covid? Did trains get back to pre covid levels of passengers?
Intercity journeys seem to have recovered, commuter services still down – I only commute into the office 1 day per month now.
However it’s planning and contracts all pre-date corvid. From what I’ve heard there would be no money to be saved in not finishing what’s already been started. Which is why the extensions, have been either delayed or cancelled.
As a railwayman myself, exactly this Sean.
It is needed. We look at how other nations build up infrastructure and moan about our own, then when we actually build something more complaints.
The routing could have been better and going through ancient woodlands is wrong.
Like everything we put our hands on, costs go through the roof. I’ve read of suggestions the money could have gone into existing infrastructure but that’s often easy to say and not so easy in reality.
Heathrow is another, all the noise complaints. Well, the airport was there before most of the population which expanded because the airport is there and locals work there. It is needed, peole like to fly.
We had the same crap in the 80s when they were considering building HS1 and now people are happy with it. I know, I had to do field studies in Kent as part of my GCSEs. 🙄
Alas many people don’t bother to read beyond the “20 mins faster to Brum” soundbite to find the detailed business case. As it is, I belief there’s a lot of investment going on in the infrastructure around the West Coast mainline to take advantage of it once intercity traffic is diverted to HS2 allowing more non-London trains to be hosted.
Building infrastructure does seem excessively expensive in the U.K. Reducing the amount of planning objections and legal cases that can brought by NIMBYs would be a start – or as in France, not allowing them for critical national infrastructure would help. But then SSSIs etc still need safeguarding.
And of course, being such a crowded island, building usually means compulsory property purchases based on current inflated property values.
Yes, all contributory points.
Hornby or Lima ?
Hornby. Defo.
Exactly the French developed high speed rail 40 years ago, we’ll get HS2 after the French have had HS rail for 50 years. Thats just embarrassing for the country.
I think the point is that it’s a really expensive way to add capacity. £100 billion could deliver many more miles of new lines linking up unconnected towns and cities and adding capacity much much more than the single HST line running from London to Birmingham.
The really really really funny thing is that HS2 is now forecast to not go into London Euston or any other London terminal until the 2040s as it’s overspent and the programme hadn’t realised that Euston needs a massive redevelopment programme and the widening of lines and adding extra platforms meant buying up central London properties lining the route. So they could knock them down for the railway to be added. Very very expensive , not foreseen and not fully coated or budgeted for.
It’s an absolute joke.
No it was needed. Services serving Wales and the West Midlands were all being impacted by the WCML running at capacity. As it is they’re investing a lot in local branch lines that connect to the WCML to improve local services once HS2 allows a reduction in London traffic.
Even without Euston, it’ll have a Central London station at Old Oak Common with connections to the Elizabeth Line, etc. Personally as someone living in London, it makes more sense to use this as the main terminus rather than overloading the Circle, Victoria and Northern lines out of Euston.
As for Euston, nope you got that completely wrong, they always knew it’d be expensive due to having to buy property for the larger station. They don’t need to buy up properties on the route, HS2 will be underground from Old Oak Common to Euston. But the cost of £1.2bn for that tunnel plus £5bn for the station is difficult to justify.
Correct. I thought it well known that the London section will go through tunnels myself. Trying to put more lines into Euston through the existing cutting north of there would be more than just buying up properties, the whole lie of the land precludes that without massive costs, including removing a rather important site used by the MoD.
Gravy train and troughs spring to mind.
Across all government departments from defence to health (probably dwarfs the £200 million at the MoD), to education and elsewhere they have teams of ministers, civil servants, thousands of employers and contractors……but for some reason then also feel the need to pay the private sector to tell them what to do!!!
It’s absolutely rotten. Just a way of shifting the blame for difficult decisions.
We “scored” a great 16th place on a list of countries surveyed for corruption recently. Yup, 16th. THATS where lobbying, donations and bungs gets a so called civilised and democratic country on the world stage. Its a huge trough with thousands of noses in it. The only thing I liked about the Orange Man was his “drain the swamp” saying. About sums us up.
I’ll think you’ll find most contracts are up from grabs for anyone who’s willing to bid. Its not Hollywood movies. You can have gander at current government contracts below.
https://www.gov.uk/contracts-finder
I wonder if any of these consultants were actually civilian contract staff who were doing work that would normally be done by service personnel or civil servants, had they not been cut from the payroll some years ago.
Represents 4 or 5 patrol boats every year or a new frigate every 2 years!!! Consultants really means that the MOD staff aren’t able to do their jobs themselves.
Shambles!
Not necessarily, SRO’s have little to none project/programme experience as reported by UKDJ. So maybe therein lies the problem? SRO’s want a second opinion from contractors despite being informed by said MOD staff
A link between this and the lack of project/programme management experience at SRO level could be the driver here…..
I need to get a job as a defence consultant. £££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££
The definition of “Consultants” is very broad brush. DE&S have a number of contracts where outside companies providing staff to fill roles in the organisation, either as short term fixes, or to fill roles they cannot recruit for. Does that make me and others a “consultant” or a “contractor”.
So, more than a 6th T31.
What I cannot understand is why we have so many serving Admirals, Generals, and Air Marshalls employed in the UK military, and yet we still contract Consultants to tell those * officers things that they should already know.