Defend public services

New Labour wastes billions on consultants

Defend public services

A SHOCKING report has just been published which reveals that the government
spent nearly £2 billion on management consultants last year. That’s enough to
build 100 hospitals.

The Management Consultancies Association boasts smugly of a 46% increase in
government spending on their ‘services’ from 2003. And in 2003, spending went
up by 111% to £1.28 billion.

This report – costing an impressive £400, so it must be good – shows what
New Labour’s plans for public services really mean: Sack civil servants and
other public-sector workers who actually know what they’re doing and spend a
fortune on your friends the ‘consultants’.

Anyone who has ever worked with consultants will tell you that the only
consulting they usually do is with the people who are really doing the job.
They then charge a fortune to tell the bosses how to cut the workforce.

Mick PhilIpsz is a civil service union PCS, assistant branch secretary from
the Department for Education and Skills, where the government plan to cut
staff by a third. He told the socialist:

"The use of consultants is a particularly sore point in my department.
Management are making huge cuts in staffing in the interests of ‘efficiency
savings’ at the same time as employing an army of unaccountable consultants.

"At a union meeting two weeks ago a member spoke of one consultant who was
being paid more than £1,000 a day. Also many of our members have gone from
doing fairly rewarding professional work to being glorified PAs for some of
these people.

"Whatever my department wishes to save, it’ll be less than consultants
cost, and ‘savings’ could be made without losing a single job. My union branch
is attempting to publicise the huge costs this practice involves at the DfES
and throughout the civil service."

A PCS pamphlet quotes another PCS member:

"There have been countless consultants who wish to change things but they
do not understand the work or the jobs they are changing. Civil servants then
need to sort out the mess."

This revelation about the £ billions wasted on consultants must give a
further spur to a united trade union campaign to defend all jobs in the
public-sector. This should include demands to end the waste of public money on
consultants – use the expertise of the existing public-sector workforce. Back
them up by providing decent pay and training.

If the government has billions to waste on consultants, it has billions to
spend on effective public services.