Home Office blaggers

From the Telegraph today:

A large slice of the £140 million bill for last year went on two projects that have since been subject to embarrassing Home Office climb downs.

And spending on one company has trebled in the same year it faced severe criticism for losing data on every prisoner in the country.

The sharp rise means the department has now spent more than half a billion pounds on external experts since 2005, despite having thousands of its own staff.

It comes three months after it emerged the National Policing Improvement Agency, the quango charged with improving police efficiency and cutting bureaucracy, spent more than £70 million on consultants in its first year.

Mark Wallace, the campaign director of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: “Whenever anyone questions the large salaries paid out to Home Office staff we are told it is because they are the best people for the job.

“If that is the case why on earth are we paying an army of consultants to tell them how to do their job properly?

“Whitehall must drastically rein in spending on consultants if it is ever going to control its costs, especially at a time of recession.”

The Home Office spent £140 million on external consultants in 2008/09, a 46 per cent increase on the £96 million spent the previous year.

Three of the top five biggest earners were handed almost £60 million to help on the ID cards project or the controversial proposals to monitor every email and phone call.

PA Consulting Group was the highest earner with £24.5 million while the year before it received some £8.4 million.

The company had one contract with the Home Office cancelled last year after it lost a memory stick containing the details of 84,000 prisoners and 30,000 offenders.

Spending on the firm in 2008/09 was for work on the national identity scheme and the Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP).

The IMP centres on proposals to track every email, phone call, text message and website visit as part of the battle against terrorists and criminals who use complex communications to plot crimes.

But in April this year, Jacqui Smith, the then Home Secretary, scrapped plans for a national communications database to hold the information amid privacy fears.

Instead each service provider will be ordered to collect and store the data so the authorities can access it when needed.

Deloitte and Touche LLP received £21 million in 2008/09 and Ernst and Young was given £13.8 million, both mainly for work on the national identity scheme.

The ID cards scheme has also since suffered a climb-down after Alan Johnson, who succeeded Mrs. Smith at the Home Office; scrapped plans top make them compulsory.

More than £200 million has been spent on the £4.9 billion scheme so far but both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have said they would scrap it if they win power.


The phrase “Can’t tell their arse from their elbow” comes to mind.

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