The government has been criticised for a “lack of transparency” and failure to grasp expenditure details related to consultancy work it bought in preparation for the UK leaving the European Union.
Following a review the spending watchdog, the National Audit Office (NAO), said departments had spent at least £97m on Brexit consultants by April 2019.
But it found expenditure figures held by the Cabinet Office failed to match up with departmental figures.
Cabinet Office figures showed £65m was spent on consultants in the year to April 2019. However, the NAO estimated the total costs from Brexit-related consultancy to be 50% higher.
The NAO investigation uncovered an additional £32m in Brexit consultancy expenditure by government departments to April this year, including costs from the EU referendum until April 2018.
The extra spending related to contracts entered into before Cabinet Office began offering support to departments requiring consultancy, and contracts with consultancy firms that departments are not able to access via Cabinet Office arrangements, the auditor said.
Auditor General Sir Amyas Morse’s report set out how “limitations in the data” used by the Cabinet Office “inhibit its ability to fully understand” and there was “little oversight” of departments’ expenditure on Brexit-related consultancy before April 2018.
It said government departments failed to publish details of contracts awarded within 90 calendar days.
While other consultancy contracts took an average of 82 days to be published, the average for Brexit consultancy contracts was 119 days and all that had been published were “significantly redacted”.
In April Sky News revealed that the government had quietly awarded £75m of Brexit-related contracts to some of the world’s biggest consultancy firms.
The news report made the contracts public for the first time, prompting the chair of the public affairs committee Meg Hillier to condemn the secrecy, and refer the contracts for investigation by the National Audit Office.
Labour MP Ms Hillier said it was “not good enough” that the Cabinet Office, which is responsible for improving government efficiency, appeared to have lost track of 50% of the consultancy costs.
She said: “The lack of transparency around Brexit preparations that my committee has become all too familiar with applies to the use of these consultants.
“It is not good enough that some departments are failing to publish even basic information about their contracts and that the Cabinet Office does not know how much is being spent across government.”
The NAO also said the Cabinet Office found overall spending on consultancy services to have increased since 2015-16 from £0.5bn to £1.5bn in 2017-18.
But the figures reported in departments’ annual reports for consultancy costs totalled £134m for 2015-16, compared with £332m for 2017-18.
Sir Amyas said the Cabinet Office was “working to understand the difference between the data sets” and would review spending, but added Brexit preparations had been a “significant challenge” for the government.
The Management Consultancies Association said: “The UK is a world-leading centre for consulting and we have been proud to provide expert support to the Government with its Brexit preparations during this critical time, providing extra capacity, specialist knowledge and expertise.
“Departments have faced an unprecedented volume of workload planning for all Brexit scenarios and using external resources has enabled the government to work quickly and with intensity on major programmes across the UK.”
The NAO said six prominent consultancy firms received 96% of Brexit work from the Cabinet Office.
It named Deloitte as receiving 22%, PA Consulting 19%, PricewaterhouseCoopers 18% and Ernst & Young with 15%.
US giants Bain & Company had 11% and Boston Consulting Group took up 11% and 10% of the work respectively.
:: Exclusive: ‘Secret’ £75m Brexit contracts facing investigation
Source : Sky News : http://news.sky.com/story/bill-for-brexit-consultants-tops-16397m-as-government-criticised-for-lack-of-transparency-11736238