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The Government pays private sector consultants daily fees of around £ 7,000 to help with its coronavirus testing and tracing system, according to reports.
Sky News said it has seen documents revealing that the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) received around £ 10 million for around 40 consultants to provide four months of work between the end of April and the end of August.
The broadcaster said the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) received a 10-15% discount from BCG, whose daily rates for public sector work range from £ 2,400 to £ 7,360 for the most experienced consultants.
Their report comes amid continued criticism of the government’s £ 12bn test-and-trace system.
DHSC said efforts to establish NHS Test and Trace required it to work with private and public sector partners, with “every pound spent” going to keep people safe and increase testing capacity.
But Labor’s shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth, responding to the reports, said: “The numbers being spent on this broken system are really shocking.”
He added: “Testing and contact tracing fail to keep the virus under control, which makes it even more embarrassing that such huge amounts of money are being spent on something that is not fit for purpose.”
Mr Ashworth reiterated Labor’s call for a “short circuit” lockout to “fix the faulty test-and-trace system and ultimately save lives.”
In raising consultant pay reports in the Commons, Labor MP Toby Perkins said: “You will not find dedicated civil servants who are paid £ 7,500 a day.”
He added: “But what you will find is a core competency, a knowledge of your area, a desire to make sure the systems work before they are implemented.
“And that’s what we need in our system now.”
Meanwhile, Liberal Democrat MP Munira Wilson commented: “Imagine how far that money would go if it were turned over to local authorities.
“They are paying these consultants the weekly equivalent of what a nurse earns in a year.”
Large companies such as Deloitte, PwC, and BCG have been working on the government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, managing the track and trace system, purchasing personal protective equipment (PPE), and seeking to produce working fans.
Sky News reported last week that more than 1,000 Deloitte consultants were working on the NHS Test and Trace program, with daily rates of up to £ 2,360.
The broadcaster said the documents showed that the government had since hired more consultants from the private sector to work on its Moonshot mass testing program.
About 165 consultants have been hired to work on the plan between now and November, Sky News said.
This includes 84 more from Deloitte, 31 from EY and 50 from KPMG, with another 42 roles potentially available to consultants.
Tamzen Isacsson, executive director of the Management Consulting Association (MCA), said that during the pandemic a large number of consulting firms were hired to support “critical government projects,” including NHS Test and Trace.
“The consulting industry has provided multidisciplinary capabilities and senior expertise very quickly to support the government and has helped deal with complex negotiations on data, infrastructure and acquisitions at the pace,” he said.
Ms Isacsson said that the MCA member firms used by the Government had been acquired through “competitively tendered Crown business service frameworks that evaluate bidding firms based on quality and cost criteria.”
The contracts required companies to “upgrade the skills of public officials” and “transfer knowledge,” Isacsson says.
He added: “We must remember that the government is dealing with an unprecedented volume of work and great turmoil due to Covid-19 and the use of external resources has allowed them to work quickly and with intensity in many areas.”
A DHSC spokesperson said: “NHS Test and Trace is the largest test system per capita of all the major countries in Europe.
“It is processing 270,000 tests a day and almost 700,000 people have been contacted who might otherwise unknowingly have been at risk of spreading the coronavirus.
“To build the largest diagnostic network in British history, we need to work with private and public sector partners with the specialized skills and experience we need.
“Every pound spent is contributing to our efforts to keep people safe as we increase testing capacity to 500,000 tests per day by the end of October.”
BCG declined to comment.
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