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A criminal waste of Whitehall funds

John Reid blames everyone but the management consultants.
A shame, says richard brooks

John Reid says the Home Office is "unfit for purpose". So, when will the Blair government realise that revelations of dysfunctional Whitehall departments might only end when it stops placing them at the mercy of management consultants?

Reid yesterday gave the Home Affairs Select Committee a first glimpse of what caused the released foreign prisoner crisis. The part of the Home Office that should have been keeping tabs on released prisoners had been under-staffed for years. As the backlog built up, managers failed to appreciate its significance and the criminals slipped back into the community. Yet more serious offences were committed.

But why should such a large department be unable to staff such a crucial function? Could it be because in the last two years it has spent £150 million on management

In the last two years the Home Office has spent £150 million on management consultants

consultants, not only depleting the budget but taking top civil servants' eyes off the ball of monitoring offenders? £21 million was spent by the immigration directorate alone last year on consultants to assist mandarins' navel-gazing.

Reid (left) wasn't too complementary about the Home Office's IT either, calling it a "technologically based system that seems to be on a horizon that never gets any nearer". Bought from consultants Siemens, the system has a tortured history. In the summer of 1999 it almost brought the Passport Office to a standstill and was subsequently criticised by the National Audit Office as "too ambitious".

Blair's answer to the current woes is to rearrange the ministerial deckchairs, with Liam Byrne moved to immigration for his "project management" skills. But what are these skills? Running a large government department? Leading a successful multinational? No, Mr Byrne was for years a consultant with Arthur Andersen and a broker of the marriage between New Labour and the consultancy industry in the first place.

FIRST POSTED MAY 24, 2006

Whitehall consultants: the cosy relationship