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The £100,000-a-day cost could have hired more than a thousand senior nurses, the Unite trade union said, as the Department for Health told us “these consultancy spending rates are not acceptable”.
The cash-strapped NHS has spent £140m in four years on private management consultants as the Government vows to slash this “unacceptable” spending.
The £100,000 a day cost of expensive private advice could instead have been spent on hiring more than one thousand senior nurses, the Unite trade union said. It found that between 2019 and 2023, NHS England spent nearly £100m on a string of blue-chip consultancy firms, while Independent Commissioning Boards within the NHS spent a further £40m.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “We don’t need management consultants to improve the NHS – we need more frontline staff who are better paid and better valued. Instead of wasting millions on companies producing fancy presentations, the NHS should be spending money on resolving the recruitment and retention crisis. We could be funding over a thousand extra senior nursing roles a year with these management consultancy fees”.
In her first speech as Chancellor of the Exchequer to the House of Commons, Rachel Reeves pledged to “rein in consultancy and Government communications spending” and added: ”Those things got out of hand under the last Government, and we will rein them in.”
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “These consultancy spending rates are not acceptable – every penny that goes into the NHS needs to be well spent where it matters most – on patient care. We are working closely with NHS England to implement stronger controls on consultancy spending and resolve workforce challenges, which will reduce our reliance on expensive external support. We are also committed to moving towards a neighbourhood health service, with more care delivered in local communities to spot problems earlier and bring more clarity and focus to the system without expensive consultancy costs.”
An NHS England spokesperson said: “The NHS is already one of the most efficient health services in the world with all organisations subject to strict rules around spending. The NHS is committed to cracking down on wasteful spending, and we have already saved millions of pounds by reducing the size of our organisation by more than 40% to reinvest in frontline patient care.”
Unite sent freedom of information requests to NHS England and every ICB in England asking them what they had spent on consultancy firms. The biggest earner was PA Consulting, which received £59m from NHS England over four years and a further £4m from ICBs.
A PA Consulting spokesperson said: “PA Consulting has a strong track record of helping governments and organisations around the world tackle society’s biggest challenges, and we are proud of our work delivering essential value and improving public services. Whilst we are unable to comment on confidential client matters, we can confirm that our experts’ in-depth understanding of the healthcare sector and NHS systems helps us deliver meaningful improvements for clients and patients.”
The next four biggest earning consultancy firms were Deloitte, which received £16m from the NHS over four years, PWC, with £11m, KPMG with £9.6m and Attain Health Management Services, on £9.2m Deloitte, PWC and KPMG declined to comment. Attain Health Management Services did not respond.
