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Defra splashes cash on advisors as farmers face cuts in subsidies
EXCLUSIVE: A government department spent more than half a billion pounds on consultants and temporary staff in a single year while considering slashing the subsidy payments of thousands of farmers.
In 2007-2008 Defra spent 573.3m on "professional services", the buying in of external help. This was more than a fifth of its entire budget for the year and double what was spent the previous year.
In 12 months the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which employs 10,536 people, spent 420m on consultants, compared with 54m the previous year.
Of this figure, 358.2m was handed out for just one programme – the Government's Warmfront scheme to make homes more energy efficient.
It also spent a further 62m on additional consultants' fees and a further 62m on temporary cover for absent staff, up from 7m in 2006/07.
The overall figure comes against the backdrop of a decline in Defra's workforce of more than 3,000 over six years and the news it is considering cutting subsidy payments to more than 17,000 farmers to curb costs.
Defra defended the spending, saying consultants were generally used to provide expertise absent in its full-time staff for one-off projects and that it made better sense to employ them temporarily.
Trade union officials and taxpayer bodies condemned the spending as being poor value for money, while the Tories branded it "ridiculous".
Mark Wallace of the TaxPayer's Alliance said: "This is a vast amount of money and smacks of a failure to properly plan or manage the department's work.
"Every time Whitehall pay goes up we are told it is because civil servants are the best staff available. If then departments choose to go out and hire consultants to tell them how to do their jobs then this is a clear inconsistency. It leaves taxpayers with a massive bill.
"Everyone in the real world is having to tighten their belts and cut back at the moment. A lot of these costs could be easily cut out with proper organisation of staff."
The figures, published in Defra's annual report, also showed 81m was spent on staffing and consultants for the controversial Rural Payments Agency, which has faced heavy criticism over its handling of the payments of subsidies to the nation's farmers.
A spokesman for the Public and Commercial Services Union, which represents Defra workers, said it was hard to justify spending on consultants at a time when civil service jobs were being cut. Money would be better spent improving existing employees' knowledge, he said.
"You have got spending on consultants which is in the billions across Government and consultants are often doing the same work as civil servants which offers very poor value to the taxpayer.
"The Rural Payments Agency is heavily reliant on temporary staff and you had a situation there where people who were working for the RPA on a temporary basis were sitting opposite a Defra employee with two or three years' experience, doing the same job.
"Using consultants is also quite demoralising because it says to staff that any external advice is going to be better than theirs and that management would rather source ideas externally.
"There are better ways of working and quite often the existing staff will have the ideas and answers rather than bringing in consultants at a cost of millions."
Tory shadow Farming Minister Jim Paice said consultants had a role but it is ridiculous to spend hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers' money on them.
"I am convinced that the serious problems that the RPA has been having stem from their use of temporary staff. They do not know what is going on and neither to farmers when they have to speak to a different person every time they ring up."
A Defra spokeswoman said: "The Department's only uses consultants or temporary staff where it provides value for money and where it is appropriate and necessary to use them as an alternative to building in-house capacity."
WHERE THE MONEY WENT
Total spent on professional services
2007-08: 573.3m
2006-07: 290m
Total spent on temporary staff
2007-08: 62m
2006-07: 7m
Total spent on consultants
2007-08: 420m
2006-07: 54m
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