Kevin Schofield is Politics Editor of HuffPost UK.
government spent nearly a quarter of a billion pounds on Home Office consultants in its final year in office, HuffPost UK can reveal.That is almost exactly double the £117.4m it spent the previous year, and three-and-a-half times the £67m spent in 2021/22.
The figure is also 10 times the average amount spent on consultants between 2019 and 2021, and 20 times the average spent from 2015 until 2019.government has pledged to halve the amount spent on consultancy services as it battles to fill a £22 billion black hole in the public finances. According to the Home Office’s annual report for 2023/24, the last government’s doomed plan to deport asylum seekers toIt said: “The increase in spend is predominantly due to continued support on the following objectives: dealing with illegal immigration from boat arrivals, including the Rwandan Migration Economic Development Partnership ; support the police to cut crime and make the UK safer for women and girls; protect the people of the UK.
A government spokesperson said: “We are committed to saving taxpayer money, which is why this new government is taking immediate action by stopping all non-essential government consultancy spending, to meet a target of halving spending on consultancy.” Labour scrapped the Rwanda scheme - which was launched with great fanfare in 2022 but never led to a single forced deportation to the east African country.Rachel Reeves Admits Taxes Will Have To Go Up When She Unveils Her BudgetSign up and we will email you daily with the best of our political and news coverage while also giving you a taste of our most-popular lifestyle, opinion and personal blogs.
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