The pandemic has shown relying on these private companies to deliver core services simply doesn’t work
When he was leader of the opposition, David Cameron did not mince his criticism of the Labour government’s dependency on consultancy companies. Speaking in 2008, he lambasted how, “for the last decade or so, in the name of modernisation, rationalisation and efficiency, we have been living under a regime of government by management consultant and policy by PowerPoint.”
Fast forward 13 years, and those words could have been said by any politician about the decisions of Conservative governments since. As one Tory minister put it last year, Whitehall has been “infantilised” by an “unacceptable” reliance on expensive management consultants.