THE government spent nearly £60m on consultants during Kristina Moore’s time as Chief Minister, it has emerged.
Figures delayed by more than a year shared yesterday showed that £17,868,485 was spent on consultants from July to December 2022, while £40,026,911 was spent across the whole of 2023.
This means that a total of £57,895,396 has been spent on consultant remuneration since the last election in June 2022.
This total does not include the cost of interim, agency, and fixed-term contract employees.
As a backbencher, Deputy Moore was critical of John Le Fondré’s government’s use of UK consultants.
Following a successful proposition in 2019 by Deputy Kirsten Morel – who later became Deputy Chief Minister under Deputy Moore and remains Economic Development Minister today – the government agreed to produce biannual updates on its consultant spend.
The report published in February 2023 showed that Mr Le Fondré’s government spent more than £100m on consultants, interim staff and agencies in its final year.
Of this figure, £30m was spent on consultants, compared to Deputy Moore’s £40m spend during 2023 – her final full year as Chief Minister.
During his time in the last government, Deputy Morel said they were “absolutely committed” to reducing the millions of pounds spent on temporary and locum staff.
However, he could not say the same for consultants – for which he noted there would “always be a need”.
The most recent consultant spending figures were revealed in answer to a written questions asked by Deputy Max Andrews.
However, they were first due to be published in early 2023.
In March 2023, officials said they would instead be released in May and June because of major issues with the finance part of the government’s new IT system.
This was then pushed back as resources had to be diverted to deal with the ongoing IT problems.
The JEP was then told that Islanders would have to wait until the end of July to discover details about the use of consultants for the second half of 2022, as well as details of ministerial travel and expenses from 1 July 2022 to 30 June 2023.
In August 2023, Cabinet Office officials pushed the date back again until September at the earliest.
