The Ministry of Justice has revealed that it spent just over £36m on management consultants in the last three years, including nearly £6m on HM Courts and Tribunal Service’s reform programme.

The department paid £10.4m to consultants in 2021/22 having spent £12m the previous year and £13.7m in 2019/20, with almost half the amount for that year in relation to the courts and tribunals reform programme. However, the outlay on consultants is significantly less than in previous years: the MoJ spent £35.6m on consultants in 2018 alone.

The bulk of the MoJ’s consultancy spend over the last three years was in relation to MoJ headquarters, paying out £16.7m, and HM Prison and Probation Service with £12.9m spent during the same period.

HMCTS accounted for £5.8m of the total £13.7m spent on consultants in 2019/20, but only £629,000 in the following two years.

The MoJ also paid £4.3m to external consultants in relation to its ‘digitech’ initiatives in the last two years as well as nearly £2m in respect of its ‘people group’ between 2019/20 and 2021/22.

Commercial and contract management at the department led to a total consultancy spend of £5.6m in the past three years, though just £436,000 of that came in the last year.

‘The Ministry of Justice makes use of management consultants to advise on resolutions to complex and challenging problems,’ justice minister James Cartlidge said in response to a written question from deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner. ‘To ensure value for money is secured from the engagement of management consultants, the ministry’s commercial policy is to put new requirements out to competition.’

 

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