Over the course of three years, spending included almost £60 million for a single consulting firm.
According to new analysis by the Unite trade union, the money spent on management consultants by NHS England (NHSE) and its integrated care boards (ICBs) could have been used to pay for thousands more nurses.
NHSE spent around £100 million on a variety of consultancies between 2019–20 and 2022–2023; of these, £60 million went to PA Consulting alone. In the same period, an extra £40 million was spent by ICBs, the NHS entities in charge of regional health care planning and procurement.
The money given to these consulting companies might have been used to pay 1,037 more nurses' wages annually, since senior grade 6 nurses presently make close to £45,000. Even more nurses with entry-level positions or lower grades would have been paid with the funds.
According to Unite national secretary Sharon Graham, more frontline employees who are better compensated and respected are what the NHS needs to improve, not management consultants. The NHS should invest in fixing the recruiting and retention issue rather than squandering millions on firms making ostentatious presentations. With these management consulting costs, they could be paying for more than 1,000 more senior nurse positions annually.
Unite requested information from NHSE and all ICBs in England on their expenditures on consulting companies through freedom of information requests. The consulting companies Boston Consulting, Deloitte, KPMG, McKinsey, Moorhouse, PA Consulting, and PwC received more than £1 million from NHSE.
The Labour administration made it plain when it was elected that it was going to reduce expenditure on these ridiculous management consulting businesses that do little more than print reams of paper, Richard Munn, the Unite national officer for health, added. The fact that waiting lists are still getting longer while these snake-oil marketers and scammers are making millions of dollars is ridiculous.
