Ministry of Defence hires consultants to sack soldiers

Alix Partners is the firm of management consultants who are advising the Ministry of Defence on how to cut costs. They charge the MOD a daily rate of £4,000 per consultant that, as the 'Daily Mail' points out, amounts to more in a week than a soldier's annual salary. This could either be money well spent by a department so notorious for their costly incompetence that some clued-up consultants could save the tax-payer an aircraft carrier of cash; or it's good money after bad as the management whizz kids will simply recommend sacking squaddies, without attacking the real problem, the highly paid top-brass that is running the place into the ground.

In 2011 then Defence Secretary Liam Fox described how MOD chiefs had to take the blame for the swinging cuts the coalition is making to the armed services, telling 'The Guardian': "I think the MoD consistently dug a hole for itself that it eventually found that it could not climb out of." There are too many instances to list but some notable examples include the Type 45 destroyer, that was late and over budget although it looked cheap and timely compared to the £1.5 billion overspend on two aircraft carriers that were built for the now defunct Harrier fleet. For sheer bumbling ineptitude you must honour the huge black hole that was the Nimrod crash that killed 14 servicemen. At the subsequent inquiry in 2009 'The Guardian' said: "The report describes a PowerPoint culture in government that glosses over hard questions and detailed evidence, and sacrifices safety to incompetence, sloppiness, complacency and cynicism."

At this point the project to build the much-needed replacement for the knackered Nimrod was ten years behind schedule and £1 billion over budget, before it was cancelled altogether last year, leaving Britain without naval reconnaissance planes and more vulnerable to attack.So soldiers are paid a pittance to fight in Afghanistan and 1,100 sailors and navy support staff have just been canned in a recent round of redundancies but the medal encrusted buffoons at the MoD have found the cash to employ high price consultants, to stop them making the sorts of mistakes that cost even more than money.
Fox said he would sack commanders and civilians responsible for cost overruns but it is difficult to discover evidence of anyone senior being binned (consultants won't be any help with this as they're not going to bite the hand that feeds them and recommend sacking the high command).

But it's a bigger problem than just the MoD. In 2010 it was revealed that the coalition had spent £1.8 billion on consultants, a rise from £1.5 billion during the last year of the previous government. It seems like the Department of Health (laying off thousands of staff) spends the most, a staggering £480,402,000 on consultants, and not the sort who wear white coats and make you feel better. In the case of the NHS four contracts worth £300,000 were awarded to "aid the transition" to GP commissioning, so using public money to pay for the privatisation of the NHS. During 2011 ministers were signing contracts worth up to £56.6 million per day, much of it on employing consultants.
It was Tony Blair who really brought consultancy culture to the UK, trying to sack 80,000 civil servants and replacing them with managers. There is no question that outside advisors can benefit an incompetent organisation like the MoD, but what solutions can they offer when the problem starts at the top. By sacking lots of support staff they are leaving organisations under staffed and totally reliant on these expensive services.