UK Government departments award contracts worth up to £94m for Brexit-related consultancy work

UK Government departments have awarded contracts worth up to £94m for Brexit-related consultancy work since the June 2016 referendum, an analysis of procurement data has shown. Included in this is £7m in deals related to IT projects.

The figures, compiled by public contracts database Tussell and seen by Holyrood’s sister title Civil Service World, give a glimpse at the scale of government spending with consultancy firms since the UK voted to leave the EU.

The total value is likely to be considerably higher, as the data only includes contracts explicitly labelled as EU exit work. CSW has previously reported on millions of pounds of departmental spending on Brexit-related consultancy fees, not all of which is accounted for in the contract figures.

Among the deals awarded is a £1.1m IT and business services consultancy contract with the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs awarded to The Boston Consulting Group. The deal covered general advice about the department’s wide range of Brexit-related work streams.

Defra also awarded to PwC a £1m contract for IT services project support. The audit firm also won a tech deal worth £824,094 with the Crown Commercial Service. The contract covers “delivery support for the EU Exit Settlement Scheme”.

The Home Office has awarded two Brexit-related IT contracts to Accenture: a £2.5m deal for support of a caseworking application; and a £1.5m contract to integrate caseworking software to support the settlement scheme.

Figures published by Tussell earlier this month showed public sector bodies awarded contracts worth a total of £554m to private consultancies in 2018 – up slightly from £546m in 2017. Three central government departments – the Cabinet Office, the Home Office and the Department for International Development – accounted for nearly half of that spending between them.