MoD and the £4,000 a day Consultants
by Baron Halpenny, LincsMag Editor.
Date: 03 November 2011
Ministry of Defence, it has been revealed, are paying consultants on average of nearly £4,000 a day each to advise it on cost-cutting measures and to provide support to the MoD’s programme of re-negotiation with top suppliers. This to a consulting firm that has been engaged without any advertised competition.
The MoD has already handed over £5.5million to the consultancy firm, Alix Partners, which was drafted in last November to find savings in military contracts.
£3,950 a day
The spending on consultants - which includes two lots of bonus payments - was revealed by Defence Minister Peter Luff in response to a Parliamentary question that showed that each MoD consultant earned an average of £3,950 a day.
That comes to an average 5 day a week salary of £19,750. Yes, WEEKLY! And only working 5 days.
Now realise that a private on the frontline, getting shot at and risking his life for his country, having been sent into a hostile environment on the whim of a politician, earns just £17,265 per year.
That is £17,265 a YEAR and that's NOT working 5 days a week but 7!
The consultants can also claim 25p mile for car travel, £90 a night for accommodation and £10 for lunch, but please don’t weep about the sum allowed for lunch, as this is on top of the £3,950 a day they are getting.
Add to all this the consultancy firm can increase day rates by 3% on 1 April 2012, you’d be a fool not to note the date, or are they trying to say that the only fools are the British taxpayer?
But if that’s not enough, there is a success fee of an amazing 30% of the day rate based on success. I would have thought they are paid enough to just do the job and being successful is all part of it, otherwise why are they being engaged? If you want to motivate them, make it clear that money will be DEDUCTED if they fail to meet targets!
Cold Heartedness
News of these huge payments came in the same month, October, when it was revealed that Army bosses had deducted £433 from the pay of Lance Corporal Jordan Bancroft, who was killed in Afghanistan last year.
They sent L/Cpl Bancroft's family a payment for unused leave, but had the heartless gall to have docked the salary, which had been paid in advance before the soldier's death.
Devastating MoD Cuts
The MoD is facing devastating £5billion of cuts to its budget over the next few years as part of the Lib/Con Government's deficit-slashing austerity measures, which apparently don’t include Cameron’s pet projects and agenda, such as giving ever more money away to other countries and lining his nest and that of his family, colleagues and friends.
The MoD is set to cut around 17,000 jobs by the year 2015 and these include thousands of frontline service personnel, yet sadly no politicians or deadbeat hanger-ons are set to lose their lucrative jobs ... paid for by an ever-squeezed and abused taxpayer.
The cutbacks will also affect local communities especially those closely linked to the military and its bases. Cutbacks to the RAF have a knock on effect to the local community in Lincolnshire, something these ministers have not put into the equation
Yet despite these MoD cutbacks to the frontline and ones that have to do the actual work, the department has repeatedly come under criticism for its back-office overspending, such as the £250million its civil servants spend each year using official credit cards.
Add to this the fact that the MoD has spent an amazing £9million on advertising for new personnel at a time when there is a large cut in the number of jobs that are now available.
Rising Tensions
The Lib/Con Government's penny pinching cuts comes at a time of rising tensions around the world and when a nation should be increasing its military strength, not cutting it, to show strength and warn off any aggressors.
Let us not forget that Cristina Kirchner's Falklands rhetoric was a strong election winner in Argentina.
“I think that the cuts themselves are very poorly thought out and may trigger a similar trouble in the Falklands that Mrs Thatcher's equally badly thought out ones did!”, said the Chairman of the English Democrats, Robin Tilbrook,
“Mrs Cristina Kirchner has already made clear moves to ramp up the tension there and is backed by Obama. Without carriers Cameron will be finished if there is a rematch.”
And regarding these outrageous payments to MoD consultants, Robin commented, “As for spending so much on consultants to advise on cuts, that is beyond parody!”
