Q61 Jim Sheridan: PCS seem to have a number. They say that you have used 40 firms of consultants.
Ms McHale: That has been provided in a previous answer before, I think -.
Q62 Jim Sheridan: If it was provided in an answer previously, why does Mr Varney not know that?
Ms McHale: We do not have the detail at our fingertips today.
Q63 Jim Sheridan: He just said he did not know. You said it was provided in a previous answer.
Ms McHale: Some of these are construction providers who help on the various major works projects that we do. There can be quite a high number of consultants involved in those types of projects.
Q64 Jim Sheridan: But we do not know how many?
Ms Ghosh: We do know how many, but -
Mr Varney: I did not bring it with me and I answered about the contract.
Q65 Jim Sheridan: I would have thought one of the things we would want to know is how many consultants were used.
Mr Varney: I have said we will give you an answer.
Q66 Jim Sheridan: Prior to bringing in consultants, was there any assessment done in-house in terms of those people who may have been capable given the proper training to do the job rather than employing consultants?
Mr Varney: I am sure there was.
Q67 Jim Sheridan: You are sure there was?
Mr Varney: I am sure there was. We had historically managed this estate through individual locations. We were now pulling it together and managing it as a whole. Therefore, we were managing the estate across all of the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise. That clearly threw up problems that we had not had to deal with before across the whole estate. We are not a real estate business.
Q68 Jim Sheridan: You understand the confusion and perhaps the frustration caused when people are being made redundant at the same time as you are bringing in consultants?
Ms McHale: To clarify, a lot of the consultants that we are using are extremely specialist skill sets. They are not skill sets that we could develop as transferable skills in-house. It is a preference and a priority to professionalise the contract management unit and grow that skill inside but sometimes we are not able to do that and we have to buy external advice.
Q69 Jim Sheridan: With the greatest respect, I have a view about consultants and certainly within the Civil Service it is too easy, when managers arrive at a difficult decision, to just reach out for consultants. It does not happen in the private sector. In the private sector if a manager asks for a consultant the manager gets sacked. They do not have two of them making the same decisions.
Mr Varney: With great respect, you have a very different experience of the private sector than I do.
Q70 Jim Sheridan: If we have to bring in consultants, why do we need managers?
Mr Varney: Because sometimes the consultants bring in specialist expertise. The consultant firms do quite well, most of it out of private industry.