The last Tory government spent nearly a quarter of a billion pounds on Home Office consultants in its final year in office, HuffPost UK can reveal.
A staggering £233.75 million was spent on “consultancy services” by the department in 2023/24, according to its annual report.
That is almost exactly double the £117.4m it spent the previous year, and three-and-a-half times the £67m spent in 2021/22.
The figure is also 10 times the average amount spent on consultants between 2019 and 2021, and 20 times the average spent from 2015 until 2019.
The new Labour government has pledged to halve the amount spent on consultancy services as it battles to fill a £22 billion black hole in the public finances.
According to the Home Office’s annual report for 2023/24, the last government’s doomed plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda was responsible for some of the spike in consultancy costs.
It said: “The increase in spend is predominantly due to continued support on the following objectives: dealing with illegal immigration from boat arrivals, including the Rwandan Migration Economic Development Partnership (MEDP); support the police to cut crime and make the UK safer for women and girls; protect the people of the UK.”
A Labour source said: “This is typical of what the Tories were doing in their last year in government - spending money like no tomorrow and handing hundreds of millions to their mates in the consultancy sector.
“No wonder they left a £22 billion hole in the public finances.
“And who were the guilty men in charge of the Home Office when these massive bills were being racked up – Cleverly, Jenrick and Tugendhat – the three of them now competing for the Tory leadership with not a single word of contrition between them, and zero lessons learned.”
A government spokesperson said: “We are committed to saving taxpayer money, which is why this new government is taking immediate action by stopping all non-essential government consultancy spending, to meet a target of halving spending on consultancy.”
Labour scrapped the Rwanda scheme, which was launched with great fanfare in 2022 but never led to a single forced deportation to the east African country.
Home secretary Yvette Cooper has revealed that the Conservatives had planned to spend £10 billion on the controversial policy.
Tory leadership contender Robert Jenrick has said he plans to bring the Rwanda policy back if he wins the race to succeed Rishi Sunak.