Brexit department spends £4m hiring outside consultants in preparation to leave the EU

Campaigners said the figures raised concerns about Whitehall’s ability to cope with delivering Brexit

The government’s Brexit department has spent more than £4m hiring external consultants to help prepare for leaving the EU, new analysis shows.

Official figures show the Department for Exiting the European Union (DexEU) has stumped up £4,049,995 to pay for services from big firms such as McKinsey, KPMG and PwC since it was founded in 2016.

This includes almost £1.5m spent on Boston Consulting Group, which published a blog post on its website in 2016 warning that “a protracted period of uncertainty and volatility seems very likely on many dimensions, including on growth, trade, investment, interest rates, and financial markets” after Brexit.

Pro-EU campaigners said the figures raised concerns about Whitehall’s ability to cope with the sheer scale of the task of delivering Brexit.

It also comes after The Independent revealed that the number of officials who have left DexEU is equivalent to more than half of its total staff. According to the turnover data obtained under freedom of information, some 357 staff have left the DexEU in just two years, out of a total number of 665.

The department is still recruiting for key roles, including analysts and Brexit project managers.

Labour MP Susan Elan Jones, a supporter of the People’s Vote campaign, which provided the analysis, said: “The only people who benefit from the government’s Brexit plan are management consultants and accountants. It’s a bad deal for Britain and a much worse deal than we’ve already got in the EU.

“However many consultants the government employs to try to make this deal work, the truth is what was promised in the last referendum can’t be delivered, and the same problems will still apply to any form of Brexit, no matter how it is presented.”

A government spokesperson said: “It is standard for government departments to draw on the advice of external specialists. The Brexit negotiations are a priority for the government and we bring in expertise from outside as appropriate."

Other departments have also spent large sums on consultants to prepare for Brexit. However, the figures are not directly comparable as some are reported in different formats.

The Department for Environmental and Rural Affairs (Defra) said in its annual report in the summer that spending increased by £14.7m to £37.5m in 2017-18 compared with the previous financial year, and core department consultancy expenditure increased by £8.6m to £11.4m.

It cited “a greater workload in regards to EU exit” for the increase.

The Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy spent £3.68m on consultancy services for the period October 2017 to September 2018, according to a parliamentary question asked by Labour’s Jon Trickett.

It comes as the prime minister prepares for a turbulent return to the Commons, when MPs will begin a new debate on her Brexit deal on 9 January – with a vote expected to take place the following week.

Ms May faces widespread opposition in the vote on her deal, which has already been postponed once in the face of near-certain defeat.

Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, challenged her to cut short the Christmas recess to allow the vote, telling The Independent the prime minister was engaged in a “cynical manoeuvre” to run down the clock and offer MPs the “choice of the devil or the deep blue sea”.