Boston Consulting Group lands £2 million contract with Brexit department
The British arm of global strategy firm the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has landed a £2 million contract from the UK government’s Department for Exiting the EU (DExEU). The American consulting giant now holds at least five Brexit contracts as scrutiny grows on the Government’s perceived overreliance on consultancies to help engineer a ‘smooth’ Brexit.
BCG’s contract with David Davis’ DExEU department commenced in December 2017 but only became public knowledge five months later when it was published on the government contracts website. The delay has done little to help DExEU’s media image after it was revealed that the department charged with executing Brexit has the worst transparency record of any governmental office.
The £2 million contract handed to BCG in the UK is for “the provision of consultancy support for the cross government delivery coordination of the EU Exit Programme”, according to the award notice. It was awarded on December 8, began a week later, and is due to be completed on September 14 2018.
Boston Consulting Group has now been awarded at least five Brexit-related contracts by the government. They have a combined value of £4.7 million and more may yet be made public. Though sizeable it is a drop in the ocean compared to the £2 billion just six core Whitehall departments are expected to spend on Brexit-related policy work by the time Brexit becomes a reality in 2019.
In response to the news, a spokesman for the DExEU said it was “quite standard for a government department to draw on the advice of external specialists”, adding "the Government is utilising the skills of the brightest and best across the Civil Service as we prepare to exit the EU.”
Consulting firms are among the most immediate beneficiaries of the 2016 referendum. McKinsey & Company recently beat off competition from EY, KPMG and PwC to land a £1.9 million DExEU contract. The long-term impact of Brexit on Britain’s booming management consulting industry is, however, unclear with concerns mounting that a hard Brexit could impede the flow of talent into the UK.
