Head of Reform UK's DOGE, Zia Yusuf has hit out at a £160k report into 'inclusivity' on buses, which has revealed more about spending within local councils.Yusuf told GB News: "'We're going to pull every lever available to us to stop this horrendous waste of money."WATCH ABOVE.
00:00Just tell our viewers, if you can, what you think the main takeaway is from this finding and indeed what it might be telling us more generally about what on earth is going on in local government.
00:11Well, we've seen this writ large, Matt, enormous amounts, insane amounts of British taxpayers' money are paid to these strategy consulting companies, basically people doing work that is of absolutely no meaningful value whatsoever.
00:25I mean, in this enormous report, £160,000 was spent, about 98, almost 100 pages.
00:32And I've actually read through this report. If you suffer from insomnia, I highly recommend it.
00:38The key takeaway, do you know what the key takeaway you got, Matt, for £160,000? I'm not kidding. It was that buses are too crowded.
00:45Now, I think everybody who's taken a bus recently will tell you, could have told you that for a lot less than £160,000.
00:52Look, you've seen this, again, we're seeing this time and time again. I've seen this in local councils, and I've spent a lot of time now.
00:59I was at West Northamptonshire County Council last week on the entire day, just like going through a lot of these reports that these strategy consulting firms provide them and then to national government.
01:10So if you look at KPMG, PwC, you know, the big four accounting firms, and then you look at some of these strategy consulting firms,
01:16do you know how much those firms won in contracts from just national government alone over the last five years?
01:21£8.5 billion.
01:23£8.5 billion.
01:25And they keep spending, all these councils are spending tens of millions of pounds a year on, quote, transformation.
01:31And it happens year after year.
01:33Now, most transformations I think of, you'd assume the transformation is done once you've transformed.
01:38Not in the case of British taxpayers having to spend all the money.
01:41And look, we laugh because it's so depressing.
01:43And if you didn't laugh, you would cry.
01:45But this is what reform are doing.
01:47The first thing we're going to do is do the research, expose this stuff, and then you'd be rest assured that we're going to pull every lever of power available to us, Matt, to stop the renders' waste of money.
