Can you imagine the outcry if this was one of the Bush daughters?
Labour's favourite consultants employing Chelsea Clinton on £10m NHS contract
Financial Mail
publication date: 5 June 2005
Bill Clinton's daughter Chelsea has been seconded by McKinsey, the consultants with close links to Downing Street, to work on a £10million Government project. She is understood to be receiving a package worth £90,000 at the offices of Monitor, the new regulator for foundation hospitals.
By Eleanor Mayne
She is understood to be receiving a package worth £90,000 at the offices of Monitor, the new regulator for foundation hospitals.
Chelsea, 25, whose parents have remained close friends with Tony and Cherie Blair since leaving the White House, was brought in to work on the project from McKinsey's New York office, which she joined two years ago after completing an MPhil in International Relations at Oxford. She specialises in healthcare, having previously worked as an intern at the World Health Organisation in Geneva.
But the fact that the salary of Mr Clinton's only child is effectively being funded by a New Labour quango will add to questions about the way in which McKinsey has apparently become the Government's favourite consulting firm almost overnight. The relationship appears to have blossomed since former BBC chief John Birt, now Lord Birt, was appointed as Tony Blair's adviser four years ago.
He is employed by McKinsey as a strategic consultant and has been followed into Downing Street by a number of other 'McKinseyites'.
Within months of his appointment, No 10 engaged as independent advisers McKinsey senior partner Nick Lovegrove and former McKinsey partner and Confederation of British Industry directorgeneral Adair Turner. And in early 2002, another former consultant, Matthew Elson, was brought in to No10 to advise on transport strategy.
Since then, The Mail on Sunday has discovered, a number of Government departments have hugely increased the amount spent with the firm.
From 2002 onwards the Ministry of Defence spent a staggering £ 40million on McKinsey contracts. Before 2002, its average annual bill for McKinsey was less than £500,000.
The Department of Health appointed McKinsey to work with Monitor last year, almost as soon as the new regulator was created, without offering the contract for competitive tender. Monitor has since spent more than half of its 2004 annual budget on the consultants.
McKinsey initially earned £ 2million in fees before other firms were allowed to compete for further work.
After getting this head start, McKinsey then won the bidding to help set up Monitor's 'regulatory framework' – effectively teaching the regulator how to do its job.
A year later, 12 McKinsey consultants are still working on that project, with no definite end date. Asked to justify why it had spent more than half of its budget on McKinsey, a spokesman for Monitor said: 'In addition to authorising the first NHS foundation trusts, Monitor had to rapidly establish a comprehensive system for regulating them.
'To do this effectively, in the short timeframe available, utilising the support of an external consultancy was the most appropriate solution.'
Explaining why McKinsey had been appointed without a formal tender process, he said that a threemonth deadline to establish trusts meant 'it was necessary to get some additional high-quality support in to help with that work'.
Last night Shadow Health Minister Simon Burns said: 'It is extraordinary that the Government should award large contracts without any competitive tendering, and it is equally extraordinary that contracts like this should be going to a company with close links to New Labour. It does give the impression that it is "jobs for the boys" and it is most unwise of a Government that pays lipservice to transparency and openness that they should expose themselves in this way, and to accusations of sleaze.'"
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