PwC and KPMG greasing the government contract wheel?

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The Independent has a somewhat indignant post about the extent to which PwC and KPMG in particular are thought to be ‘donating in kind’ to the Tories:

Analysis by The Independent has revealed that leading companies including PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and KPMG, have given the Tories nearly £500,000 since the start of last year as they attempt to build ties with the party that has a double-digit lead in the polls.

and…

The making of these donations-in-kind has raised concerns among some MPs that the companies are attempting to position themselves for more government contracts. “This is quite undesirable,” said the Liberal Democrat MP, Norman Baker. “These auditors are not making these donations out of the goodness of their hearts. They will want a return for it. The return is contact with a future Conservative government. These people are omnipresent across government in terms of contracts.”

I’m a little conflicted by this. On the one hand I see how it is good to give things away. I do it all the time. The difference is that I’m not using what I know as a direct ‘in’ to any company or organization. If someone sees what I say and wants to pay for the 20% that’s unsaid then fine. Let’s talk. In fact it is a way of doing business that I fined very appealing. But to use consultant ‘donations’ as a beach head for much larger contracts has a bit of a whiff about it. Others agree. Raedwald says:

The big seven have become such an integral part of the central State that they are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

If Cameron is serious about Localism and the devolution of power from the centre to the periphery, he will pocket their douceurs now but keep his own objectives free of their ‘advice’.

Put another way: what’s the difference between the way the big consulting firms ‘donate’ and an inappropriate inducement aka bribe? The problem as always is that when the big firms do this kind of thing everyone gets tarred with the same brush. All of a sudden ‘these auditors’ to use Baker’s expression become all of us when in fact the professionals I know are decent, hard working people that want to do the right thing. Of course the consultancies have a defense dripping in PR BS. To quote the Independent post:

“For many years, the Government has encouraged the exchange of people and experience between it and the private sector,” a KPMG spokesman said. “We believe this benefits both parties by enabling the sharing of skills, which in turn contributes to modernisation and efficiency improvements in public and private organisations alike.”

So now it’s government that’s doing the tin cupping? Sorry peeps but it takes two to tango. And people wonder why I have such a downer on Big Four PR?

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