NHS England more than quadrupled its budget for outsourced consultancy work to £83m last year, new figures obtained by openDemocracy show.
The combined value of the health service's consultancy contracts in 2022 could have trained more than 1,600 new nurses or paid for almost 14,000 hip operations.
Campaigners said the “ludicrous sums” are proof that the government has failed to learn from the billions the Department of Health and Social Care wasted on consultants for its ineffective NHS Test and Trace scheme during the pandemic.
