In the absence of any specialist government department to deal with specific emergencies such as COVID, politicians tend to spend big on consultants. Consultancy UK, one of the leading voices in the industry, spoke on 10 March 2020 of a darkening outlook with the “UK consulting market books slowest growth in seven years.” With Brexit heavily weighing on the local economy, the numbers predicted a wider global downturn. The National Health Service, which a month earlier claimed parts of it were“seriously financially unstable”, was meanwhile dealing with the sixth death from the spreading COVID-19 virus, which would be announced as a pandemic the next day by the World Health Organization. By the end of the month, 1,789 would be dead from the virus while the prime minister, health minister and future king had tested positive and the entire country was in lockdown. It wasn’t only the NHS struggling. The functions of government within the UK were already working overtime to keep up with the pace of a nation undergoing enormous change stemming from Brexit. Taxpayer money spent on consultants within the government had been increasing year on year from £700 million in 2016 to £1.2 billion in 2019-20. These numbers would surge during the pandemic, with the UK government spending £2.5 billion in 2020-21. The media was full of stories of how much governments were spending on consultants to support various pandemic-related activities, a cost which might have been justified on the basis of the scarcity of expertise and the short-term nature of the role. By October 2020, it was reported that £175 million had been spent, with The Guardian claiming: “The government has bought consulting services from almost 90 different companies as it scrambled to fill gaps in the civil service’s pandemic response.” By the end of the pandemic’s first full financial year, government and public bodies had issued £664 million in Covid-19 consulting contracts. However, no one seemed to be questioning why management consulting firms would have the requisite skills to organise for a pandemic. Or, at least, why would they have better skills than say civil servants, healthcare managers or even regular and cheaper temporary staff such as interim managers. Indeed, in the absence of any convincing case for specialist skills, it seems that consulting firms were used as expensive ‘temps’. By 2022 the UK government had reportedly contracted £2.8 billion worth of work from consultants, while the National Health Service quadrupled its budget on outside advice in the same year. Spending caps brought in more than a decade ago by then British PM David Cameron appear to have been quietly dropped within the halls of powe despite the constant reaching for the consultant’s button being described as a “lazy habit” by cabinet minister Theodore Agnew. So what else could the government do to deal with a pandemic? The concept of a government department solely set up for such rare events, brought into action when required, staffed by experts, and deploying the latest technologies might seem ridiculous. Nevertheless, some sort of contingency or capacity, perhaps shared by multiple governments, is more plausible. However, in the UK and elsewhere, there was no such availability. Because, as many claim, the public sector has been ‘hollowed out’ to the extent that when extra staff are needed, there is no capacity. This is the dominant view in most research and news media, with the added irony that public sector staff cuts were often the result of earlier advice from the consultants issued the contract to analyse the efficiency of government departments. However, this does not explain why the most expensive option is chosen and for a sustained period. Research elsewhere suggests that the strong brand (for some) of management consulting in general and specific firms in particular is important. This reflects deference to private sector ‘solutions’ over civil/public service expertise and values as well as close and ‘revolving’ relationships between decision-makers and consultants. In short, senior civil servants and politicians have developed a consulting ‘habit’. In fact, this is sometimes the case whether or not their own management is hollowed out. The – consultants are not simply substitutes. While it is difficult, if not impossible, to establish whether others would have done better than externals for less. A further irony is that the immediate availability of consultants was partly founded on a COVID-induced downturn in consulting business generally, which should have led to a significant reduction in rates.