Hand-picked moles in offices - Labour

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Labour has accused Bill English of stacking offices with hand-picked moles.

Ministers are being told to hire private sector advisers, with departments being required to pay for them, Labour says.

Labour MP Chris Hipkins said Finance Minister Bill English had instructed ministers to use the contractors and was heavily involved in deciding who was used. Mr Hipkins said the process circumvented usual hiring processes.

However, a spokesman for Mr English said there was nothing unusual about the process used, Mr English was not saying who to hire and the advisers were ensuring taxpayers got value for money on purchasing decisions.

Mr Hipkins said he had obtained answers to written questions that told a different story. NZPA is seeking those papers.

"Bill English is the one who is naming all of these purchase advisers, he's the one who is approving, he was the one who instructed ministers to engage them, he chooses who they should be and has given instructions to departments about how much they should be paid," Mr Hipkins said.

"They are effectively spies for Bill English in all of the different ministers' offices -- it's a bit of a power grab."

When National came in to power and hired 18 press secretaries on salaries higher than $100,000, it said it was hiring fewer but higher quality staff.

Mr Hipkins said National was increasing staff by hiring contractors while the state sector was undergoing redundancies.

"What they are doing is they are just finding a different way to fund private office staff for ministers," Mr Hipkins said.

Normally ministerial staff were hired by Ministerial Services unless seconded from a department.

"So these are not departmental staff, they are not your conventional secondees who remain still part of the staff of their department, these are people hand-picked and named by the minister."

Mr Hipkins said Labour would ask questions in Parliament about the issue.

Mr English's spokesman said there were fewer than 10 purchase advisers who worked part-time.

"They are actually a good way to save quite a lot of money at low cost to taxpayers and they've actually already proven their worth," he said.

"Their job is to provide advice in big spending portfolios on whether ministers are actually getting the services and results that they need when purchasing from departments -- just casting an expert eye over the value that taxpayers are getting from those arrangements."

He said there was nothing unusual about the hiring process and said there were dozens of secondees working in ministers' offices.

"The Finance Minister wasn't hand-picking them, the respective ministers were involved in the hiring -- there's nothing unusual about that."

Asked about the difference compared to normal secondment of existing department staff, the spokesman repeated it was not unusual.

"The people they were looking for were people with actual technical expertise that wasn't available to the ministers already. In some areas there would be relatively few people out there in the private sector with that expertise."

He was unsure what they were paid.

"The idea is to actually deliver better value for government spending but doing things better."

NZPA