Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the Dutch government is spending billions of euros on outside consultants and contract staff.

Thanks to the trend for public private partnerships and competition between essential services, the line between the public and the private sector is becoming increasingly blurred.
After all, this is a country in which professors paid for by the dairy industry are giving speeches about how vital milk is.
This is a country where a government advisory committee set up to look at boosting employment is chaired by a CEO who says he will sack thousands more workers unless they agree to a pay freeze.
And this is a country where the head of the tax office moonlighted as chairwoman of a hospital’s financial watchdog – and was apparently unaware that the hospital in question was using an elaborate tax dodging scheme.
Contracting out none-core operations is a fact of life in modern industry. But the government is not a private company. Its core function is to govern and provide public services.
It would be good to know just what all these consultants and advisors have actually been doing other than creating more opportunities for external advisors to get involved in the public sector. Perhaps some external auditor should look into it.