The government has named the firm that will be carrying out a civil service review already branded a waste of money by one union.

Policy and Reform Minister Chris Thomas said the firm 2000 Weeks would conduct the review of civil service structure. The review is expected to compare salaries and benefits, covering employees at executive officer level and above.

After Tynwald voted to allow the review last October, Prospect leader Angela Moffatt branded the £20,000 allocated to it as a ’waste of money’, because the information was already to hand, following a series of grade reviews.

Mr Thomas gave an update in the House of Keys last week. He said: ’The procurement exercise for the civil service review has been completed and a firm of consultants called 2000 Weeks has been selected to carry out the work.

’The contract has been drawn up and signed and the company has submitted a project plan and commenced work.’

Julie Edge (Onchan), who was the MHK who pressed for the review, asked Mr Thomas who appointed the firm.

Mr Thomas said Treasury’s procurement division handled the matter and the decision was signed off by chief secretary Will Greenhow.

He added: ’Ultimately, this is an independent report commissioned independently. Yes, it is government’s money - it is up to £20,000 of government money that could have been spent.

’It was an independent procurement exercise carried out using the resources of the accounting officer in Cabinet Office.’

In a separate question, Ms Edge asked for clarification of the rules on how meetings of the chief officers group of government - the top civil servants from each department - were recorded.

Mr Thomas said minutes were taken of such meetings, but Ms Edge said the recent report into the Vision 9 debacle had made it clear that meetings between chief officers had not been recorded.

The minister replied: ’I think when I last looked - which was this morning - there were archives for 2013, so that covers the period. Obviously not every meeting will be in that stream, but the monthly meetings of the chief officer group are minuted and the minutes of those are published.’