BrewDog founder James Watt has revealed that he is assembling a team of whistleblowers to emulate Elon Musk and call time on government waste.
In an interview with the Sunday Times over the weekend, Mr Watt described his innate “duty and obligation” to do something to improve the UK and wants to establish better outcomes for healthcare, schooling and frontline public services.
He revealed more details about his Coalition for Organisational Reform and Government Improvement (Corgi) which seeks to mirror Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) by identifying wastage in government departments, quangos and town halls.
“We’re being taxed more than we’ve ever been taxed for a level of service that has never been weaker at the same time that the economy is really, really struggling as well," Mr Watt said.
"I want to try and see if we could show an alternative to austerity or further raising taxes.”
He told the Sunday Times he has received more than 350 offers of help, some from inside government and public bodies, as well as from senior finance executives, software engineers and data scientists.
He is funding the infrastructure required while a small leadership team of volunteers is now co-ordinating its first report.
It is hoped it could be published in April, with the aim to update it every two months.
Mr Watt indicated he was giving a minimum of a year’s commitment to the project, although he would stay longer if there was demand. He hopes to shine a light on potential improvements and cost savings which will ultimately benefit public services.
This will include seeking out whistleblowers, as well as plans to establish an anonymous hotline and email dump for disgruntled civil servants to leak examples of government waste.
Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, and Russell Findlay, the Scottish Conservative leader, have already promised to set up a Holyrood Doge should they be successful in next year’s elections.
Watt confirmed devolved spending and Scottish government departments would also be scrutinised by Corgi.
Watt stepped down as BrewDog chief executive in May 2024 and last year got engaged to Georgia Toffolo, the television personality and dog food entrepreneur. They married in a surprise ceremony on Saturday.