Financial guru Martin Lewis hit out at the Money Advice Service yesterday, branding the service a ‘brand-building narcissistic exercise’.

Mr Lewis was giving evidence to the Treasury Select Committee in an inquiry into the future of the service.

Mr Lewis, founder of consumer finance website moneysavingexpert.com, was giving evidence with Tracey Bleakley, chief executive of the Personal Finance Education Group and Otto Thoresen, director-general of the Association of British Insurers.

Responding to a question from Pat McFadden MP on whether the Money Advice Service was able to reach its target 19m people, Mr Lewis said many consumer finance sites were already doing well and that ‘this brand-building narcissistic exercise’ needed to stop rather than try to compete.

He then went on to talk about the tools on the website such as the financial healthcheck saying: “If the product wasn’t crap, I would think it might be a good idea but the product is abominable and I’d be embarrassed to put their tools on my website.”

He then pulled out his phone to read a selection of comments from Facebook about the service’s financial healthcheck tool which highlighted its failures and described it as ‘useless’.

He suggested that “rather than spending £20m of what is effectively public money on a brand that is bland, boring, unnecessary and unproductive” the service should focus on one-to-one interactions with those in need and proposed that service should offer a signposting service to consumer website which were already doing a good job.