Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much his Department has spent on (a) consultants, (b) temporary staff and (c) contingent labour in each of the last five years; how many people have been so employed; what the length of contract of each such person was; and what equivalent civil service salary band each was on.

Spend on consultants, temporary staff and contingent labour over the last 5 years:

*Temporary Staff includes Casuals and Fixed Term Appointments employed for less than 12 months only.

Spend on consultancy, contingent labour and temporary staff reduced in 2011/12 as the Cabinet Office Spend Controls introduced by the coalition government in May 2010 took effect. Whilst these controls are still being applied spend in these areas has since increased in response to the need for specialist external support to meet the demands of DWP major change programmes such as UC and PIP, and in response to business needs for temporary staff mainly in Operations.

All requests for the recruitment of temporary staff are subject to recruitment freeze dispensations and are subject to Ministerial approval.

Number of consultants, temporary staff and contingent labour employed, length of contract and equivalent civil service salary:

Consultants:

Consultants are not engaged on an individual basis. Consultancy services are delivered by a consultancy company which deploys resource according to the requirements of the engagement. Extracting data on the length of engagement of each consultant would be at disproportionate cost. Consultants do not have an equivalent civil service salary band.

Temporary Staff:

The above figures are for temporary staff engaged for less than 12 months only. No further breakdown of the length of engagement is available.

We are unable to extract data on the length of engagement of each contingent labour worker or the equivalent civil service salary band as this would be at disproportionate cost.