Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how much his Department has spent on the use of external consultants to advise on the governance of the NHS in the last 12 months.

The Department does hold cost information on the amount spent with external consultants. However, the information captured by this central record does not enable us to readily identify the expenditure which relates specifically to governance of the National Health Service in the last 12 months. In order to gather all possible relevant information, we would need to contact each business area and Directorate in the Department requiring them to check their records. This undertaking would amount to a substantial effort across the Department and could only be achieved at disproportionate cost.