Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much the Health Research Authority has spent on external consultants in each of the last five years; and if they will publish a breakdown of (a) the amount paid to each consultancy contracted, (b) the name of each consultancy contracted, (c) the specific matters on which they were consulted and (d) whether each contract was subject to usual Government procurement rules.

The following table shows the Health Research Authority’s expenditure on externally contracted consultancy services in each year since 2017/18. The information requested for 2021/22 is currently being collated and audited and will be available later this year.

Details of all Government contracts awarded from 2016 above £10,000 and £25,000 in the wider public sector are published on Contracts Finder at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/contracts-finder

Each award notice provides information on the name of the supplier, value of the contract, its purpose and information on the type of awarding procedure used. Government departments, individual agencies and arm’s length bodies are required to publish all spend against individual suppliers above £25,000 on GOV.UK and to follow the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 in awarding contracts.