Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many members of staff who ceased to be employed by his Department, its agencies and non-departmental public bodies in the last three years have subsequently been re-employed by his Department on a temporary basis or as a third-party contractor or consultant.

To retrieve and analyse the records of all leavers from the Department, its agencies and non-departmental bodies to determine the number of individuals re-engaged by the Department on a temporary basis or as a third-party contractor or consultant in the last three years, would incur disproportionate costs.

However, information from the ‘core’ Department’s Business Management system shows that five or fewer individuals who ceased employment with the ‘core’ Department in the past three years have returned to the ‘core’ Department on a temporary basis or as a third-party contractor or consultant.