Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government how the Civil Service learning and development contracts awarded to KPMG and EY will complement UK Research and Innovation programmes like P2R: increasing UK policymaker engagement with research, which aim to strengthen direct links between policymakers, civil servants and UK research organisations.

The Civil Service values its people, invests in their growth, and is serious about building the capability to meet the challenges of the future. This autumn the National School of Government and Public Services will formally open its doors to civil servants. The learning the school provides will boost public sector productivity and accelerate the pace of progress towards delivering the excellent, digitally-enabled public services to be expected from a modern state.

The learning and development contracts awarded to KPMG and EY enable the National School to procure evaluation and research services from UK universities and research organisations. This complements our wider evaluation, research and data strategy. As part of this, we recently launched our College of Experts, a set of academic and external experts who can bring insight to and advise on all aspects of the National School’s work, and presented on this work at the Universities Policy Engagement Network.