Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, with reference to pages 31 and 32 of the report entitled Cross-Government Fraud Landscape: Annual Report 2022, published on 21 March 2023, what assessment she has made of the reasons for the increase in detected error in her Department from £0.0 in 2019-20 to £0.1 in 2020-21.
Answered by Julia Lopez - Shadow Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
DCMS is committed to tackling fraud and error wherever it is identified. A key strand of this work is ensuring better reporting of fraud and error, within the department and its public bodies.
Minor fluctuations in reported error are expected year on year, and do not represent a change in our overall risk profile or failure of financial control.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, how much her Department spent on external recruitment consultants in the (a) 2020-21, (b) 2021-22 and (c) 2022-23 financial year.
Answered by John Whittingdale
The figures for financial years 2020-21 and 2021-22 have previously been provided in PQ 137042. The figure for 2022-23 has been updated to reflect the spend across the full financial year.
Financial Year | Spend (Ex VAT) |
2020/2021 | £116,358.67 |
2021/2022 | £61,824.44 |
2022/2023 | £64,731.76 |
Total | £242,914.87 |
External recruitment agencies and search firms are an important resource which support the Civil Service's ability to recruit - to find talented people, in the right places, with the right capabilities to deliver for the people of the United Kingdom. The Civil Service has developed a number of commercial frameworks which provide transparency, high quality services and value for money.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, (a) how many and (b) what proportion of officials of his Department resigned in each of the last six years.
Answered by Lord Vaizey of Didcot
| 2011-12 | 2012-13 | 2013-14 | 2014-15 | 2015-16 |
Resignations (FTE) | 10 | 30 | 18 | 15 | 21 |
Payroll Employees (FTE) | 457 | 376 | 381 | 461 | 517 |
Proportion | 2% | 8% | 5% | 3% | 4% |
The data for resignations has been sourced from the HR Management System Leavers Reports for each financial year. Data is recorded from 2011 onwards and records prior to this data cannot be provided.
The Total headcount figures have been sourced from the DCMS Annual Accounts and only employees who were on DCMS payroll at the point they left the department are included in the data above.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, how many and what proportion of officials of his Department took sick leave for reasons relating to stress in each of the last five years; and what proportion of total sick leave that leave was in each such year.
Answered by Lord Vaizey of Didcot
The average days’ sickness absence per full time equivalent employed by DCMS during the last financial year was 2.0 days.
The Civil Service takes a holistic approach to managing sick absence and improving wellbeing and we have focussed on specific actions to reduce the incidence of mental disorders, including stress related absence. This includes
early referral to occupational health experts, particularly for mental health, stress or musculoskeletal conditions,
early referral to Employee Assistance Programmes (EAP) for CBT based counselling support for mental health issues,
workplace adjustments that help to prevent conditions from developing or worsening, whilst reducing the barriers to work for those affected by mental or physical impairments,
extensive training for managers and employees including on disability and mental health awareness, well-being, resilience and stress.
Financial Year | Number of officials who took sick leave for reasons relating to stress | Proportion of officials who took sick leave for reasons relating to stress | Proportion of total sick such sick leave was in the department |
Apr 14 - Mar 15 | 1 | 0.2% | 0.5% |
Apr 13 - Mar 14 | 2 | 0.5% | 0.9% |
Apr 12 - Mar 13 | 3 | 0.8% | 1.2% |
Apr 11 - Mar 12 | 5 | 1.1% | 2.1% |
Apr 10 - Mar 11 | 6 | 1.4% | 2.5% |
Background
We have reported on the average sickness absence in the annual report (link) and do not specifically report on sickness absence due to stress.
The DCMS sick absence data is low in comparison with the Civil Service average of 7.4 Average Working Days Lost. We do not have any evidence to know why this is. HR continues to remind all staff and managers of the importance of accurate and prompt recording on the HR system.
Financial Year | Number of officials who took sick leave for reasons relating to stress | Proportion of officials who took sick leave for reasons relating to stress | Department FTE | Total sickness in department | Percentage of staff who took Stress Related Absence against total staff who recorded a sick absence |
Apr 14 - Mar 15 | 1 | 0.2% | 461 | 203 | 0.5% |
Apr 13 - Mar 14 | 2 | 0.5% | 381 | 234 | 0.9% |
Apr 12 - Mar 13 | 3 | 0.8% | 376 | 259 | 1.2% |
Apr 11 - Mar 12 | 5 | 1.1% | 457 | 243 | 2.1% |
Apr 10 - Mar 11 | 6 | 1.4% | 443 | 242 | 2.5% |
¹Department FTE from DCMS Annual Report & Accounts 2010-11 and 2014-15
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, how many (a) publications, (b) consultation documents and (c) circulars his Department has issued since August 2012; and what the title was of each such publication, consultation document or circular.
Answered by Lord Vaizey of Didcot
The answer can be found by using the publicly available filters on GOV.UK:
The Department has published 692 publications. Details, with full titles of each publication, can be viewed at:
The Department has published 60 consultations. Details can be viewed at:
The Department has published no Circulars in the timeframe.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, how much his Department has paid to staff in overtime in each of the last 24 months.
Answered by Lord Vaizey of Didcot
Sums paid to Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) staff for overtime for the last 24 months, for which figures are available, were as follows:
£000s | January | February | March | April | May | June | July | August | September | October | November | December |
2014 | - | 5.1 | 10.9 | 2.6 | 6.8 | 4.3 | 7.3 | 23.7 | 7.0 | 7.1 | 3.7 | 10.8 |
2015 | 2.2 | 3.9 | 28.0 | 6.2 | 31.0 | 5.8 | 4.3 | 8.3 | 6.6 | 4.3 | 8.6 | 7.1 |
2016 | 6.3 | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - | - |
DCMS is the smallest government department, with 509 full time equivalent (FTE) permanent employees (as of 31 January 2016). Overtime is a cost-effective way of managing peaks in workload in order to reduce the need for contractors or adding to the department's headcount. Annual expenditure on overtime accounts for just under 0.3% of the DCMS paybill.
DCMS has responsibility for high profile policy, which includes staging national First World War commemoration events - this is reflected in our overtime figures for August 2014 and May 2015.
Recent machinery of government changes has also seen DCMS take on additional policy areas, including the digital economy unit, digital inclusion, data protection, the sponsorship of the National Archives and the Information Commissioner. The figure for March 2015 reflects the addition of the 2014-15 total overtime cost for the Digital Economy Unit following its Machinery of Government transfer to DCMS; monthly analysis of this sum is not available.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, how many civil law suits have been brought against his Department based either wholly or partially on grounds provided by the Human Rights Act 1998; how many such suits were settled out of court before a court judgment was delivered; and how much such settlements have cost the public purse since 2010.
Answered by Lord Vaizey of Didcot
We do not have any information on civil law suits have been brought against the Department based either wholly or partially on grounds provided by the Human Rights Act 1998.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, how many consultants' contracts were terminated early in each of the last six years for which figures are available; and what the cost of each such termination was in each of those years.
Answered by Lord Vaizey of Didcot
DCMS has not terminated early any fixed fee consultancy contracts, where a cost might have been incurred, in the said time frame.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, how much his Department spent from the public purse on industrial tribunals in the last 12 months.
Answered by Lord Vaizey of Didcot
The cost of Employment Tribunals can be found within the HMCTS annual accounts published at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/433948/hmcts-annual-report-accounts-2014-15.pd
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, on how many occasions a special adviser in his Department accompanied a Minister on an overseas trip since May 2015.
Answered by Lord Vaizey of Didcot
As has been the case under successive Administrations, civil servants, including special advisers, may routinely accompany their Ministers on official visits.
Information relating to Ministers' overseas visits are published on my Department’s website, as part of the Government’s wider transparency agenda.
All ministerial travel is undertaken in accordance with the Ministerial Code.