Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much his Department has spent from the public purse through the dynamic purchasing system to employ local specialist support over the last 12 months; and what estimate he has made of the funding available for that specialist support in the next six months.

A Dynamic Purchasing System was introduced in July 2016 as an additional way to purchase ad hoc Flexible Support Fund provision. Expenditure on contracts via this route is not separated from Flexible Support Fund provision purchased via other routes, and these figures could only be provided through a manual review of contracts at disproportionate cost.

The total budget available for the provision of the Flexible Support Fund in 2017/18 is £70m.