Question to the Scotland Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, how much his Department spent in total on external recruitment consultants in (a) 2019, (b) 2020 and (c) 2021; how many full time equivalent posts were filled as a result of that expenditure; and how many of those posts were filled by people recruited from outside the civil service.

The Scotland Office is a small Ministerial Department which does not employ any staff directly. Those that join do so on an assignment, loan or secondment from other government Departments, principally the Scottish Government and the Ministry of Justice, who remain the employers.

Over the period in question, the Scotland Office did not incur any expenditure on recruitment consultants and as such the remaining questions are not applicable.