Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how much his Department spent in total on external recruitment consultants in (a) 2018-19, (b) 2019-20, (c) 2020-21, and (d) 2021-22; how many full time equivalent posts were filled as a result of that expenditure; and how many of those posts were filled by individuals recruited from outside the civil service.

The information requested on external recruitment consultant spend is not available as we do not hold this level of granularity on recruitment costs for any of the financial years in question. As a result we are also not able to identify the equivalent posts that were then filled as a result of this spend nor would we be able to identify the number of individuals who were recruited through these routes which existed outside of the civil service prior to joining the department.