Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many civil servants there have been in the Commercial Profession in each year since 2014.

From the ONS Civil Service Statistics, based on the profession of post economic and statistic by responsibility level, the following figures are identified under Commercial headcount:

2013: 2,230

2014: 3,280

2015: 5,590

2016: 5,130

2017: 5,210

Data caveats:

1) Profession definitions relate to the post occupied by the person and are not dependent on qualifications the individual may have.

2) Professions involves matching people data to posts. This is considered to have a lower level of precision than other HR metrics so caution must be exercised when drawing any conclusions from these data.

It should also be noted that from 2013-2015 the data relates to 'Procurement and Contract Management' as opposed to 'Commercial'.