Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what estimate he has made of the cost of using external agencies for recruitment to Senior Civil Service posts in his Department in each of the last five years for which figures are available.

As part of its long-term economic plan, this Government has reduced the size of the Civil Service by 22%, adjusting for Machinery of Government changes that moved staff into and out of the Civil Service since the 2010 General Election, representing a significant increase in efficiency and productivity that helped save taxpayers £2.8 billion last year alone.

In the past five years, Department costs for using external agencies in the recruitment of two Senior Civil Service posts are recorded as below:

Background Information

We hold no records for years 2011/2012, 2012/2013, 2013/2014.The Department has used external agencies to recruit for specialist SCS roles. Departments have a number of routes available to them to procure recruitment agency services. These include their own departmental procurement processes and the Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS), which has been in place since April 2014.

The roles recruited for were Chief Executive of BDUK and Deputy Director of Telecoms Business Intelligence Centre