Department of Health and Social Care: Brexit

(asked on 31st October 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much his Department has spent on consultancy fees relating to the UK leaving the EU since July 2016.


Answered by
Caroline Dinenage Portrait
Caroline Dinenage
This question was answered on 7th November 2018

The question has been interpreted as requesting information regarding the level of consultancy spend by the core Department, as recorded in the Department’s Annual Report and Accounts.

The definition employed for capturing consultancy services spend is in line with HM Treasury guidance on the preparation of Annual Report and Accounts in which consultancy services are defined as “the provision to management of objective advice relating to strategy, structure, management or operations of an organisation, in pursuit of its purposes and objectives. Such advice will be provided outside the ‘business-as-usual’ environment when in-house skills are not available and will be time-limited. Consultancy may include the identification of options with recommendations, or assistance with (but not the delivery of) the implementation of solutions.”

Subsequently consultancy spend is recorded on the basis of this definition. As such we are only able to report against this in the Department’s Annual Report and Accounts, rather than on the basis of any different interpretation or perspective, such as reporting spend on consultancy by specific programmes such as European Union Exit.

The Department’s expenditure on consultancy services, for each of the last two financial years is as follows:

Financial Year

Consultancy Services (£000’s)

2017-18

12,402

2016-17

4,485

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