Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, 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 individuals recruited from outside the civil service.

Although examples will exist for specific roles, the Department does not, in general, make use of external recruitment consultants to fill fulltime roles and the information requested is not centrally held.