Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many clerical agency staff his Department has employed in each month since July 2014.

Since April 2010 we have cut our overall spend on temporary staff by £35.5m. We only use temporary staff to fill business-critical posts and essential frontline services where they can provide a fast, flexible and efficient way to obtain necessary skills that are not currently available in-house. We will continue to examine our use of contractors and look for further reductions.

In responding to each question we have utilised data provided by our contracted supplier of temporary clerical staff.

1) The following amounts (exclusive of VAT) have been spent on clerical agency staff across -

July 2014 - £3,421,108.62 (5 week period)

August 2014 - £2,711,052.38 (4 week period)

September 2014 - £2,946,902.62 (4 week period)

October 2014 - £4,060,595.46 (5 week period)

November 2014 - £3,082,356.77 (4 week period)

2) The following number of clerical agency staff have been utilised –

July 2014 - 2117 (Actual)

August 2014 - 2129 (Actual)

September 2014 - 2271 (Actual)

October 2014 - 2509 (Actual)

November 2014 - 2257 (Actual)