Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to the Government's response to the Health Select Committee's Fifth Report of 2008-09 on the use of management consultants in the NHS and the Department of Health, HC 28, whether his Department initiated talks with the Management Consultancies Association (MCA) on its members' engagement with the NHS; and what formal meetings (a) Ministers and (b) officials of his Department have had with the MCA since then.

Department officials discussed and agreed a concordat with the Management Consultancies Association (MCA) in 2009 and early 2010. Several meetings between officials and the MCA were held subsequently from May 2010 under the new Government, although no Ministers have met with the MCA since May 2010.