Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how much his Department has spent on (a) agency workers and (b) agency retainer fees in (i) 2020, (ii) 2021 and (iii) 2022.

The Department’s published figures in the Department’s Annual Report and Accounts includes the total contingent labour expenditure figures for the core Department and its Executive Agencies. These numbers are available online at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/dft-annual-reports-and-accounts.

The table below provides the total spend on contingent labour

for DVSA, covering financial years 2019-20 and 2020-21, as these figures are not included in the total Departmental contingent labour expenditure published in the Department’s Annual Report and Accounts for those years:

Agency workers (more commonly referred to as “Contingent Labour” or “Temporary Workers”) are subject to a Cabinet Office controls framework to ensure robust governance of spending in this area.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/contingent-labour-spend-control

Commentary on Contingent Labour usage, if applicable, is available in departmental annual reports.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/annual-reports-and-accounts-for-central-government-departments

The Crown Commercial Service provides two frameworks specifically for the supply of Contingent Labour which are used by central government departments. These are:

RM3749 - Public Sector Resourcing. https://www.crowncommercial.gov.uk/agreements/rm3749

This provides a managed service for departmental use including low supplier margins, regular pay rate benchmarking, comprehensive tracking and reporting of contingent labour assignments, full timesheeting and approvals technology and onboarding, contracting and payroll services.

RM6160 - Non Clinical Temporary and Fixed Term Staff https://www.crowncommercial.gov.uk/agreements/RM6160

This provides access to a range of generalist, specialist and niche contingent labour agencies offering a wide range of suppliers, maximum margins, free transfer to permanent after 12 weeks and onboarding, contracting and payroll services.

Use of these frameworks provides robust governance, visibility, value for money and flexibility in meeting departmental contingent labour needs.

We have interpreted your reference to agency retainer fees as the fees charged at the commencement of the provision of a search recruitment service, this is only applicable when recruiting for a permanent or fixed term post.

Agency retainer fees are not applicable to the contingent labour market.