Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how much the Prime Minister's Department has spent on (a) agency workers and (b) agency retainer fees in (i) 2020, (ii) 2021 and (iii) 2022.

For reporting purposes the Prime Minister’s Office is an integral part of the Cabinet Office and consolidated as part of our group expenditure.

A) Spend on Agency staff is published as part of our Annual Report and Accounts, the last 3 years figures are:

Note - 2021/22 figures remain provisional until our annual report and account is published later this year.

B) 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.

We do not specifically record expenditure on retainer fees paid to recruitment agencies, and they form part of our overall recorded recruitment costs. This includes assessments, search fees and vetting and is undertaken both for our own purposes and cross government. We cannot separate out expenditure paid solely on retainer fees.