Question to the Department for Exiting the European Union :

To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, how many full-time equivalent third-party contractors and consultants his Department plans to employ in (a) 2017, (b) 2018 and (c) 2019; and what the cost to the taxpayer will be in each of those years.

The department has sourced a large proportion of experienced staff from across Whitehall and a number of secondees and contractors from the private sector and the wider public sector. We are not in a position to give a final total for particular groups of staff as recruitment is ongoing and numbers are regularly changing. The total cost of consultancy for 2016/17 will be published in the Department’s Annual Report and Accounts in the summer.

Plans and budgets for third-party contractors and consultants for future years have not been finalised and will be kept under review.