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Departmental Staff

Volume 454: debated on Tuesday 5 December 2006

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development how many staff were employed on a consultancy basis in (a) his Department and (b) each of its agencies in each of the last five years for which information is available; and what the (i) average and (ii) longest period was for which a consultant was employed in each year. (102977)

Personnel engaged on a consultancy basis are not employees of DFID, and their details are not recorded on our central staff database. Consultants are used to fill short term staffing gaps or to provide specialist skills that are not immediately available in house. There is no central record of the number of people employed on this basis, and the information could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development whether people employed (a) through employment agencies and (b) on a consultancy basis are included in the calculations for the full-time equivalent staff mentioned in his Department's annual report. (102996)

Neither agency staff, nor those engaged on consultancy terms, are included in the full time equivalent staffing figures that appear in the Annual Report published by the Department for International Development (DFID). This approach is fully consistent with the Cabinet Office guidelines on the categories of staff that should be reported in departmental headcount figures.

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development how many value for money exercises on the use of (a) management consultants and (b) professional advisers were conducted by his Department in each of the last five years for which information is available; and if he will make a statement. (103012)

DFID has not specifically undertaken formal value for money exercises regarding the use of management consultants and professional advisers. However, all DFID contracts are subject to rigorous procurement processes and procedures that are designed to ensure that value for money is obtained.

All contracts above the EU threshold are tendered through international competition using clear evaluation criteria. DFID contracts include explicit terms of reference that focus on the need to achieve value for money, and all contracts are subject to rigorous monitoring, reporting and review. Payments to consultants are only made once confirmation has been received that they have performed satisfactorily.

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what his Department's annual budget is for employing workers on a consultancy basis; and how much of this budget was used in each of the last five years for which records are available. (103022)

Personnel engaged on a consultancy basis are not employees of DFID. Consultants are used to fill short term staffing gaps or to provide specialist skills that are not immediately available in house. We do not maintain a central budget for employing temporary staff on consultancy terms. This information could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development how many and what percentage of staff employed in his Department were registered disabled in each year since 2001. (104472)

The following table details the number and proportion of staff employed by DFID who have declared a disability in each year since 2001.

As at April:

Staff with a declared disability

Percentage of UK-based staff with declared disability

2001

23

1.8

2002

24

1.5

2003

23

1.4

2004

36

2.0

2005

42

2.2

2006

45

2.4

Note:

We do not collect disability data for our locally engaged, staff appointed in country, and they are not reflected in the statistics above.

Data on the disabled status of civil servants, for the years requested, are available on the civil service website. The latest available data are as at April 2005 and these, together with previous years’ data, can be found at the following website addresses:

http://www.civilservice.gov.uk/management/statistics/publications/xls/report_2005/table_p.xls

for data as at April 2005,

http://www.civilservice.gov.uk/management/statistics/publications/xls/disability_apr04_4nov04.xls

for data as at April 2004, and

http://www.civilservice.gov.uk/management/statistics/archive/index.asp

for previous reporting periods.

Declaration of a disability is voluntary.