To ask the Chairman of the Public Accounts Commission how much the National Audit Office paid to recruitment agencies for the hire of temporary staff in each year since 1997; and if he will make a statement. (110507)

National Audit Office expenditure on the hire of temporary staff from 1997-98 to 2005-06 is set out in the following table.

National Audit Office resourcing policy is to hire temporary staff to cover short-term resource requirements for which it would be too costly to recruit permanent members of staff. For example, the Office's financial audit workload reaches a peak in May and June each year and this is partly met by buying in additional skilled resources on a temporary basis. This trend has increased in recent years as more Departments try to meet the Treasury's ‘faster closing’ targets and lay their accounts before the parliamentary summer recess and this also explains the increase in costs between 2004-05 and 2005-06. The peak in 2002-03 reflected the increase in the number of value for money reports from 50 to 60 combined with the fact that, because of the state of the recruitment market, it was taking longer than usual to fill posts.