Departmental Manpower

Simon Hughes

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (1) how many external contractors were employed by her Department in the last 12 months; and at what cost to the public purse; (313764)

(2) for how long on average staff on interim contracts are employed by her Department;

(3) how many people in her Department are employed on interim contracts; and at what cost to the public purse.

[holding answer 28 January 2010]: Contractors and interims are individuals engaged by the Department to provide specific skills or support that is not available in-house or within the required time frame.

The number of contractors/interims working in December 2009 within DWP on that basis was 355. This should be seen in the context of a Department employing well over 100,000 staff. Such contractors are only engaged with the prior approval of an appropriate senior civil servant and their agreement can only be extended beyond 12 months with the approval of the permanent secretary.

During the period from January to December 2009 (inclusive) the associated spend on such contractors was approximately £43 million.

The average tenure of an interim appointment within DWP is currently 9.7 months.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many and what proportion of staff in (a) her Department and (b) the executive agencies for which she is responsible are disabled; and what the average salary in (i) her Department and (ii) the executive agencies is of (A) full-time disabled staff, (B) full-time non-disabled staff, (C) part-time disabled staff and (D) part-time non-disabled staff. (317900)

We are aware that not all staff declare their disability for departmental records, and the true representation of disabled people across the Department may be higher than the figures shown. For example, the 2009 People survey (which is completed anonymously), showed that 10.5 per cent. of respondents considered themselves to have a long standing health condition or disability.

Due to the self-reporting nature of disability and the process by which part time salaries are up-rated in order that they are comparable to full-time staff salaries, care should be exercised when drawing conclusions based on these statistics. The following table shows the numbers and proportion of disabled and non disabled staff for DWP and its executive agencies.

	Disabled	Non Disabled	Not declared or non-response	Disabled as a percentage of known disability status
DWP Corporate Services	310	6,740	710	4.3
DWP Shared Services	130	3,800	650	3.2
Pension and Disability Carers Service	670	14,510	1,550	4.4
Job Centre Plus	4,190	62,930	10,360	6.2

*Table 2*: *Median Earnings of disabled and non-disabled staff, broken down by full-time and part-time working patterns for each business within DWP and its executive agencies*
	Full-time	Part-time
	Non disabled	Disabled	Non disabled	Disabled
DWP Corporate Services	£28,900	£27,370	£25,730	£23,990
DWP Shared Services	£17,600	£17,600	£17,600	£17,600
Pension and Disability Carers Service	£17,600	£17,600	£17,600	£17,600
Jobcentre Plus	£20,430	£22,310	£19,480	£20,170

The statistics are drawn from Departmental records and have been collected by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) from the Annual Civil Service Employment Survey (ACSES). The latest published statistics are for 31 March 2009.

Volume 507: debated on Friday 12 March 2010