Advisers/Consultants

HC Deb 14 June 2004 vol 422 cc708-9W

Bob Spink

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs how much his Department and its agencies and non-departmental public bodies spent on external consultants and advisers in each of the last three years. [172433]

Mr. Rammell

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) expenditure on consultants is published annually in our departmental report. The latest available figures are as follows:

£
	FCO	British Council	Wilton Park Executive Agency
2000–01	17,900	2,397	4
2001–02	20,100	2,280	4
2002–03	23,700	1,959	12

These figures cover consulting roles e.g. advice on major estate and ICT projects and management consultancy. The increase in 2002–03 over the previous year is accounted for by expenditure on improving the efficiency of our internal service providers.

Our target for these efficiency savings is to reduce direct costs by £7 million over the next two years, and to enable an extra £8 million to £10 million worth of benefits for the FCO more widely from improved procurement from the year 2005–06 onwards.