To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change what proportion of his Department's contracts have been let to companies with (a) one to five, (b) six to 49, (c) 50 to 250 and (d) more than 250 staff.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is committed to increasing its direct and indirect spend with SMEs. However, we do not hold contract or company expenditure data in the format requested. DECC is working with the Cabinet Office spend analysis team to improve the breakdown of expenditure data. This information may be available in future but currently is not held centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

DECC does collect combined SME expenditure and as a proportion of total procurement the expenditure was 13.02% in the financial year 2012-13 and 10.02% in the current financial year to September 2013.

Contracts of the Department are published on the Cabinet Office website, which can be found at:

https://online.contractsfinder.businesslink.gov.uk/