Department of Health written question – answered at on 12 September 2016.
Margaret Hodge
Labour, Barking
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will publish a list of all secondees to his Department from (a) PwC, (b) Deloitte, (c) Ernst and Young, (d) KPMG and (e) other consulting firms in the last three financial years; and what the role was of each of those secondees.
David Mowat
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health
In line with privacy and data protection legislation as well as standing Cabinet Office instructions, the exact numbers and details of individual roles cannot be published. This is to prevent the personal identification of individuals either directly or in combination with other published information.
There have been two appointments in total into Senior Civil Servant roles as follows, during the years in question as follows:
Name | Start date | Grade | End date | Seconding Organisation | Role |
Robin Furnell | 24/08/2015 | SCS1 | 31/12/2016 | Accenture | Contract Management Function Implementation Lead |
Nicole Mather | 22/04/2014 | SCS2 | 22/10/2016 | Deloitte (formally seconded to BEIS and part-time to DH) | Director - Office for Life Sciences |
During the same period of time, at lower grades the following table summarises the disclosable information
Company | Numbers | Grades of role |
PwC | 5 or fewer | HEO and SEO |
Deloitte | 5 or fewer | Analyst and G7 |
Ernst and Young | 5 or fewer | G7 |
KPMG | 0 | - |
Accenture | 0 | - |
The above information does not include secondees to the Department’s agencies or arms’ length bodies.
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