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Cabinet Office: Consultants

Cabinet Office written question – answered at on 27 March 2023.

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Photo of Angela Rayner Angela Rayner Deputy Leader of the Official Opposition, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Shadow Secretary of State for the Future of Work, Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how much his Department spent on external consultants in 2022.

Photo of Jeremy Quin Jeremy Quin The Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office

For 2021-22, Cabinet Office external consultancy spend can be found on page 193 of our Annual Report and Accounts 2021-22, linked here.

Consultancy spend for 2022-23 will be published in the Cabinet Office Annual Report and Accounts 2022-23, later this year.

Cabinet Office has a mature assurance framework for Consultancy & Professional Services. A dedicated team exists to assure such spending and make recommendations to officials accordingly for decision. The assurance framework is built on the principles outlined in the Consultancy Playbook and aims to ensure that where such requirements are justified, they deliver value for money for the taxpayer. This use of these consultants is a legitimate part of policymaking that helps to deliver efficient public services to the taxpayer and has been a feature under successive Governments.

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  • (Citation: HC Deb, 27 March 2023, cW)

Cabinet

The cabinet is the group of twenty or so (and no more than 22) senior government ministers who are responsible for running the departments of state and deciding government policy.

It is chaired by the prime minister.

The cabinet is bound by collective responsibility, which means that all its members must abide by and defend the decisions it takes, despite any private doubts that they might have.

Cabinet ministers are appointed by the prime minister and chosen from MPs or peers of the governing party.

However, during periods of national emergency, or when no single party gains a large enough majority to govern alone, coalition governments have been formed with cabinets containing members from more than one political party.

War cabinets have sometimes been formed with a much smaller membership than the full cabinet.

From time to time the prime minister will reorganise the cabinet in order to bring in new members, or to move existing members around. This reorganisation is known as a cabinet re-shuffle.

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Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.