The Department has not carried out an assessment of the value for money of sole supply arrangements. The Department publishes guidance for schools on school uniform. Our guidance is clear that when deciding how to source school uniform, the governing body should give highest priority to the consideration of cost and value for money for parents. The governing body should be able to demonstrate how best value has been achieved. The guidance also recommends that schools avoid exclusive single-supply contracts unless a regular competitive tendering process is run to secure best value for parents. The Department believes that this approach provides the right balance to secure open and transparent arrangements and good value for money.

The Government is supporting the Education (Guidance about Costs of School Uniforms) Private Members' Bill to enable us to issue statutory guidance on the cost of school uniform. The Department’s existing guidance on cost considerations will form the basis for the new statutory guidance.

Expenditure on medicines in 2018/19 financial year in England in primary care and secondary care was £15.4 billion.

All National Health Service trusts as autonomous entities record their data locally. NHS Improvement and NHS Digital have been working to centralise purchase order and invoice data centrally to provide better national data visibility on common goods and supplies (everyday hospital consumables; high value healthcare consumables; common goods and capital equipment). Spend is reported by NHS trusts on the NHS Spend Comparison Service for England; common goods and supplies contains £5.6 billion of expenditure. Reviewing the categories requested below within the spend comparison service shows:

Expenditure on examination gloves for 2018/19 financial year was £41.7 million; expenditure on disposable aprons was £4.9 million and expenditure on medical scanning devices was £359.5 million. There are no categories on the Spend Comparison Service for ‘other medical consumables’ and ‘other equipment’.

The figures above will exclude any spend not reported through the Spend Comparison Service.

NHS Trusts are autonomous entities who will make their own procurement decisions based on local pressures and demands. Collaborative procurement is promoted across healthcare to make the most of the NHS budget ensuring value for money is delivered. NHS trusts work with other local hospitals, regional procurement hubs and the national framework organisations that the Department has established - Commercial Medicines Unit and NHS Supply Chain Coordination Ltd for medicines and common goods and supplies respectively – to purchase these supplies.

NHS trusts will make individual decisions on what to do with products which expire, are decommissioned or are at the end of their lifecycle. The decision will depend on the value of the asset and whether the asset has any ongoing use. There are charities which will collect expired products for use in third world countries and there are also specialist auctioneers who will sell equipment with residual life and use. Quite often old imaging equipment will be purchased by vets.

There is no single or definitive route for approving suppliers to the National Health Service therefore the information cannot be provided in the format requested.

National Health Service organisations can currently buy goods and services from many sources, within the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 and national and local procurement policies and there is no single or definitive list of approved suppliers to the NHS.

Clinical commissioning groups may use any supplier where they are satisfied that the provider is supplying the goods or delivering the service to the required price and quality and therefore the requested information cannot be provided.

With reference to the previous question 146799 the Crown Prosecution Service currently has one contractor engaged whose fees exceed £1,000. The contract commencement date was 25th May 2018 with an estimated duration of 40 days in total to be carried out on an ad-hoc basis.

The answer of 6 June 2018 stated there were 8 contractors in the Government Legal Department (GLD) who had worked in GLD for five or more years at 30 April 2018. Their daily rates of pay are: £167.20, £254.45, £285, £369.08, £375, £380, £389.50, and £418.

The table below sets out the number of days worked per month for each of the three individuals with a contracted daily rate of £1,000 or more as of 31 March 2018.

The Cabinet Office utilises contingent labour to supply specialist skills and capability not readily available within the Civil Service. 13 contractors currently engaged by the Cabinet Office receive £1000 or more per day.

13 contractors currently engaged by the Cabinet Office receive £1000 or more per day. Out of these, nine are deployed to work on departmental transformation projects in other government departments; three have been engaged for 1-2 months; and one has been engaged for 14 months.

Additional information about the numbers and costs of contingent labour working in the Cabinet Office (including temporary staff) is published monthly and 2017/18 statistics are available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cabinet-office-workforce-management-data-2017-to-2018.

Based on the position at 31st March 2018, the daily bill rate for each of these contractors falls within the range £956.18 to £993.55 per day, a percentage of which includes an agency rate.

We have provided a range rather than individual figures due to there being fewer than 5 contractors in scope.

The contractor in question will as of the end of June have been engaged under contract to the Department for 15 months, though it should be noted that this contractor is engaged on a part time basis of six days per month therefore they have actually only worked for the Department for a maximum of 90 days during this period.

Due to the numbers of contractors working in the Department for 5 years or more totalling less than five, we are unable to provide the figures requested as it could lead to identification of individuals so therefore constitutes personal information.

Since our response to 147409 on the 23 May 2018, it has been confirmed that there are six contractors earning over £1000 a day, recruited via the Contingent Labour one framework. These contractors have been employed over the past 18 months with the latest starting 2 weeks ago. I am arranging for the earlier response to be corrected.

The response to Question 147414 said that there were three contractors employed by the department and paid £1,000 or more per day. Two of those no longer work for the department with their contracts having ended in February and April 2018.

The one current contractor has completed 10 months in the department and the contract terminates in September 2018.

The Ministry of Justice brings in contractors for a variety of reasons. These include general skills for short term work on projects that do not require a long term permanent role, or where highly specialist skills are required only on a temporary basis. We seek to use contractors where to do so is more efficient and cost-effective, saving money for the taxpayer.

As at 31 March 2018, three contractors had been engaged by Defra for a period of five years or more. Their respective daily rates were £237, £466 and £534. This is the total daily cost to the Department of engaging the individuals and includes agency fees and VAT.

As at 31 March 2018, the three individuals with a contracted daily rate of £1,000 or more were engaged for 5, 19 and 19 months.

The Cabinet Office utilises contingent labour to supply specialist skills and capability not readily available within the Civil Service. As at 22^nd May 2018 the breakdown of contingent labour contracted in the Cabinet Office, by length of contract is detailed below.

These figures refer to all contingent labour who have been contracted in the Cabinet Office for the time period specified at any point during the last a) one year, or b) five years.

Additional information about the numbers and costs of contingent labour working in the Cabinet Office (including temporary staff) is published monthly and 2017/18 statistics are available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cabinet-office-workforce-management-data-2017-to-2018.

We do not hold a complete set of information on tenure centrally. To collect this information for the whole of MoJ could only be done at disproportionate cost.

Three. As at February 2018.

The Ministry of Justice brings in contractors for a variety of reasons. These include general skills for short term work on projects that do not require a long term permanent role, or where highly specialist skills are required only on a temporary basis. We seek to use contractors where to do so is more efficient and cost-effective, saving money for the taxpayer.

DWP have 6 contractors paid £1,000 or more per day. They are not DWP employees.

GEO does work with consultants hired under contract working on e.g. the gender pay gap portal, but these people would be procured for such activity via the government procurement service, and are not GEO employees.