Q171 Chair: Yes, but if you are paying a consultancy, you are paying a bomb. We presumably noticed this in the paper in that we had on consultants. Was the Highways Agency included in the consultancy?
David Finlay: No. This is external.
Q172 Chair: The Department for Transport is the highest spender on consultants. It spends 70% of its staff budget on consultants. What do you spend? If you look at your staff costs and then look at your consultancy costs, what percentage is on consultants?
Graham Dalton: If I use the staff numbers-how many have we taken out?
Ginny Clarke: We've taken about 140 of what we call consultants sitting in our offices, which is distinct from people who sit outside and are effectively a contracted service.
Q173 Chair: 140?
Ginny Clarke: In the region of 140.
Graham Dalton: Just over 200.
Ginny Clarke: That is from 1 May to the beginning of November.
Q174 Chair: 140 consultants. How many staff?
Graham Dalton: 3,800.
Q175 Chair: What is the relative cost? Your staff bill will be x; what is your consultancy bill?
Graham Dalton: I haven't got a separate print for consultants. You can see in the daily rates that we have here that we use engineering consultants, which typically cost some £500 a day.
Q176 Mr Bacon: We are not interested in that-well, we are-but I understand the Chair to be asking a fairly simple question. How much in total do you spend on staff, how much in total do you spend on consultants and, thus, what is the ratio of one to the other?
Graham Dalton: Can I just explain a little bit more about the model of the Highways Agency? We have 3,800 staff. Some 1,700 of them are uniformed in control rooms or traffic offices, and the balance is professional staff, but most of the work that is done on the network-even where it is badged up as Highways Agency-is contracted out.
Q177 Mr Bacon: I am just asking you a question to which I'd quite like an answer. I'm not saying that it's good or bad. I used to represent the consulting industry. I used to work for the Management Consultancies Association. I quite understand that if you want to build a motorway, it's probably better to get a consulting civil engineer, under a contract, for the period while you want your motorway, rather than to keep one on the books just in case you want a motorway. That is fairly elementary. What I am asking you is what the costs are?
Chair: Do you know, David?
David Finlay: We've noted in our report, in paragraph 2.26, that there was very limited information on internal costs. That's why we haven't put that in.
Chair: I think what we're after is your annual cost of staffing and your annual cost on consultancy. Those are the basics.
Q178 Mr Bacon: Why don't you send us a detailed note that sets it all out and hopefully justifies it?
Graham Dalton: My overall staff costs-the costs of employing Highways Agency staff-are just over £50 million per annum. I don't have a figure to hand of what we are spending on the consultants in our offices in the current financial year. We have had more last year, because we were delivering the fiscal stimulus.
Q179 Mr Bacon: What is the total that you are spending on consultants, whether they are in your offices or watch what Ginny Clarke called contracted staff out and about?
Graham Dalton: That is a very substantial part of our budget and our overall budget is £2.5 billion per annum.
Q180 Mr Bacon: Okay, but "very substantial" doesn't really help me; £200 million is a lot of money, but so is £2 billion.
Ginny Clarke: The bulk of our costs are spent on the construction, so in terms of the consultant staff, if you include these design people, then they are in the regions of hundreds of millions.
Mr Bacon: I'm sure that they are. It may be that you spend far more on consulting staff, of one kind or another, than you do on your in-house staff. That might be perfectly reasonable and reflect the nature of your business, as opposed to, shall we say, a police force, where you might expect most of the constabulary to be constables who are employed. It is something that may be intrinsic to your business. I am just asking you, and I think so is the Chair, what it is, and you don't seem to be able to tell us.
Ginny Clarke: I cannot give you that number off the top of my head. I know that our staff costs are £50 million.
Mr Bacon: If you could give us a detailed note, that would be helpful.