A row has erupted after it emerged that Whitehall departments and quangos are spending around £10 million on temporary staff and recruitment agencies every month.
This comes despite a recent hiring freeze on new civil servants with the government paying at least £28 million on staff and agencies between September and November last year.
Some departments were found to spend more than others, according to the Daily Mail, with Ken Clarke's Ministry of Justice shelling out £15.7 million on recruitment agencies for temporary staff.
The figures were released by the government following questions from Jon Trickett, Labour’s spokesman for the Cabinet Office.
The newspaper quotes Mr Trickett as saying: "These figures reveal a shocking false economy; it is quite clear that the government’s left hand doesn’t know what its right hand is doing."
"On the one hand they are talking about the need for savings and cutting thousands of jobs. On the other they are spending tens of millions of pounds in recruitment agency fees and hiring new temporary workers."
Not all of the departments responded to Mr Trickett's question so the figures could in fact be higher, but government officials told the newspaper the temporary staff were used to deal with "front-line and business-critical roles", where there were "no suitable internal resources available".
A spokesman for the Cabinet Office is also quoted as saying something along similar lines, suggesting that plenty of money has been saved by freezing recruitment but also that the hiring of temporary workers is often necessary to fill critical roles.
The Department for Work and Pensions spent £2.8 million on recruitment agencies while, along with its quangos, the Home Office spent £5.1 million. The Department of Health paid around £3.1 million to recruitment firms with the Department for Business building up an outlay of £916,000 on recruitment agencies.