It reads like a cry for help smuggled out of an unloved corner of Whitehall. Greg Clark’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has offered £80,000 to any outside company who can find out why it is losing 600 staff in a year. In an unusually frank admission, it says: “There is no reliable data to inform us of the reasons they are leaving”.

The department, created by Theresa May a year ago, is trying to stem the steady stream of people handing in their notice at a time when it is overseeing a new industrial strategy and seeking to keep business here after Brexit.

A tender document asking for a consultant to interview leavers has been published on the government contracts finder