Boris Johnson spent nine times as much as Ken Livingstone on headhunters while Mayor (Evening Standard)

1.00.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 6th Jul 2010

Boris Johnson spent almost £450,000 on headhunters in two years - nine times more than his predecessor Ken Livingstone.

New figures reveal the Mayor has spent £446,600 in the two years since he took over, with £308,865 going to recruitment firm Odgers Berndtson, who former Tory MP Virginia Bottomley works for. Mr Livingstone spent £50,000 between 2006-08 and £24,000 between 2004-06.

It comes after Mr Johnson criticised Ken Livingstone for spending an "excessive" £17.4million on consultants in the previous eight years.

A spokesman for the Mayor said: "The costs of the current Mayor and the previous Mayor are not comparing like for like because of the big changes at City Hall in recent years.

"Odgers Berndtson won a contract through a fair competitive tendering process. We try to do recruitment internally but sometimes we do need the help of external experts."

The large number of new senior executives needed at City Hall and for the Olympic Games in 2012 has been blamed for the big rise in costs.

Odgers still has strong links with the Conservative Party. New MP for Milton Keynes South, Iain Stewart, is a former staff member and chief executive Richard Boggis-Rolfe has donated £207,500 to the Conservatives since 2006. Headhunters charge a percentage of the salary of the role they have helped fill. Critics say that they have been overused at City Hall.

Liberal Democrat finance spokesman Mike Tuffrey said: "I am staggered by the amount spent on headhunters and the Mayor must be honest with Londoners about the costs of this reorganising and the amount he has spent filling posts.

"The GLA is a high profile and attractive place to work and in some of these instances a traditional advert would get a good range of candidates. These new figures show that the use of headhunters has been excessive."

Today Mr Johnson said that the large increase in recruitment costs was due to the need to appoint many high level staff, including an executive director and chief executive, after his Organising for Delivery programme and to prepare for the Olympics in 2012.

An Odgers Berndtson spokesman said: "Virginia Bottomley is chair of the board practice, one of eleven practice groups. She has never worked on a recruitment assignment for the Greater London Authority.

"Odgers' work for the GLA was won after a fair and competitive tendering process."

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