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Bob Spink: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs how many disciplinary actions against civil servants employed in her Department (a) were commenced and (b) resulted in a sanction being applied in each of the last five years. [43500]
Ms Harman: My Department has a conduct policy and supporting procedures which have been brought to the attention of all staff via the departmental intranet, internal publications and induction and management training. There is a range of sanctions which can be applied in cases of misconduct, up to and including dismissal. Dismissal might be justified for instances of gross misconduct for a first offence or for repeated instances of serious or minor misconduct.
Data for the number of employees against whom disciplinary action has been commenced, or in respect of whom disciplinary sanctions, short of dismissal, have been applied is only recorded on individual files. These are retained for the appropriate period before removal and destruction in compliance with the Department's obligations under the Data Protection Act. It is therefore not possible to obtain this information without incurring disproportionate costs. The number of employees who have been dismissed on disciplinary grounds in the past five financial years is as follows:
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Number | |
---|---|
200001 | 14 |
200102 | 13 |
200203 | 27 |
200304 | 30 |
200405 | 43 |
Mrs. Villiers: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs how much her Department has paid since 2004 to external consultants who had previously been employed by the Department in any capacity within the previous five years. [41202]
Ms Harman: Although there have been instances in which former civil servants have been re-employed directly by the Department, no information is held centrally about any who may have been engaged as external consultantseither directly or via independent consulting firms and could only be obtained at disproportionate .
Joan Walley: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs which postal code areas are dealt with by the Central Finance Unit at Rugeley in respect of fixed penalty notices. [45039]
Ms Harman: The Central Finance and Enforcement Unit at Rugeley serves all postal code areas within Staffordshire. The postal code areas are:-
Peter Law: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs if she will make a statement on the operation of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 during its first year in force; and what estimate she has made of the cost of its implementation to (a) central Government and its agencies and (b) local government. [41489]
Ms Harman:
I am confident that the Freedom of Information Act is working and working well. It is estimated that in the first year of its operation, major central Government bodies alone received approximately 36,000 FOI requests. In the third quarter of 2005, for those bodies whose performance is monitored by DCA, 67 per
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cent. of resolvable requests resulted in the full disclosure of information. For local government and the wider public sector, anecdotal evidence also suggests that there has been a large number of valuable releases of information on issues that matter to the public.
My Department has made no estimate to date of the cost of the implementation of FOI to either (1) central Government or its agencies, or (2) local government.
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Mr. Bone: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs what the change in criminal legal aid rates has been over the last 10 years. [45426]
Bridget Prentice: There are different rates prescribed for the many separate schemes across a variety of services provided within the criminal defence service (CDS). The changes to the prescribed basic legal aid rates for work in the criminal courts are set in the following table.
Mr. Amess: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs if she will make a statement on the National Mediation Helpline. [41746]
Ms Harman: The National Mediation Helpline is a departmentally funded scheme that has been set up to help court users and the general public settle their disputes, and where appropriate refer the caller to a low cost mediation.
Since the Helpline started at the end of November 2004 it has received over 2,600 calls, and in the past five months, records show there have been over 6,000 visits to the supporting website (www.nationalmediationhelpline.com).
At the end of 2005, the Helpline had arranged 81 mediations with a total of 71 settling on the day or within 14 days of the mediationa settlement rate of 87 per cent.
The Helpline is being piloted for a further year, and progress will be reviewed in autumn 2006.
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