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10 Sep 2007 : Column 1992W—continued
Departments: Redundancy
Mr. Hoban: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how much was spent by his Department on redundancy payments in the last 12 months. [153038]
Bridget Prentice: Since its creation on 9 May 2007, the cost of redundancies (including voluntary redundancies) of staff leaving the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has been £2,283,840(1). Prior to the MoJ, the Department for Constitutional Affairs was responsible for such costs. For the period 1 July 2006 to 8 May 2007 redundancy payments totalled £7,471,574.
This relates to 97 departures during this 12-month period, mainly resulting from a restructuring exercise undertaken in Her Majesty's Court Service aimed at streamlining the organisation and reducing management overheads. Wherever restructuring could not be achieved through natural wastage, particularly in the more senior grades, volunteers for early departure were sought to avoid the need for compulsory redundancies.
(1) This figure is for the period 9 May to 30 June 2007
Departments: Taxis
Mr. Hoban: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how much was spent by his Department on taxis in the last 12 months. [153029]
Bridget Prentice: It is not possible to list the costs spent on taxis by the Department in the last 12 months as the expenditure is not separately identifiable within the Department's accounts and may be provided only at disproportionate cost.
All ministerial travel is undertaken in accordance with the rules set out in the "Ministerial Code" and "Travel by Ministers", copies of which are available in the Library of the House for the reference of Members. All official travel by civil servants is undertaken in accordance with the requirements of the "Civil Service Management Code", a copy of which is also available in the Library of the House for the reference of Members.
Departments: Training
Mr. Hoban: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how much was spent by his Department on (a) staff and (b) communication training in the last 12 months. [153036]
Bridget Prentice: The information requested is not held centrally and could be provided only by identifying individual staff training records for those staff that transferred from the Home Office prior to the creation of the Ministry of Justice on 9 May 2007 and would incur disproportionate cost.
During the financial year 2006-07, my former Department, the Department for Constitutional Affairs spent £2,192,701 on staff training which included communication training.
Mr. Hoban: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how much was spent by his Department on staff away days in the last 12 months. [153037]
Bridget Prentice: The responsibility for arranging staff away days in the Ministry of Justice is for each individual directorate and the costs are met from local budgets. Therefore, the information is not held centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.
Departments: Tribunals
Mr. Hoban: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how much was spent by his Department on cases at industrial tribunals in the last 12 months. [153035]
Bridget Prentice: The information is not held centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost as costs would need to be obtained from a number of sources, including various internal costs along with Treasury Solicitor costs.
Kennet Prison
Mr. Garnier: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many of HM Prison Kennet's places are occupied by prisoners. [153479]
Bridget Prentice: As at 24 August 2007, 136 prisoners were held at HM Prison Kennet. The final operational capacity will be 347.
Legal Aid
Mr. Spellar: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how much was paid in legal aid to Arani and Co solicitors in each of the last five years. [153622]
Bridget Prentice: The following table shows the gross amounts paid to the solicitor firm Arani and Co during each of the last five financial years for legal aid, as recorded centrally.
| Financial year | Legal aid (£) |
The figures in the table are gross figures. They are inclusive of VAT at 17.5 per cent. and also disbursements where paid. The firm must pay the VAT to HM Revenue and Customs.
The total sum of payments received by a firm for legal aid work during any one year does not necessarily represent the value of the work carried out during that year. In particular, they are likely to include payments for work carried out in previous years.
Not all legal aid payments are recorded centrally in a way that can be readily attributed to individual solicitor firms. Also, not all payments made to solicitor firms are recorded in the database used to compile these figures. These include manual legal aid payments and payments made for proceedings in the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division and House of Lords.
Members: Correspondence
Sir Gerald Kaufman: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice (1) when he expects to answer the letter to him dated 9 July from the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton with regard to Ben Taylor, Glaisyers Solicitors; [154980]
(2) when he expects to answer the letter to him dated 12 July from the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton with regard to Mrs. K. Kerry. [155065]
Mr. Wills: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor replied to the right hon. Member on 6 September 2007. I apologise for the unacceptable delay.
National Offender Management Information System
Nick Herbert: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice whether it remains Government policy that the main C-NOMIS base release, encompassing full prison and probation functionality, will be available no later than July 2008. [155008]
Mr. Hanson:
Following consideration by the National Offender Management Service Board a decision has been made to conduct a rapid review of
the NOMIS programme. This review will consider the affordability of the overall programme and will report to Ministers in the autumn with recommendations for a revised programme.
Nick Herbert: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice when the National Offender Management Service first advised Ministers that a review of C-NOMIS was necessary. [155010]
Mr. Hanson: I was informed of the recommendations of the NOMS Board on 31 July. On receipt of that advice I requested additional information which was provided and discussed by me with a senior official on 3 August. At that meeting I agreed the review to consider the affordability of the NOMIS programme and commissioned an audit of decision making from inception to date.
Nick Herbert: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what compensation or penalty payments will be due from firms involved in the C-NOMIS project should the project be scaled back. [155012]
Mr. Hanson: No compensation or penalty payments are being discussed.
Mr. Garnier: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how much his Department has spent on commissioning and procuring the C-NOMIS IT system; how much of that total sum has been spent (a) on outside agencies and consultants and (b) internally within the Department, broken down by the internal divisions, agencies and services within the Department, including the Prison Service, the Probation Service and the National Offender Management Service, that spent the money; and when C-NOMIS will be operational within (i) the Prison Service and (ii) the Probation Service. [155095]
Mr. Hanson: The total NOMS expenditure of £155 million to date can be split approximately 85 per cent. contractors, suppliers and consultants, with the remainder split across in-house civil service expenditure.
Following consideration by the National Offender Management Service Board a decision has been made to conduct a rapid review of the NOMIS programme. This review will consider the affordability of the overall programme and will report to Ministers in the autumn with recommendations for a revised programme. Decisions about the project including timescales will be made once this is considered.
National Offender Management Information System: Consultants
Nick Herbert: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice which consultants were engaged to advise on the C-NOMIS project; and what the total committed cost of such consultants is to date. [155011]
Mr. Hanson:
In answering this I include the costs for consultants and contractors. The contract to develop the C-NOMIS system is held by Electronic Data Systems (EDS). Other contractors involved include Syscon, Steria, Sungard, and Business Objects.
Consultants who have advised on the project in the last year are PA Consulting, Gartners, Ernst and Young, and the internal governmental organisation, OGC. In addition Deloitte has given support to NOMS internal audit. The total expenditure of £155 million to date can be split approximately 85 per cent. contractors, suppliers and consultants, with the remainder split across in-house civil service expenditure
National Offender Management Information System: Finance
Nick Herbert: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how much public money has been (a) committed and (b) expended on the C-NOMIS project. [155009]
Mr. Hanson: The original business case for the system was based on lifetime costs to March 2020 of £234 million and expenditure to the end of July 2007 was £155 million. I have instituted a moratorium on further development work while the review of the NOMIS programme is underway.
National Probation Service
Peter Bottomley: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how the tiered modalities of the National Probation Service (punish, help, change and control) include the previous core activities to advise, assist and befriend. [154965]
Mr. Hanson: The statutory requirement to “advise, assist and befriend” was deleted from the relevant legislation when the Probation Order became the Community Rehabilitation Order under the 1991 Criminal Justice Act. To advise, to assist and to befriend are all inputs in probation work with offenders. In common with most of the public sector, the probation service has been more focused in recent years upon the outcomes of its efforts rather than the inputs.
The Criminal Justice Act 2003 (s 142) sets down five purposes of sentencing. Offender Managers—Probation Officers and Probation Service Officers—are charged with implementing sentences of the court in order to achieve the purpose or purposes defined by the court for any individual sentence passed. The Offender Management Model, which has been implemented for all offenders on community sentences and around 14 per cent. of offenders in custody, sets out the NOMS end-to-end case management approach. Within this approach, Offender Managers will select one of the four broad options for which the one-word labels—PUNISH, HELP, CHANGE and CONTROL—are a “shorthand”.
The Offender Management Model itself describes what these labels mean in more detail. The terms PUNISH, HELP, CHANGE and CONTROL map well against the five purposes of sentencing set out in the Act. They each attract different workload allowances for the Offender Manager. The Offender Management Model describes a case management approach with a sound working relationship between an Offender Manager and an offender at its core. Advising, assisting and befriending are approaches an Offender Manager might use in that relationship,
depending on the needs and learning style in each case, in order to achieve the outcomes sought from the sentence, but advising, assisting and befriending are no longer viewed as the objectives of probation work.
Prison Officers Association: Trade Unions
Mr. Bellingham: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many members of the Prison Officers' Association national committee were promoted while holding trade union office in each of the last three years; who was responsible for authorising their promotion in each case; and if he will make a statement. [153678]
Bridget Prentice: No members of the POA National Executive Committee have been promoted while holding trade union office in the last three financial years.
Prison Sentences
Mr. Garnier: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many offenders were (a) sentenced to serve custodial sentences and (b) released from prison (i) in each of the last 10 years for which figures are available, (ii) in each week in (A) 2006 and (B) 2007 and (iii) on each day in 2006. [153480]
Mr. Wills: Information on the numbers of prisoners received into all prison establishments in England and Wales between 1996 and 2005 can be found in the following table:
| Receptions 1997-2006 prison establishments England and Wales | |
| Receptions under immediate custodial sentence( 1) | |
| (1 )Total sentenced receptions, excluding fine defaulters (taken from table 7.2 of the Offender Management Caseload Statistics) Figures 1997-2005 have been published in Offender Management Caseload Statistics; 2006 figure is soon to be published | |
For each week in 2006, the number of sentenced receptions ranges between 1,200 and 1,900. The average number of sentenced receptions per day in 2006 was around 300. For each week in 2007 between January and July, the number of sentenced receptions ranges between 1,300 and 1,900.
There are quality problems with the data on sentenced prisoners finally released from prison which mean that we do not have a consistent series to compare with receptions. We expect to have reliable data for 2007 in early 2008. In general, weekly discharges were around 1,400 to 2,400 in 2006 and 1,200 to 2,000 between January and July 2007.
These figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems, which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.
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