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26 Nov 2008 : Column 1964W—continued
For Special Advisers, I refer the hon. Member to the written ministerial statement made by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on 22 November 2007, Official Report, columns 147-150WS.
Departmental NDPBs
Jenny Willott: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many staff were employed by (a) Jobcentre Plus, (b) the Health and Safety Executive, (c) the Pensions Regulator and (d) the Pension Protection Fund in (i) 2005-06, (ii) 2006-07 and (iii) 2007-08. [238202]
Mr. McNulty: The following table shows the number of staff employed at 31 March for each of the years 2005-06, 2006-07 and 2007-08 at Jobcentre Plus and the Health and Safety Executive. For the Pension Regulator and the Pensions Protection Fund the table shows an average of headcount for each of the aforementioned years as this is the normal basis on which these units report staffing information.
| Business area | 2005-06 | 2006-07 | 2007-08 |
| Notes: 1. HSE figures include agency staff and staff in the Health and Safety Laboratory which is an in-house agency of HSE. 2. HSE figures at 1 April 2007 include staff in the Office for Civil Nuclear Security and the UK Safeguards Office who transferred from DTI on that date. 3. HSE figures at 1 April 2008 include staff in the Pesticides Safety Directorate who transferred to HSE from DEFRA on that date. | |||
Departmental Pay
Mr. Ancram: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what bonuses were paid by his Department in 2007-08; to which members of staff; and for what purposes. [239660]
Jonathan Shaw: The information requested is as follows.
End of Year Performance Bonuses
DWP employees in pay bands below the senior civil service are eligible for an annual individual performance bonus if they attain a “Top”, “Higher” or “Majority” rating under the annual Performance and Development System. The amount of bonus awarded is differentiated on the basis of employee’s pay band and the performance level achieved.
For the senior civil service end of year bonuses are determined on an individual basis by the relevant DWP SCS Pay Committee.
Performance awards from the year 2006-07 are paid in the financial year 2007-08.
A total of £36.61 million was paid in performance bonuses in the 2007-08 financial year broken down as follows:
| Table 1 : D epartmental total | ||
| Financial year | Total paid (£ million) | Total number of recipients |
| Table 2: Total at grades below SCS | ||
| Financial year | Total paid (£ million) | Total number of recipients |
Individuals may also be entitled to special bonus payments either as cash or vouchers. These are one-off recognition awards, payable at any time during the performance year and are not linked to the annual pay award.
The cost in a typical year for cash bonuses is around £2.7 million with payments made to approximately 11,250 individuals.
The cost for voucher payments was £1.77 million in 2007-08. 31,237 vouchers were issued, but some individuals might have received more than one voucher.
Departmental Procurement
Mr. Philip Hammond: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions whether there has been any nugatory cost to his Department and its agencies relating to tendered procurement where the tender process has been cancelled prior to the award of the contract in the last three years. [239646]
Ms Rosie Winterton: My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State, announced on 13 November that the Government had decided to award a contract for a successor to the current Post Office card account to Post Office Ltd.
I shall write to the hon. Member with an estimate of the costs of the staff directly involved in the procurement and will place a copy of my letter in the Library. Some of these costs would have been necessary in any event to put in place a new contract with the Post Office so have not been ‘abortive’.
No other tender processes undertaken by my Department in the last three years have been cancelled prior to the award of a contract.
Departmental Public Opinion
Mr. Jeremy Browne: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how much his Department has spent on (a) focus groups and (b) opinion polls in each year since 1997-98; how much he estimates will be spent on each category in 2008-09; and if he will make a statement. [239054]
Jonathan Shaw: Focus group research is often an integral part of the development of communications campaigns. However the cost of such is often included within those campaign development costs and the specific costs are not held separately. disproportionate costs would be incurred to cover 10 years of expenditure.
Focus groups are also used as elements within the Department's larger evaluations but as above, specific costs are not always held separately and disproportionate costs would be incurred to cover 10 years of expenditure.
The Department has conducted omnibus surveys on public attitudes to the Government's welfare reform programme since 2001. To date in 2008, the Department has conducted omnibus surveys designed to raise awareness of the change to state retirement age for women, to encourage planning and saving for retirement and on young people's attitudes to work and benefits.
Details per financial year are provided in the following table.
| Cost (£) | |
|
2004-05—Public Attitudes—Wave 5 and new 1 and Public Awareness | |
|
2008-09—Public Attitudes (includes predicted costs until end of the financial year) | |
This research was limited between 2001 and 2004. In 2005 an increased number of new attitude statements were included in omnibus research and we also conducted a piece of research to monitor public awareness of the Department and its responsibilities. This year, we have increased the frequency of the surveys in order to most effectively inform the development of our communications activity.
The Department does not conduct opinion polling since the quick turn around necessary to reflect the pressing issues of the day often involves:
quota or other non-random sampling methods (i.e. less rigorous and giving less certainty who the results are actually representative of)
smaller sample sizes (greater confidence intervals and difficulty supplying estimates for small groups)
single questions or short questionnaire (meaning views given often lack context)
lack of methodological rigour, particularly in terms of question design (raising risk that answers are influenced by question wording.
Departmental Translation Services
Chris Grayling: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how much was spent by his Department on providing translation services for customers in each of the last five years. [226157]
Ms Rosie Winterton: The DWP provides a range of language translation services for customers across the UK, namely:
Face to Face
Telephone
Welsh
Braille
Audio.
We are also able to offer a service to convert documents into Easy Read format.
The contractual arrangements for the services have been developed over a number of years and as a result spend has not been applicable for some of these services in each of the last five years or data has not been able to be gathered for spend during some years. Disproportionate cost would be incurred in trying to identify such spend.
The range of services also includes the translation of departmental information leaflets that are provided to customers into a range of ethnic languages, as well as all publications for Welsh speaking customers.
The following table contains the spend across the DWP for all translation services as recorded on a number of departmental systems and as reported in previous parliamentary questions or freedom of informations requests.
| Type of translation service | 2003-04 | 2004-05 | 2005-06 | 2006-07 | 2007-08 | 2008-09( 1) |
| (1 )Year to date August 2008. (2) Not available without disproportionate cost as data not held centrally. | ||||||
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