| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
12 Oct 2009 : Column 104W—continued
Departmental Public Expenditure
Mr. Brady: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice which Minister in his Department has been assigned responsibility for overseeing the delivery of value for money in his Department; whether his Department has established a public sector reform team to implement service reforms; and if he will make a statement. [289736]
Mr. Wills:
I am the Minister with responsibility for value for money in the Ministry of Justice (MOJ). The MOJ is committed to reforming and improving public
services for the citizen and there are a number of teams across the department that are working closely with colleagues in the centre of Government to achieve this. The MOJ's Performance and Efficiency Programme (PEP) was set up to ensure the department delivers efficiencies of over £1 billion in the three years running up to March 2011. This programme is supported by a small PEP team which helps coordinate the work of the wider department.
Departmental Recycling
Stewart Hosie: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what proportion of his Department's waste was recycled in the latest period for which figures are available. [289672]
Mr. Wills: The Ministry of Justice was created in May 2007. This answer gives the figure for 2007-08 which is the latest period for which figures are available.
The proportion of waste the Ministry of Justice recycled in 2007-08 was 15,635.6 tonnes and the percentage recycled was 22 per cent. This information was published in the seventh annual "Sustainable Development in Government" Report (SDiG) at:
2008-09 data will be published in December.
Departmental Training
John Mason: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many external training courses were attended by staff of his Department in the last 12 months; and what the cost was of attendance on each such course. [289704]
Mr. Wills: In the 12 month period from 1 September 2008 to 31 August 2009 records show that 2,500 Ministry of Justice staff attended external courses. This figure excludes the National Offender Management Service, as to obtain this information would involve identifying and contacting sources of information in many different locations at a disproportionate cost. Responsibility for decisions on training rests with line managers, again there is no central collation of management information on the cost of attendance of these courses and this information could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.
Departmental Travel
Justine Greening: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how much his Department and its predecessors spent on (a) car hire, (b) train travel, (c) air travel and (d) hotels for (i) Ministers and (ii) staff in his Department in each of the last five years. [289977]
Mr. Straw: All travel by Ministers is undertaken in accordance with the ministerial code. Since 1999, the Cabinet Office has published a list of all overseas travel over £500 undertaken by Ministers. Information for the financial year 2008-09 was published on 16 July 2009 and can be viewed at:
All travel and hotel booking by Ministry of Justice staff members is completed in line with the published
rules for official travel and subsistence within the staff handbook. The rules are in accordance with the guidelines set out in the Civil Service Management Code.
It is not possible to identify other expenditure on travel and hotels incurred specifically by Ministers without incurring the disproportionate costs as a significant proportion of hotel bookings, air travel, train travel and car hire are arranged through travel management companies employed by the Ministry to obtain best value for money options. Expenditure may also be incurred directly by staff and reimbursed through an expense claim process or charged to a Government Procurement Card (GPC). The GPC is a credit card operated by Barclays bank designed to limit transaction processing costs for low value, ad-hoc expenses. Expense claim records and log books detailing expenditure on the GPC card are held locally across the organisation, including by courts and prisons across the country. Examination and analysis of local records to identify amounts relating specifically to hotels, air travel, train travel and car hire for the last five years would incur disproportionate cost.
Travel and hotel costs incurred by Directors General and the Permanent Secretary within the Ministry in 2008-09 are published on the Ministry's website at:
Directors General and Permanent Secretary costs have also been published quarterly on the website since July 2009.
The annual departmental resource accounts disclose expenditure on "travel, subsistence and hospitality" in notes 10 (administration expenditure) and 11 (programme expenditure). Resource accounts were published by the Ministry of Justice for 2007-08 and 2008-09 and prior to that by the Ministry's predecessor, the Department for Constitutional Affairs. All published accounts can be found at:
Analysis of published totals to identify amounts relating specifically to hotels, air travel, train travel and car hire for the last five years would incur disproportionate cost. The majority of expenditure is recorded within the Ministry's accounting records against a general "travel and subsistence" category which includes, in addition, subsistence allowances where, for example, staff are required to stay away from home overnight.
The information that is held under the "travel and subsistence" category in the accounts includes non-civil servants, for example, judiciary and probation personnel. To calculate these costs, it would be necessary for the central procurement team to trawl manual records for the last five years. This is not possible since the procurement contracts have changed during this period as have the structure of the Department following Machinery of Government Changes.
Officials are now working to improve significantly the data held in this area.
Driving Offences: Insurance
Mr. Kemp: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many convictions there were for the offence of driving without insurance in each of the last five years. [289333]
Claire Ward: The number of findings of guilt for using a motor vehicle uninsured against third party risks in England and Wales from 2003 to 2007 is shown in the following table.
An amendment to the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988, s. 143 means that driving a motor vehicle while uninsured against third party risks a fixed penalty offence as from 1 June 2003. Initially, offenders are, when appropriate, offered a £200 fixed penalty; this can be increased to a maximum of £5,000 if the matter goes to court.
2008 data will be available in the autumn of 2009.
| Number of findings of guilt for using a motor vehicle uninsured against third party risks at all courts, England and Wales, 2003 to 2007( 1,2,3) | |
| Proceeded against | |
| (1) Includes offences under the Road Traffic Act 1988 s. 143 (2). (2) It is known that for some police force areas the reporting of court proceedings, in particular those relating to summary motoring offences, may be less than complete. (3) Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts and police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their limitations are taken into account when those data are used. Source: Office for Criminal Justice Reform-Evidence and Analysis unit. | |
Electoral Register
Mr. Crausby: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what steps he is taking to encourage people to complete and return electoral registration forms. [291469]
Mr. Wills: Encouraging people to complete and return electoral registration forms is the responsibility of electoral registration officers (EROs), in local authorities, under a duty placed on them by section 9 of the Electoral Administration Act 2006 (EA Act), which requires them to take all necessary steps to maintain the electoral register, including sending the canvass form more than once, inspecting such records that the ERO is allowed to inspect, and making house-to-house inquiries.
The EA Act also provided for the Electoral Commission to introduce a performance standards framework for EROs. The standards provide a framework within which the performance of EROs in registering people can be assessed, and targeted work undertaken to drive up performance where necessary. The first assessments against these standards were published on 21 April 2009 and are available on the Commission's website.
The Government also established a funding mechanism to support novel and innovative projects and activities which EROs and returning officers take forward in pursuance of their duty, under section 69 of the EA Act to encourage electoral participation. Through this, funding has been made available for a range of schemes to support registration.
In addition, the Government recently legislated in the Political Parties and Elections Act 2009 for the phased implementation of Individual Registration (IR) in Great Britain. This will be supported by a programme of work to drive up registration rates in Great Britain, enhancing both the comprehensiveness and accuracy of the electoral registers.
This programme will include: data matching pilots between EROs and local authorities to support registration; and secondary legislation to support registration amongst service voters, enhance data sharing in areas where there are two tier local authorities, and clarify that the section 9 duty applies all year round. The Government have also initiated a registration poster campaign in Citizens Advice Bureaux, the network of HM courts in England, Wales and Scotland and Jobcentre Plus offices.
Figures released by the Office for National Statistics show that during the last three years registration rates continued to rise. As of 1 December 2008 the number of UK parliamentary electors rose to 45.2 million.
Employment Tribunals Service
Justine Greening: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many times his Department has been taken to an employment tribunal in each of the last five years; what the primary reason cited in each case was; and in how many cases the tribunal found in favour of (a) the employee and (b) his Department. [290249]
Mr. Straw: The data are held centrally only for the two years since the establishment of the Ministry of Justice. To obtain the data now for previous years would incur disproportionate costs.
The following tables show the position at the end of each of the last two financial years in respect of the number of claims issued at the Employment Tribunal against the Ministry of Justice, and their outcomes. All of the claims shown in the tables were defended by the Ministry at the initial stage in the process.
The total number of people employed by the Ministry of Justice varies from day-to-day. The claims made are from an employment population of circ. 79,840 in 2007-08 and 80,750 in 2008-09. The staff numbers used are published headcount figures on 31 March 2009 held on the Office for National Statistics website at:
| Next Section | Index | Home Page |