| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
12 Oct 2009 : Column 696W—continued
Departmental Dismissal
Justine Greening: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many staff have (a) been dismissed and (b) had their contract terminated by his Department in each of the last five years; what the reason was in each case; and what the severance costs in relation to (i) dismissal and (ii) contract termination were in each such year. [290443]
Phil Hope: In each of the last five years, less than five individuals have been dismissed from the core Department.
In each of the last five years, less than five non-permanent workers have been terminated for reasons other than the completion of the work under their contract.
Exact figures are not provided and related information suppressed on confidentiality grounds.
Departmental Flexible Working
Justine Greening: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what flexitime arrangements were available to staff within the Department in each of the last five years; and how many staff participated in such arrangements in each such year. [290445]
Phil Hope: The Department recognises that flexible working allows staff to combine employment and a career with other responsibilities as well as meeting personal needs. The Department encourages staff to work flexibly through providing opportunities such as part-time working, job sharing, term-time only working and the use of flexitime. It also provides the technology to allow staff to work at home on occasions and has in place specific arrangements to allow parents, adopters, guardians and foster carers of children under 16 (or disabled children under 18) to apply to work flexibly.
Most staff participate in the flexitime work arrangement. The Department also encourages other flexible arrangements such as spreading working hours over nine days within a fortnight or four days within a week.
Managers have the discretion to agree flexible working arrangements locally, without making contractual changes. These local arrangements are not recorded centrally so the numbers of staff working flexibly is not available, but is likely to be a large proportion of the work force.
In our last submission to Office for National Statistics (1 April 2009) we had 201 staff working part-time, based on those arrangements where contractual changes were agreed centrally. Of those, six had job-share arrangements and five were working term-time. Prior to July 2008 this information was not held centrally.
There are details of full- and part-time employees in the Department.
From 16 June 2009 civil servants hoping to find a job-share partner can now use a new online job-sharing board to help match them with a suitable person. This can be found at:
Departmental Information and Communications Technology
Justine Greening: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what IT systems have been in development for use within his Department in the last five years; what the reason for the development of each system was; how much has been spent on the development of each system; and which systems have been subsequently (a) implemented, (b) terminated prior to implementation and (c) terminated following implementation. [290439]
Phil Hope: This information could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.
Departmental Manpower
Justine Greening: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what recent estimate he has made of the average length of employment of staff of his Department at each civil service payband. [290441]
Phil Hope: The average length of employment in the Department for each grade are presented in the following table.
| Grade | Average length of service (years) |
Departmental Marketing
Mr. Philip Hammond: To ask the Secretary of State for Health with reference to the answer of 26 November 2008, Official Report, column 2061W, on departmental marketing, how many staff in his Department are responsible for branding activity; and what the cost of employing such staff was in 2008-09. [290214]
Phil Hope: In the 2008-09 budget year three staff were employed to work on branding.
The cost of employing branding staff during this period was £141,752.
Departmental Motor Vehicles
Andrew Stunell: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much his Department spent on hire vehicles in each of the last five financial years. [291612]
Phil Hope: Figures for car hire expenditure booked through our car hire contract company Arval are only available for the last two years.
| Car hire expenditure (£) | |
The previous car hire contract expired in May 2006 and figures for previous years are not easily available and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.
Departmental Non-domestic Rates
Justine Greening: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many properties owned by the Department were liable for payment of (a) business rates and (b) empty property rates in each of the last five years; and what the liability of each was in each such year. [290446]
Phil Hope: The information requested is provided as follows.
The Department has occupied two freehold properties for which business rates are paid during the five-year period.
Information in relation to empty business rates is not readily available other than for the last two years.
| Business rates | Empty business rates | |||
| Number of Properties | Cost (£) | Number of Properties | Cost (£) | |
Departmental Paternity Leave
Justine Greening: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many staff took paternity leave from his Department in each of the last five years; and what the average duration of such leave has been. [290444]
Phil Hope: The figures for the number of staff taking paternity leave are only available from the implementation of the Department's business management system on 1 July 2008. Prior to that date information is only be available from hard-copy files and so it would incur disproportionate costs to establish that information. Our records show that the number of staff taking paternity leave in 2008 was nine, and so far this year (2009) the number has been five. The average length of paternity leave taken was 14 days.
Departmental Public Consultation
Mr. Stephen O'Brien: To ask the Secretary of State for Health when he plans to publish the responses to his Department's consultation on its Green Paper, "Shaping the Future of Care Together", Cm 7673. [290395]
Phil Hope: The Green Paper consultation closes on 13 November 2009. The Government's response to the consultation will be published after this date.
Departmental Public Consultations
Mr. Lansley: To ask the Secretary of State for Health which (a) individuals and (b) organisations he consulted on his proposals to (i) give 350,000 people free personal home care, (ii) provide patients with access to cancer diagnostics within one week of concerns being raised and (iii) provide free parking for hospital in-patients. [292535]
Andy Burnham: The Department and Ministers engage continuously with key stakeholders across all policy areas and through this process can identify key issues and develop proposals to address them.
Such engagement and consultation with individuals and groups with an interest in these proposals will continue as we work with them towards their implementation.
Departmental Public Expenditure
Mr. Brady: To ask the Secretary of State for Health 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. [289739]
Mr. Mike O'Brien: I am the Department of Health Minister with responsibility for overseeing the delivery of value for money. The Department has not created a new single public sector reform team because directorates within the Department lead on different elements of service reform.
Robert Neill: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what recent discussions he has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on whether funding presently allocated to his Department is to be re-allocated to the Department for Communities and Local Government to help implement the housing policies announced in the Draft Legislative Programme for 2009-10. [290487]
Phil Hope: The Secretary of State for Health discussed the Department of Health's contribution to the housing policies announced in the Draft Legislative Programme with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, as part of the process of publishing "Building Britain's Future".
Mr. Lansley: To ask the Secretary of State for Health with reference to the Prime Minister's announcement of 29 June 2009 on provision of social housing, whether funds from underspends in his Department's budget will be re-allocated to social housing initiatives. [291877]
Mr. Byrne: I have been asked to reply.
I refer the hon. Gentleman to the answer I gave on 21 July 2009, Official Report, column 1352W.
Mr. Lansley: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what the reasons are for the time taken to publish the national programme budgeting data for 2007-08. [291878]
Mr. Mike O'Brien: I am told that the time taken to publish the 2007-08 programme budgeting data was due to a new data collection mechanism for both the reference cost data (which are used as part of the programme budgeting calculations) and the programme budgeting data. In addition, due to a change in the programme budgeting data collection methodology, additional validation work was undertaken to estimate expenditure levels per programme without methodological changes.
Departmental Publications
Mr. Stephen O'Brien: To ask the Secretary of State for Health pursuant to the answer of 1 July 2009, Official Report, columns 350-1W, on parliamentary bulletins, what amendment was requested to the first edition of Westminster; for what reason a reference to the remuneration of the chair of the Appointments Commission was removed; and what the chair's remuneration is. [289693]
Phil Hope:
The Appointments Commission had planned to include an article on the remuneration of chairs in the first edition of the 'Westminster' bulletin. During discussions on the draft, departmental officials suggested that the article might raise expectations of chairs of national health service organisations about the Secretary of State's discretion when deciding remuneration increases, within the framework of the Public Sector Pay Committee's
decisions, which were not correct. The Appointments Commission, who have editorial control, made a decision to replace the article.
The planned article was about chairs' remuneration in general. It did not refer to the remuneration of the chair of the Appointments Commission specifically, and no such reference was removed from Westminster Bulletin.
Remuneration for the chair of the Appointments Commission is in the range of £45,000-50,000 as published in the Appointments Commission's latest annual report and accounts (2008-09). This can be found on their website:
| Next Section | Index | Home Page |