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5 Jan 2010 : Column 13W—continued
The Serious Fraud Office provides transactional services for the payment of all National Fraud Authority's invoices. The Agency is unable to disclose its payment performance as it uses the Serious Fraud Office's accounting system and NFA-specific payments cannot be differentiated.
Departmental Buildings
Mr. Baron: To ask the Solicitor-General how much the Law Officers' Departments spent on works and refurbishment to offices allocated to Law Officers in the last 12 months. [305675]
The Solicitor-General: In the last 12 months AGO has spent £3,694.00 on works and refurbishment to offices allocated to Law Officers.
Departmental Conferences
Mr. Baron: To ask the Solicitor-General which conferences held overseas have been attended by civil servants based in the Law Officers' Department in the last three years; and what the cost to the public purse was of such attendance at each conference. [305854]
The Solicitor-General: The information requested is contained in the following tables.
Staff from the Attorney-General's Office have attended the following overseas conferences in the last three years:
Treasury Solicitor's (Tsol) staff have attended the following overseas conferences in the last three years:
Staff from Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office (RCPO) have attended the following overseas conferences in the last three years:
Staff from the HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate (HMCPSI) have attended the following overseas conferences in the last three years:
Staff from the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) have attended the following overseas conferences in the last three years:
No conferences held overseas were attended by National Fraud Authority staff in 2008-09 when the Agency launched.
The Crown Prosecution Service is a devolved organisation. Although expenditure data on overseas travel are available, the Department has not kept central records of the reason for travel or which overseas conferences have been attended by CPS staff in the last
three years. To provide this information would involve checking paper records across the CPS and would incur disproportionate costs.
Departmental Legislation
Chris Huhne: To ask the Solicitor-General what criminal offences have been (a) created and (b) abolished by secondary legislation sponsored by the Law Officers' Departments since 1 May 2008. [307795]
The Solicitor-General: The Law Officers' Departments have not sponsored any secondary legislation since 1 May 2008 that has created or abolished a criminal offence.
Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office: Conferences
Mr. Graham Stuart: To ask the Solicitor-General how many (a) away days and (b) conferences that took place outside the Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office's buildings attended by civil servants in the Revenue and Customs Prosecution Office there have been since 2005; and what the cost was of each. [307449]
The Solicitor-General: Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office (RCPO) is committed to providing a rewarding and stimulating working environment in which our employees can develop and excel. Consequently, RCPO organises a number of events to set strategy, develop and engage its employees, including:
senior managers' away days to review corporate performance and set future plans
all-staff conferences to deliver key messages, outline strategy and celebrate corporate successes
(a) Since 2005 RCPO has organised seven senior manager away days, at a cost of £39,286.
(b) RCPO has accounted for domestic conference charges as a separate item of expenditure from September 2007. Since that date staff have attended 34 conferences, including all-staff conferences, at a cost of £166,930.
(c) Staff from RCPO have also attended nine overseas conferences since 2005, at a cost of £60,988.
Trials
Mr. Garnier: To ask the Solicitor-General in respect of each case which went to trial and resulted in a judge-directed acquittal, what the original Crown Prosecution Service lawyer decision had been before it proceeded to trial in each of the last five years for which figures are available. [308849]
The Solicitor-General: A case can only proceed to trial in the Crown court where the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has first decided that a defendant should be charged and which charges should be brought, by applying the two stage test of the Code for Crown Prosecutors: that the evidence supports a realistic prospect of conviction; and that it is in the public interest to proceed with a prosecution. Additionally, after a defendant is charged, each case is subject to a process of continuous review to ascertain that both the evidence and the public interest continue to weigh in favour of a prosecution.
However, while this process is intended to ensure, wherever possible, that weaker cases are identified and
dropped before reaching trial, it is neither possible nor desirable that every prosecution should result in a conviction. There will always remain a small number of cases in which essential facts only become apparent later in the process, and even in the course of the trial itself.
Both the volume and proportion of directed acquittals have improved over recent years.
The following table shows the number of defendants whose case resulted in a judge directed acquittal during each of the last five years, and expresses these as a proportion of all cases completed in the Crown court. The table also shows the reasons for which cases resulted in a directed acquittal. Information in this format is held only for the last four years.
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