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12 Mar 2010 : Column 530W—continued
Departmental Buildings
Mr. Philip Hammond: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how much his Department spent on office refurbishments in each year since its inception. [320507]
Mr. Straw: I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on 17 November 2008, Official Report, columns 17-18W, to the right hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude).
The tables in my previous answer which covered Ministry of Justice HQ, NOMS (custodial and non-custodial, HMCS Estates, Tribunals Service and the Legal Services Commission) provide costs for the full calendar year 2007; and costs up to November 2008. The Ministry of Justice was created in May 2007 and we are unable to separate costs for that year.
Costs incurred since then, including the balance of 2008, are shown as follows. The costs stated are for refurbishment works to the fabric and structure of buildings and do not include items such as furniture and are exclusive of VAT.
Balance of 2008: £862,392
2009: £150,223
These figures above cover Ministry of Justice HQ and the Tribunals Service buildings. Figures are not held centrally for buildings in the NOMS and HMCS estates and could be provided only at disproportionate cost. However, they have not been refurbishing offices, rather reducing and making better use of the buildings that they have.
2010 costs are not yet available.
Departmental Location
Bob Spink: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how much his Department spent on the relocation of staff from posts in (a) Essex and (b) Castle Point constituency in each of the last five years. [321426]
Mr. Wills: The information requested is not held centrally and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost. Local HR teams are not necessarily informed of physical relocations within a given business area.
The Ministry of Justice's accounting systems record relocation costs at an organisational level and not according to the geographical location of staff.
It would incur disproportionate cost to identify spend on the relocation of staff from posts in Essex and Castle Point. To identify the information required would involve investigations by all of the local offices and agencies of the Ministry of Justice operating within Essex and the Castle Point constituency, including prisons, probation services, magistrates, Crown and county courts and tribunal services.
Departmental Temporary Employment
Grant Shapps: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice from which companies his Department sourced temporary staff in each of the last three years; how many temporary staff his Department employed in each year; and what the monetary value of the contracts with each such company was in each such year. [320015]
Mr. Straw: According to the definition provided by the Office of Government Commerce (OGC), temporary staff include all interim managers, specialist contractors, administrative, manual and clerical staff. Personnel who are engaged to provide advisory services are excluded as the OGC classifies them as "consultancy". It is often the case that the same suppliers provide temporary staff and consultants.
On its formation on 9 May 2007 as a merger between the former Department for Constitutional Affairs and parts of the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice inherited a range of local procurement arrangements which were brought together within a single departmental wide function from April 2009. It is not possible therefore to identify expenditure on temporary staff classified according to OGC definitions from procurement data prior to the current financial year. To provide this information would incur the disproportionate cost of scrutinising thousands of invoices from relevant suppliers to determine what costs relate to consultancy and what costs relate to temporary staff.
The new departmental wide arrangements are based on the best practice processes that were already in operation on the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) agency. NOMS is therefore able to identify £27.25 million expenditure in 2008-09 with its contracted
Administrative and Clerical Agency Staff providers at that time (Brook Street; Hays; Reed; Employment Plus; Kelly Services; NRG and Office Angels).
In most cases, the Ministry now utilises the OGC Buying Solutions framework arrangements for the provision of temporary staff. The suppliers under this framework can be found at the following link under the categories of (1) Temporary Clerical and Admin (2) Specialist Contractors (3) Interim Management:
Using a slightly different definition for headcount monitoring purposes, the departmental annual resource accounts identify agency and contract staff costs and numbers within notes (9a) and (9c) in the column headed "others". However, these figures include some staff on temporary contracts who are employed directly by the Ministry of Justice, hence the pension and social security costs disclosed within the total expenditure. The figures also include the Scotland Office and Wales Office. It would incur disproportionate costs to identify the specific costs and numbers associated with staff employed through agencies rather than directly employed. The accounts can be found at the following links for 2008-09 and 2007-08 respectively:
As part of its Performance Efficiency Programme, the Ministry of Justice has controls in place to restrict and reduce the number of agency and contract staff employed. In some circumstances, however, the employment of temporary personnel is unavoidable, for example to secure specialist skills for specific time-limited projects or to cover for absences such as maternity leave.
Driving under Influence: Convictions
Paul Holmes: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many (a) arrests, (b) prosecutions and (c) convictions of (i) men and (ii) women in each police force area for the offence of drink driving there have been since 1997. [321912]
Claire Ward: The number of persons proceeded against at magistrates courts and found guilty at all courts for "driving after consuming alcohol or taking drugs", by sex and police force area, from 1997 to 2008 (latest available) is shown in tables 1 and 2.
Court proceedings data for 2009 are planned to be published in the autumn, 2010.
The arrests collection held by the Home Office covers arrests for recorded crime (notifiable offences) only, broken down at a main offence group level, covering categories such as violence against the person and robbery.
Information on summary motoring offences including those of driving etc. after consuming alcohol or taking drugs are non-notifiable and as a result are not covered by the collection.
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