Written question asked by Theresa Villiers (Conservative) on Tuesday, 14 February 2006, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 16 February 2006. It was answered by Mike O'Brien (Labour) on Wednesday, 29 March 2006 on behalf of the Solicitor General.

Efficiency Targets

Question: To ask the Solicitor-General how much of the agreed efficiency target for the Law Officers' Departments set out in the 2004 Spending Review is to be cashable; and under what budget headings these cashable efficiency savings will be re-spent.

Answer

The table shows how much of the respective efficiency targets for the Law Officers' Departments is cashable.

Department	£ million
	2005–06			2006–07			2007–08
	Target	Cashable	Target	Cashable	Target	Cashable
Crown Prosecution Service	20.1	14.6	26.6	17.2	34.1	20.3
Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office	0.73	0.73	1.46	1.46	2.17	2.17
Serious Fraud Office	1.13	0	2.0	0	2.815	0
Treasury Solicitor's Department	0.3	0.2	0.6	0.4	1.5	1.22
⁽¹⁾ Includes the Legal Secretariat to the Law Officers and HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate.
⁽²⁾ Of which £0.6 million relates to a reduction in capital expenditure which will not be re-spent.

The Law Officers' Departments will re-invest the cashable savings in the following activities.

Department	Re-investment
Crown Prosecution Service	Frontline activities such as Charging and meeting new workload pressures on frontline staff, IT system Compass, and case management system.
Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office	Frontline activity such as in-house advocacy, case management and other workload pressures on prosecuting.
Treasury Solicitors Department	Increasing demand for services which are not rechargeable to clients.

Secondary information