Catherine McKinnell – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Attorney General

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Catherine McKinnell on 2015-12-14.

To ask the Attorney General, pursuant to the Answer of 19 November 2015 to Question 15443, for what reason the (a) Government Legal Department’s expenditure on temporary agency staff and (b) Crown Prosecution Service’s expenditure on (i) consultants and (ii) non-payroll staff increased between 2010-11 and 2014-15.

Robert Buckland

The Government Legal Department (GLD) provides legal services to government. It engages temporary and contract staff as a way of managing short term variations in demand. Where an increase in demand for legal services is expected to continue for the medium or long term, the department will use temporary staff to resource the work until permanent staff can be recruited. The increase in temporary staff from 2010-11 to 2014-15 reflects increased demand for legal services and the growth of GLD as a result of the Shared Legal Services programme that has brought into one organisation legal teams from across government. As a result overall staff numbers have increased by 69% between 2010-11 and 2014-15.

As outlined in the previous answer the actual expenditure incurred by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) on consultants and non-payroll staff between 2010-11 and 2014-15 was as follows.

Between 2010-11 and 2014-15 the CPS has actually reduced its expenditure on consultants by £684,314.

In 2014-15 the CPS set up a project to manage the transition from its existing main Information Technology service provider. The Project Manager and remaining team are non-CPS staff, and their costs of £1,350,317 were the only non-payroll staff costs incurred last year.