To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many (a) legal advisers and (b) social services advisers have been employed or seconded to work in the Probation Service in each of the last eight years. (79953)

The current data collection process for workforce information does not provide data in sufficient detail to provide the information requested. Senior Circuit Judges are appointed by the Department of Constitutional Affairs to sit on Local Probation Boards and advise them on legal matters, as the appointments are made by DCA the National Probation Directorate does not keep records of how many Judges have taken post over the last eight years.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the total number of (a) operational and (b) non-operational officers employed in the Probation Service was in each of the last eight years. (79954)

Information is not available for the full period requested. Data collected prior to one April 2003 is unreliable, and is not directly comparable with the more accurate figures collected since that time. The figures presented in the table show the proportion of staff, in terms of full time equivalent value, employed in an operational capacity at the close of each quarter from one April 2003 to 31 March 2006. Operational staff in the National Probation Service operate in multi-disciplinary teams including dedicated support staff. For this reason the figures provided include both the number of operational staff, and the number of support staff dedicated to operational service teams. The total of these two staff groups gives an accurate representation of the total resource applied to operational services. The non-operational staff in the National Probation Service are all other staff who provide non operational support services.