Departmental Staff

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many staff in his Department received bonus payments in each of the last five years for which information is available; what proportion of the total workforce they represented; what the total amount of bonuses paid has been; what the largest single payment was in each year; and if he will make a statement. (102054)

[holding answer 27 November 2006]: The answer is in the following table.

DWP was formed in 2002 and information for performance bonuses is only available for the Department from this date.

Performance bonus payments are awarded to employees on the basis of their individual performance. They are paid after the completion of the performance year.

The expenditure incurred is as follows:

*Table 1: The amount paid in bonuses to DWP staff since 2002 and the numbers of staff receiving bonuses*
	Total staff receiving bonus	Proportion of total workforce (Percentage)	Total paid (£ million)	Largest payment (£)
2002-03	131,747	95	21.17	6,793
2003-04	106,123	75	25.29	7,000
2004-05	129,855	95	38.61	10,250
2005-06	123,285	95	42.82	10,400
2006-07	116,096	95	40.68	20,000

In addition to individual performance bonus payments, DWP also paid team bonuses to selected units within the Department. The expenditure incurred is as follows:

*Table 2: The amount paid in team bonuses to DWP staff since 2002 and the numbers of staff receiving bonuses*
	Total paid (£ million)	Total number receiving bonus
2002-03	7.8	14,000
2003-04	29.4	40,000
2004-05	3.3	11,250
2005-06	¹—	¹—
2006-07	¹—	¹—
¹ Not applicable Notes: 1. The information in Table 1 is based on the numbers of staff recorded on the DWP payroll systems as having received a qualifying performance mark. These are a headcount. 2. Some individuals may have received more than one type of bonus payment in any given year, which is why the information has been presented separately, and not as an aggregated total. 3. The performance bonus is paid in the financial year following the performance year of 1 April to 31 March. 4. The largest payments shown in Table 1 column 5 represent the highest performance bonus paid in the senior civil service (SCS). The largest performance bonus below the SCS was £1,750, and the largest special bonus £5,282. Both were paid in 2006-07. 5. The numbers of employees receiving a team bonus are approximations. No team bonus schemes have run since 2004-05.

Individuals may also be entitled to special bonus payments. The cost in a typical year for these bonuses is around £3 million with payments made to approximately 17,000 individuals (based on 2005-06 payments).

Volume 456: debated on Wednesday 31 January 2007