Office of Government Commerce

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will estimate (a) the savings delivered to the Exchequer by the activities of the Office of Government Commerce (OCG) in each year since it was established and (b) the savings made on each OCG programme in each year. (107777)

The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) reports against two Public Service Agreement targets, and the following tables detail the savings made against these two major programmes.

Value for Money

OGC reports value for money (vfm) gains in central Government civil procurement through improvements in the success rate of programmes and projects and through other commercial initiatives:

*£ million*
	Total vfm gains	Direct Negotiations	Joint Procurement	Reduced process costs	Gateway and other improved contract or asset management
2005-06	2600	806	484	79	1,231
2004-05	2262	677	410	113	1,062
2003-04	2086	655	466	178	787
2002-03	767	542	114	52	59
2001-02	401	220	86	40	55
2000-01	414	304	22	36	52

The Efficiency Programme

The 2004 Spending Review set targets for the Government to achieve annual efficiency gains of over £20 billion and gross workforce reductions of more than 84,000

by 2007-08.

Progress is as follows:

	Efficiency Gains (£ billion)	Comments
2005-2006 - year one of programme	9.8 (by 31 March 2006)	Figure published in HMT CSR 07 document (13 July 2006)
2006-2007 - year two of programme	¹15.5 (by 31 Dec 2006)	Figure announced in budget 2007
¹ Cumulative figure covering first 21 months of programme.

Volume 458: debated on Thursday 29 March 2007