To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what plans he has for future levels of funding of the Probation Service. (175268)

Probation funding for the next three years, 2008-09 to 2010-11, is not yet confirmed by the Ministry of Justice. Provisional budget planning figures have recently been issued for probation boards' main grant only for 2008-09 which show an increase of over 2 per cent. for probation boards.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what was spent on central IT for the Probation Service in England and Wales for each financial year since 1997-98. (175381)

Expenditure on IT services managed centrally by the National Probation Directorate (NPD) and the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) is:

The costs include the two centrally managed contracts to provide an IT infrastructure for the Probation Service. STEPS1 ran from 1 January 2002 until 31 December 2005; this was replaced by the OMNI contract which commenced on 1 January 2006 and associated replacement hardware and software. In addition other central IT costs are included¹.

The resource costs are mainly recharged to Probation boards.

For the period up to 31 December 2001 the National Probation Service Information System Strategy (NPSISS) framework enabling agreement (let in 1994) provided the core infrastructure and case management application; by the end of March 2001 49 of the then 54 probation areas were connected to the NPSISS network with the remaining areas existing via local arrangements. The full cost of the NPSISS programme over seven years to the end of 2001 was £118.038 million².

¹ Support and development of NFS legacy case management applications, GSI accreditation and half of the OASys and ViSOR costs (these jointly apply to the Prison Service) are included. NOMIS development costs are not included as NOMIS is not primarily a probation system.

² NAO report on NPSISS April 2001.