To ask the Secretary of State for Justice (1) what assessment he has made of the likely consequences of not rolling out C-NOMIS to the Probation Service; (182110)

In its work to analyse the different options available going forward, the Strategic Review requested to consider the affordability of the NOMIS Programme, actively considered and assessed the implications of not rolling out C-NOMIS to probation areas.

Work is under way on the newly revised and deliverable NOMIS Programme announced after the completion of the review, to asses the way forward for probation case management systems, and where necessary, replace those that are most at risk. In addition, to improve the sharing of information between prisons and probation, and to further support the successful implementation of the Offender Management Model and public protection, work has started on both the OASys project to improve the current separate risk assessment systems and to re-develop them as a single national system, and the Data Share project to allow access to core case information between prison and probation areas.

I expect the programme to meet the objectives that were set following the Strategic Review to:

Enable improved business continuity by replacing ailing legacy case management and offender assessment applications in public prisons and probation;

Enable more efficient and effective operational management of offenders;

Support offender management processes and thereby reduce reoffending and enhance public protection;

Provide supplier neutral information to support Commissioners; and

Provide improved management information to enable improved performance.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what the estimated maximum capacity of the C-NOMIS system will be in each of the next 10 years. (182117)

There is no maximum capacity in C-NOMIS. While the programme has estimated a total of 5 million records will be added to C-NOMIS in the next 10 years, this will be kept under constant review to allow officials to ensure that there will always be sufficient capacity in C-NOMIS to ensure the successful running of the system.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what has been the cost of the C-NOMIS project to date; and what the estimated cost is of national implementation of C-NOMIS. (182203)

The total expenditure on the NOMIS programme, of which C-NOMIS forms the very major part, to the end of December 2007 is estimated at £179 million. The estimated lifetime cost of the NOMIS programme to 2019-20 before VAT, cost of capital and depreciation is £513 million.

Financial and business benefit from work completed on C-NOMIS is preserved. Nearly all of the expenditure attributable to C-NOMIS is relevant to its future use in HMPS as ‘Prison NOMIS’. The other projects in the programme will continue to derive benefit from the investment and work to date.