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Departmental Disciplinary Proceedings

Volume 472: debated on Wednesday 5 March 2008

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many of his Department's civil servants have been (a) suspended and (b) dismissed for accessing (i) obscene and (ii) other prohibited material on work computers in each of the last five years. (188788)

The ex-DCA does not hold the information centrally in the format requested. This could be obtained at only disproportionate cost. A system has recently been put in place to record such information. It is in the process of being updated, but from October 2007 to date, there have been no dismissals for IT mis-use.

For NOMS and OCJR, there have no suspensions or dismissals on either ground in the period January 2005 to date. Prior to this the information was not held centrally in the format requested, and could be obtained at only disproportionate cost.

For the Prison Service, the information on suspensions is not held centrally and could be provided at only disproportionate cost.

According to centrally held records, 13 staff were dismissed for inappropriate use of Prison Service IT between 1 April 2002 and 31 March 2007. A breakdown of these dismissals, for each of the last five financial years, is provided in the following table:

Number of dismissals

2002-03

2

2003-04

1

2004-05

1

2005-06

7

2006-07

3