To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much his Department achieved in efficiency savings in (a) public funding and regulation, (b) productive time (including quality), (c) procurement, (d) social care, (e) corporate services and (f) central budgets between 2005-06 and 2007-08. (207648)

The Department has reported the following efficiency savings under the Gershon Programme. The Department’s target was £6,500 million.

Final figures for 2007-08, the last year of the programme, have not yet been confirmed as final data for most contributing projects is reported a number of weeks after the year end.

Final figures will be collated in September and reported in our autumn performance report to be published in December.

The original delivery plan for our Gershon efficiency savings envisaged a contribution from reducing central budgets. Although central budgets have reduced significantly over three years, we subsequently chose not to count these against our Gershon target due to difficulties in calculating the proportion of any reduction that could be attributed solely to efficiency.