To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what the (a) original target and (b) actual reduction in (i) staffing numbers and (ii) associated expenditure in his Department was in each of the last five years; and if he will make a statement. (208188)

This Department had an obligation under the SR2004 spending settlement, with the Treasury, to reduce the numbers of staff it employs by 31 March 2008. The original target was agreed as reductions in the overall headcount of 2,400 full-time equivalents (FTEs) across DEFRA and its agencies by 31 March 2008. DEFRA used the target to reshape the Department as well as resize, and implemented an organisation design that allows DEFRA to deliver its objectives.

The majority of these reductions were to have come via scaling down of the operation of the Rural Payments Agency (RPA), which was to have contributed 1,600 posts to the overall total. However, problems with implementation of the scheme for making single payments to farmers meant that it was not possible for RPA to make these savings. A revised target was agreed, with Treasury Ministers, in June 2007 to achieve reductions, in DEFRA and the agencies, totalling 1,400 FTEs by 31 March 2008.

The reduction from the previous years staffing numbers in each year from 1 April 2004 to 31 March 2008 and the costs of early departures were as follows:

The baseline against which the Department’s performance in respect of the SR04 reduction target is measured is an FTE figure, as originally agreed with HMT, of 13,650 FTEs. Machinery of government changes, definitional changes in the treatment of maternity leave for FTE reporting purposes and transfers to and from elsewhere in the public sector led to adjustment of the baseline to 12,898. For the purposes of measuring performance against the SR04 reduction target, and with the inclusion of 135 DEFRA FTEs operating within the Government offices for the regions, DEFRA’s total FTE on 31 March 2008 was 10,775. Therefore, the overall reduction measured against the baseline is 2,123 FTEs.

DEFRA has achieved its reduction target through a combination of natural wastage, controls imposed on external recruitment and two voluntary early departure schemes open to applicants within the core-Department between December 2006 to July 2007 and September 2007 to January 2008 with provision set aside in the 2007-08 financial year for any payments to retirees, consequent on their departure under this scheme, which might fall in future years. The total 2004-08 early departure cost of £83.89 million (above) includes all of early departures including those in association with the earlier periods and ill health. During financial years 2006-07 and 2007-08 this Department spent £14.8 million and £49 million respectively, on the funding of voluntary early departures under the two voluntary early departure schemes.