To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs pursuant to the answer of 27 January 2009, Official Report, column 332W, on redundancy, what estimate he has made of the annual payroll savings resulting from staff exit schemes in (a) 2005-06, (b) 2006-07, (c) 2007-08 and (d) 2008-09 excluding the cost of severance packages; and what estimate he has made of the equivalent figures for 2009-10. (254460)

[holding answer 5 February 2009]: DEFRA has run two voluntary early departure schemes since 2006. The first of these ran from December 2006 to July 2007, and the second from September 2007 to January 2008. The material forecast core DEFRA paybill savings up to 2010-11 due to early departures via those schemes are:

Further analysis is not readily available.