To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what estimate he has made of the cost to his Department of measuring compliance with its targets under its public service agreements in the last 12 months for which figures are available. (266708)

The Ministry of Justice autumn performance report 2008 contains details of the data sources used to monitor all of the Department's currently-live PSA targets. In each case, the Department is using pre-existing sources of statistics or management information to measure compliance. There are therefore no costs arising from the creation of new data collection systems to monitor PSA targets.

In some cases, targets are monitored using output from recent expansion or development of established data sources. However, where costs have been incurred through this development work, it is not possible to separate costs specifically associated with PSA target monitoring from those associated with more general, ongoing improvements to the Department's evidence base.