Departmental Risk Assessment

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many investigations her Department's Risk Assessment Division carried out with external programme providers in each of the last five years; and how many resulted in (a) prosecution, (b) an administrative financial penalty, (c) other further action and (d) no further action. (285198)

[holding answer 9 July 2009]: Data in the format requested are only available from 2006-07.

The figures are shown in the following table:

	1 April 2006 to 31 March 2007	1 April 2007 to 31 March 2008	1 April 2008 to 31 March 2009	1 April 2009 to present
Number of investigations	26	34	15'	2¹
Prosecutions	0	0	0	0
Other further action	13	14	4	0
No further action	13	20	6	0
¹ Five investigations in 2008-09 and two investigations in the current year to date are continuing and no conclusion has been reached.

All DWP contracts contain robust clauses that allow us to terminate or seek damages for breach. ‘Administrative financial penalties’ are not included in DWP contracts because penalty clauses, as such, are unenforceable through the courts. Contracts will be terminated where the breach of the contract terms is sufficiently serious.

Volume 496: debated on Monday 20 July 2009