To ask the Secretary of State for Justice on which initiatives of his Department and its predecessor and its agencies expenditure on advertising has been incurred in each of the last five years; how much was spent on each such initiative; and which such initiatives were offered for tender through the Central Office of Information. (292529)

The Ministry of Justice was formed in May 2007 to take forward the work of the Department for Constitutional Affairs together with significant additional responsibilities transferring from the Home Office. These included the National Offender Management Service, which covers the Prison and Probation Services, and the Office for Criminal Justice Reform. The figures in the following table therefore relate to the Department for Constitutional Affairs where the financial years fall prior to 2007-08 and the Ministry of Justice on or after the 2007-08 year.

The nature of the Ministry of Justice's activities is such that it does not engage in significant levels of advertising on initiatives. More than 95 per cent. of departmental advertising spend is on recruitment, mainly by Human Resources (HQ and NOMS). To provide information for individual recruitment advertising campaigns would incur disproportionate cost.

National Offender Management Service (NOMS)

NOMS, which has responsibility for the prison and probation systems, has spent the following non-recruitment related amounts on advertising, external publicity and broadcasting. Amounts relating to specific advertising initiatives cannot be separately quantified.

The expenditure on recruitment for the NOMS Agency in 2008-09 is £3,409,968, mainly on recruitment of prison officers. This figure may include other recruitment expenditure not considered to be publicity and advertising. Work to split out publicity and advertising spend from the total recruitment amount would incur disproportionate cost.

The stated figure for NOMS excludes expenditure by the 42 local probation boards and trusts whose records are held locally and could only be collated at disproportionate cost. A one-off exercise undertaken in 2007-08 found that expenditure on advertising and promotion by local probation boards and trusts was £58,264. There are no current plans to repeat this information-gathering exercise for 2008-09.

Headquarters and other agencies

For the rest of the department, the Ministry's central accounting records do not distinguish different types of advertising expenditure. To determine what expenditure relates to requires retrieval and examination of individual invoices and records held locally across the organisation.

Advertising, publicity and communications expenditure over the last five years is set out with some of the expenditure for advertising in recruitment. However, not all of the expenditure on recruitment advertising is included since it is not separately quantifiable from the accounts. The Criminal Justice Group, which is part of the Ministry's headquarters, was formed from various Home Office functions transferred to the Ministry in April 2007. It is not possible to extract historical information for the Criminal Justice Group from the Home Office's records prior to 2008-09, meaning that the figures for Headquarters are not directly comparable between the financial years.

Business groups have identified the expenditure on specific advertising initiatives detailed as follows. These figures have already been accounted for in the figures within the table.

Democracy, Constitution and Law (DCL)

Total advertising expenditure for all years from 2004-05 to 2008-09 is £573,564 on the following initiatives:

Law Commission

Information Commissioner's Office

Elections and Democracy

Information Policy

It would incur disproportionate cost to split the expenditure between the four categories.

Criminal Justice Group (CJG)

The two main advertising initiatives which are continuing are:

Victims Sup

Intimidated Witness

The advertising expenditure for these two initiatives is not separately identifiable from the rest of the publicity and advertising expenditure of the CJG and it would be at disproportionate cost to undertake this exercise.

Access to Justice

The vast majority of advertising expenditure was incurred by HM Courts Service (an agency of Access to Justice) for the Operation Payback initiative. The costs incurred is as follows:

Tribunals Service

2007-08: £204 was spent on the launch of the Welsh Language Scheme.

Central Office of Information

The Ministry's accounting records identify all amounts paid to the Central Office of Information (COI). They do not, however, separately identify those amounts relating to advertising initiatives and it would be at disproportionate cost to investigate.

The Office of the Public Guardian has incurred no expenditure with COI.