Probation Officers Mr. Gerrard To ask the Secretary of State for Justice if he will estimate what percentage of (a) probation officer and (b) probation service officer time was spent in direct contact with offenders in each of the last 10 years. Maria Eagle All probation staff in the NFS are employed by the relevant Probation Board, which is responsible for managing workload allocation. It is therefore not possible to provide information at this level. Information is, however, collected on the number of staff employed in offender management roles. The following table shows the number of staff working in an offender management role from 2003 onwards. Data prior to 2003 were collated by a different source and were incomplete in some categories. They are therefore not directly comparable with the figures collected since that time. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |Role |2003 |2004 |2005 |2006 |2007 |Increase (2003-07)| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |Number of staff in offender management role|17,551.20|17,771.71|18,630.41|19,155.90|18,706.47|— | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |Percentage |91.79 |91.03 |90.69 |89.81 |89.82 |6.58 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | | | | | | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |Number of staff in other roles |1,570.60 |1,751.27 |1,911.65 |2,173.08 |2120.86 |— | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |Percentage |8.21 |8.97 |9.37 |10.19 |10.18 |35.04 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | | | | | | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |Total number of staff |19,121.80|19,522.98|20,542.06|21,328.98|20,827.33|— | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |Percentage |100 |100 |100 |100 |100 |8.92 | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------