Asked by: Catherine McKinnell (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne North)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, what the (a) prosecution cost per defendant, (b) overall spend per completed case and (c) overall spend per full-time equivalent staff member in (i) the Crown Court and (ii) magistrates' courts was in each year since 2010-11.
Answered by Robert Buckland
(a) The prosecution cost per defendant since 2010-11 is as follows:
2010-11 | £422 |
2011-12 | £420 |
2012-13 | £452 |
2013-14 | £461 |
2014-15 | £496 |
(b) The overall spend per completed case for each year since 2010-11 is as follows:-
2010-11 | £477 |
2011-12 | £470 |
2012-13 | £503 |
2013-14 | £511 |
2014-15 | £550 |
(c) The overall spend per full-time equivalent staff member in (i) the Crown Court and (ii) magistrates' courts was, in 2014-15:
(i) Crown Court £96,532
(ii) Magistrates Court £58,924
It is important to note that these are not staff costs but represent the full cost of prosecuting cases in the Magistrates and Crown Courts. These costs include administrative overheads.
Prior to 2014-15 the CPS did not distinguish staff expenditure between Magistrates’ and Crown Court cases, so we are unable to apportion spend to full-time equivalents by these categories.
Asked by: Catherine McKinnell (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne North)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, how many wasted cost orders were made (a) in favour and (b) against the Crown Prosecution Service in each year since 2010-11; and for what reasons such wasted cost orders were made against the Crown Prosecution Service.
Answered by Robert Buckland
The Crown Prosecution Servicedoes not maintain a central record of the number of wasted cost orders made in favour of, or against, the prosecution. To obtain this information would require a manual file examination incurring a disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Catherine McKinnell (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne North)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, how many (a) prosecutors, (b) associate prosecutors, (c) caseworkers and (d) administrators were employed by the Crown Prosecution Service in each year since 2010-11; and what proportion of each such category were engaged in frontline services.
Answered by Robert Buckland
The number of (a) prosecutors, (b) associate prosecutors, (c) caseworkers and (d) administrators that were employed by the Crown Prosecution Service in each year since 2010-11, can be found in the table below along with the proportion of each that were engaged in frontline services.
Prosecutors | Associate | Caseworkers | ||
Prosecutors | & Administrators | |||
2010-11 | FTE | 2668 | 411 | 4089 |
% FrontLine | 98.7% | 100.0% | 91.4% | |
2011-12 | FTE | 2583 | 405 | 4143 |
% FrontLine | 99.0% | 100% | 91.1% | |
2012-13 | FTE | 2351 | 362 | 4130 |
% FrontLine | 97.6% | 100.0% | 91.2% | |
2013-14 | FTE | 2226 | 302 | 3710 |
% FrontLine | 97.3% | 100.0% | 90.2% | |
2014-15 | FTE | 2232 | 252 | 3333 |
% FrontLine | 97.5% | 100.0% | 90.0% |
Notes: Data may differ from other published data due to differing specifications
Asked by: Catherine McKinnell (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne North)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, how many Deferred Prosecution Agreements the Serious Fraud Office is currently negotiating; and what recent progress has been made in each of those negotiations.
Answered by Jeremy Wright
I refer the Hon.Member to the answer given by the Solicitor General to question 2337 on 17 June 2015.
Asked by: Catherine McKinnell (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne North)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, what the total value was of the proceeds of crime retained by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) under the ARIS incentive scheme in each financial year since 2012-13; and what proportion of the annual SFO budget this formed in each case.
Answered by Robert Buckland
The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) was part of the Home Office Asset Recovery Incentivisation Scheme from 2006-07 until 2012-13.
The SFO retained £2,027,171 in the year 2012-13, this represented 5% of the gross Departmental Expenditure Limit for the SFO for that year.
Since then, all monies due to the SFO under ARIS (£7,775 for 2013-14, and £3,051,434 for 2014-15) are paid to HM Treasury.
Asked by: Catherine McKinnell (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne North)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, how many requests for blockbuster funding were made by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) in (a) 2010-11, (b) 2011-12, (c) 2012-13, (d) 2013-14, (e) 2014-15 and (f) 2015-16 to date; how much funding was requested on each such occasion for which investigations; what proportion of the SFO's annual budget such blockbuster funding represented in each of those years; and on how many occasions such funding requests were not approved in each of those years.
Answered by Robert Buckland
The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has a core budget to investigate and, where appropriate, prosecute the most serious and complex cases of fraud, bribery and corruption, and some exceptionally large cases will arise that require additional resources.
Where this is the case, the additional funding which is commonly referred to as ‘blockbuster funding’ is allocated as part of the Main and Supplementary Estimates processes. Therefore, the additional funding has been approved as part of this process each year.
The table below shows the SFO’s total net Departmental Expenditure Limit for each year since 2010-11, and the amount of this which was blockbuster funding in each year.
| 2010-11 | 2011-12 | 2012-13 | 2013-14 | 2014-15 | 2015-16 |
Total budget | £36.9m | £33.2m | £40.8m | £53.6m | £57.7m | £43.8m* |
‘Blockbuster’ funding | £2.8m | £0 | £6.7m | £24m | £25.2m | £10m to date |
* This is the figure from the Main Estimate for 2015-16 and so may be revised as part of the Supplementary Estimates process.
The figures in the table do not include capital expenditure or Annually Managed Expenditure, or any income from costs awards or other recoveries. The blockbuster funding during this period also includes support for civil litigation costs relating to the investigation into Kaupthing.
As has been explained in response to previous questions from Members, it is not appropriate to provide a breakdown of the funding allocated to each SFO investigation.
Asked by: Catherine McKinnell (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne North)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, how many letters of invitation to companies to enter negotiations for a deferred prosecution agreement the Serious Fraud Office has issued.
Answered by Robert Buckland
The Serious Fraud Office has issued its first letters of invitation but it would not be appropriate to confirm numbers.
The process of reaching Deferred Prosecution Agreements (DPAs) happens in stages. Initial negotiations are confidential to encourage openness on the part of the company. Under the Criminal Procedure Rules, the Court determines whether any relevant hearings are heard in public or in private. Any DPA must be approved by a judge and publicised.