Asked by: John Redwood (Conservative - Wokingham)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, whether he is taking steps to reduce the use of external consultants by the civil service.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
The use of consultants provides short term, specialist advisory services for specific engagements. Consultants provide niche skills that are not required full time within the Civil Service.
Every department is responsible for their own use of consultancy with governance, assurance and control over budgets to ensure value for money.
Asked by: John Redwood (Conservative - Wokingham)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how much funding his Department plans to provide to Wokingham Borough Council for (a) fixing potholes and (b) other road maintenance in the (i) 2023-24 and (ii) 2024-25 financial year.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Department will provide Wokingham Borough Council with a total of £8.053 million for highways maintenance activities over the two years in question. The funding can be spent on activities including (a) fixing potholes and (b) other road maintenance in the (i) 2023-24 and (ii) 2024-25 financial years.
A Written Ministerial Statement has been laid in both Houses, and the Secretary of State has written out to Parliamentary colleagues advising them of the uplift to highways maintenance funding. In addition, officials from my Department will be writing out to all Chief Executives confirming their grant funding allocations shortly.
Asked by: John Redwood (Conservative - Wokingham)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps he is taking to raise public sector productivity.
Answered by Laura Trott - Chief Secretary to the Treasury
Efficiency and productivity are important priorities for this government.
In June, the Chancellor announced the Public Sector Productivity Programme, as a means of assessing how productivity can be improved. An update on the programme was provided in the Autumn Statement, which includes the finding that frontline workers can spend up to 8 hours a week on administrative tasks. The programme is exploring ways to reduce this number so they can continue doing what they do best, keeping us safe and treating us when we are sick. I will continue leading on boosting productivity in the public sector, with work continuing through to the next Spending Review.
Asked by: John Redwood (Conservative - Wokingham)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what the cost to the public purse was for (a) the civil service and (b) public administration in the financial years (i) 2019-20, (ii) 2022-23 and (iii) 2023-24 as of 20 November 2023.
Answered by Laura Trott - Chief Secretary to the Treasury
To answer part (a) of the question: The total salary bill for the civil service can be approximately calculated using data from Cabinet Office owned national statistics, Civil Service Statistics. A link to the latest Civil Service Statistics is available here:
Part (b) asks about public administration from budgetary tables published in HM Treasury’s Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses (PESA) it is possible to obtain administrative spending by government departmental group. Please refer to Table 1.7 within the link to PESA 2023 below:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/public-expenditure-statistical-analyses-2023
In-year expenditure data for 2023-24, from which it is possible to obtain administration budgets, are available from HM Treasury’s OSCAR Transparency release. A link is provided below:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/oscar-ii-publishing-data-from-the-database-september-2023
Asked by: John Redwood (Conservative - Wokingham)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many civil servants are employed at each grade above SCS1.
Answered by John Glen - Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office
The number of Senior Civil Servants by Director, Director General and Permanent Secretary paybands are shown in the table below.
This information is published each year by payband through the Government evidence to the Senior Salaries Review Board.
Table 1: Number of Senior Civil Servants by Director, Director General and Permanent Secretary paybands, as at 1 April 2023
Payband | Number |
Director (Payband 2) | 1140 |
Director General (Payband 3) | 180 |
Permanent Secretary | 45 |
Source: SCS Database, Cabinet Office
Notes: Numbers are rounded to the nearest 5.
Numbers are provisional and subject to revision over time.
Numbers refer to the centrally managed 'Senior Civil Service' that does not include the Diplomatic Service and a number of civil servants that work at a senior level, for example some senior military officials and health professionals, and who are not part of the 'Senior Civil Service'.
Asked by: John Redwood (Conservative - Wokingham)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many (a) Directors and (b) Director Generals there are in his Department as of 20 November 2023.
Answered by John Glen - Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office
As at 31 October 2023, the Cabinet Office employs 74 people at Director level and 21 people at Director General level.
The number of Senior Civil Servants (SCS) stems from our coordinating role at the heart of Government. First, the professional experts who lead functional services across the whole of the Civil Service sit in Cabinet Office (the level of professional expertise required, often recruited from the private sector, means a high number of SCS roles). Second, the Cabinet Office also delivers secretariat functions which need to be led at a senior level given their national significance, including the National Security Secretariat and Joint Intelligence Organisation.
Asked by: John Redwood (Conservative - Wokingham)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, whether she has an estimate of how much CO2 was produced in the (a) manufacture and (b) installation of one gigawatt of offshore wind power within the UK in the last 12 months.
Answered by Graham Stuart
The Department does not publish information related to this request directly, however, the IPCC and UNECE have published estimates related to this request here:
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5_annex-iii.pdf#page=7
https://unece.org/sed/documents/2021/10/reports/life-cycle-assessment-electricity-generation-options
Both estimates demonstrate that the lifecycle CO2 impact of generating electricity from offshore wind is significantly lower than fossil fuels.
Asked by: John Redwood (Conservative - Wokingham)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, whether she has made a comparative assessment of UK electricity prices compared to those charged in the United States.
Answered by Graham Stuart
Domestic and industrial electricity prices for countries that are members of the International Energy Agency (IEA) are published in Quarterly Energy Prices tables 5.5.1 and 5.3.1 respectively.
Table 5.5.1: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/international-domestic-energy-prices and Table 5.3.1: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/international-industrial-energy-prices
Average electricity prices in the United States are among the lowest in the IEA, below those in the UK, and they have been one of the 5 countries with the lowest prices across the IEA since the mid-2000s. Electricity prices vary by locality in the United States based on the availability of power plants and fuels, local fuel costs, and pricing regulations.
Asked by: John Redwood (Conservative - Wokingham)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, how many jobs have been created in the UK to manufacture wind turbine (a) motors and (b) blades in the last 12 months.
Answered by Graham Stuart
The Government does not hold this data.
The Office for National Statistics estimate that the offshore wind sector employed around 10,600 people across the UK in 2021.
Asked by: John Redwood (Conservative - Wokingham)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, whether she has made an estimate of the government's budget for carbon capture and storage expenditure over the next five years.
Answered by Graham Stuart
In the 2023 Spring Budget, the Chancellor announced an unprecedented £20 billion investment in the early development of carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS). The quantum of spend within a given period will depend on the outcome of commercial negotiations and will be subject to confirmation at the next and subsequent spending reviews.