Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Normanton and Hemsworth)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, how much his Department has spent on consultancy fees relating to the UK leaving the EU since July 2016.
Answered by Robert Buckland
The Attorney General’s Office has not incurred any spending on consultancy fees relating to the UK leaving the EU since July 2016.
The Attorney General’s Office publishes spend over £25,000 on a monthly basis as part of its transparency data routine publication which is accessible here.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Normanton and Hemsworth)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, how many of his Department's invitations to tender have received no bidders in the last two years.
Answered by Robert Buckland
The Government Legal Department (GLD), Attorney General Office (AGO) and HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate (HM CPSI) engage a centrally managed procurement service in procurements of more than £10,000. For 2016-17 and 2017-18, an examination of records held by the centrally managed procurement service indicated that there were no instances of an invitation to tender where bids were not received.
Similarly, during the financial years 2016-17 and 2017-18 no invitations to tender by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) or the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) exceeding OJEU thresholds received no bidders.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Normanton and Hemsworth)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, how many leak enquiries his Department has undertaken in the last two years.
Answered by Robert Buckland
It has been the policy of successive Governments not to comment on security matters other than in exceptional circumstances when it is in the public interest to do so.
The leak of any Government information or material is not acceptable and the Government takes such incidents very seriously.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Normanton and Hemsworth)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, what apps his Department has approved for use on mobile phones issued by his Department.
Answered by Robert Buckland
Due to national security concerns it would be inappropriate to publicly supply a list of applications approved for use on mobile phones issued by the Attorney General’s Office, as to do so facilitates attacks against official systems by hostile actors.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Normanton and Hemsworth)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, pursuant to the Answer of 23 March 2018 to Question 123531, on Attorney General: Procurement, if he will list (a) the suppliers of and (b) the purpose of the (i) the Government Legal Department's contracts with the eight strategic suppliers (ii) the CPS's six contracts with strategic suppliers, (iii) the Serious Fraud Office's three contracts with strategic suppliers and (iv) Her Majesty's Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate's contracts with which two strategic suppliers.
Answered by Robert Buckland
Pursuant to the Answer of 23 March 2018 to Question 123531, the table below summarises the purpose of the six contracts between the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and government strategic suppliers.
Supplier | Purpose of contract |
Capita | Supply of interim and temporary staff let via a pan government framework. |
CGI | (1) ICT Applications, Hosting and Management let via a pan government framework. (2) Managed payroll services let via a pan government framework. (3) Oracle finance system managed service let via a pan government framework. (4) Fully managed ICT services including; applications, hosting and management, system integration and management, service desk and end user computing. |
Vodafone | National contract let via the Cabinet Office G-Cloud framework for managed video conferencing services. |
In addition, the CPS has no major contracts but multiple agreements with the following government strategic suppliers:
BT –for land line phones, alarm systems and business broadband lines.
Microsoft - for MS office products, server and networking applications and other software products.
Oracle - for server and networking applications and other software products.
The table below summarises the purpose of the contracts between the Government Legal Department (GLD) and Her Majesty’s Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate (HMCPSI) and government strategic suppliers. It is the policy to engage with suppliers using central government frameworks and call off arrangements.
Supplier | GLD – purpose of contract | HMCPSI - purpose of contract |
BT plc | Provision of phone services for business continuity (disaster recovery). | Provision of mobile connectivity services and video conferencing at the York office |
Cap Gemini | Provision of a supplier invoice receipt and scanning service; provision of a cloud-based invoice approval and electronic document management system; and secure destruction of paper documents. |
|
Capita | Predominately temporary staff, mainly lawyers, and training courses. |
|
Fujitsu | Provision of e-disclosure services to support legal cases. |
|
Microsoft | Software licences and support for Microsoft products, for example, Windows and Office Suites. |
|
Mitie | Office cleaning services. |
|
Oracle | Software licences and support. |
|
Vodafone | Provision of mobile phone and connectivity services. | Provision of mobile phone and connectivity services. |
The table below summarises the purpose of the contracts between the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) and government strategic suppliers.
Supplier | Purpose of contract |
Amey | Facilities management |
BT | Network lines |
Capita | IT services |
The table below summarises the purpose of the contracts between the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) and government strategic suppliers.
Supplier | Purpose of contract |
BT PLC | Broadband lines at Southwark Crown Court |
Capita | IT support contract |
Vodafone | network services contract |
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Normanton and Hemsworth)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, what proportion of his Department's estate is (a) rented, (b) owned and (c) occupied through any other type of agreement.
Answered by Robert Buckland
The Government Legal Department (GLD) does not own any estate but rents all of its office space. GLD teams co-located with their client teams occupy client building space as part of an overall fee agreement for the provision of legal services to clients.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) estate is comprised of 42 buildings with the types of occupation shown in the table below. The HMCPSI estate is included as part of this.
Type of Occupation | Number of Buildings | Square Meters |
Freehold/Owned | 2 | 4,426 (7%) |
Commercial Lease | 27 | 52,991 (78%) |
Licence to occupy | 13 | 10,404 (15%) |
The Serious Fraud Office’s (SFO’s) estates have always been rented either by a lease agreement, or a Civil Estate Occupancy Agreement (MOTO). The SFO’s current estate is leased. The Attorney General’s Office (AGO) estate is also leased.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Normanton and Hemsworth)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, how many IT systems which his Department uses are more than (a) three, (b) five and (c) eight years old; and what steps he is taking to ensure that all his Department's IT systems are updated promptly.
Answered by Robert Buckland
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is responsible for the IT systems of CPS, Attorney General’s Office (AGO) and Her Majesty’s CPS Inspectorate (HMCPSI).
Of their eight core corporate IT systems, six were launched more than eight years ago – however, the component parts thereof are replaced and upgraded regularly. Both the hardware and the software have been updated and refreshed throughout their lifetime to make them fit for continued use into the future. One of the other systems is approximately 5 years old, and the same applies; the remaining system is new.
Where these systems are supplied by external providers, a requirement for prompt updating is part of the supplier contract. Where they are managed in-house, this is part of the internal service agreement with the relevant team. Our internal Service Management team monitors adherence to these commitments in all cases.
The Government Legal Department (GLD) uses a number IT systems, most of which are regularly updated by applying the suppliers recommended patches and version updates, after appropriate testing.
Specifically:
(a) GLD has one system (Solcase) over three years old. It was last updated in 2014 and the next upgrade is due in May 2018.
(b) GLD has two systems (RKYV and Windows 7) that are over 8 years old. The RKYV document management system, used by only a few individuals, is currently being decommissioned. This system was last updated in 2008. The desktop operating system is Windows 7, which was released in 2009. Configuration of a new Windows 10 build is in progress, and GLD is aiming to roll this out in the next month.
The answers to the specific questions in relation to the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) are a) 8; b) 2 and c) 3. This information relates only to IT Business System Applications, which enable work to be processed, and not supporting infrastructure and operating systems.
The calculated age of the SFO’s IT systems is based on the last upgrade or install date. Projects are already underway to replace or decommission a number of the systems that currently fall into the 8, 5 and 3 year old categories.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Normanton and Hemsworth)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, pursuant to the Answer of 1 February 2018 to Question 123531 on Attorney General: procurement, if he will list those contracts including the supplier name and value of those contracts.
Answered by Robert Buckland
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has the following contracts with the government’s strategic suppliers:
Supplier | Contract | Estimated Value* £ |
BT Plc | Multiple landline phones, alarms and broadband service agreements | 143,500 |
Capita | Contingent Labour ONE Call-Off | 136,900 |
CGI | Payroll Call-Off | 1,300,500 |
| Finance and Resource Management System Call-Off | 200,000 |
| Managed ICT Services contract; and | 300,000,000 |
| Applications Support and Data Hosting Call-Off | 19,000,000 |
Microsoft | Multiple licencing agreements. | 172,000 |
Oracle | Multiple licencing agreements | 470,000 |
Vodafone | Videoconferencing service Call-Off | 700,000 |
* The Estimated Value is given as the value for the contract Term where the department has signed a Call-Off Contract and the annual spend to 31 January 2018 where the department has renewable licensing arrangements.
For the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), the contracts are:
Supplier | 2016/17 |
BT plc | £15,897 |
Capita | £704,697 |
Vodafone | £75,905 |
To identify overall contract values for the Government Legal Department (GLD), Attorney General Office (AGO) and HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate (HMCPSI) would require the identification and examination of all awards made to the Strategic Suppliers (as defined by the Crown Commercial Services) and this cannot be achieved without incurring disproportionate cost. However, our payments to Strategic Suppliers, for 2016-17 is set out below:
Strategic Supplier | Expenditure 2016-17 GLD | Expenditure 2016-17 AGO | Expenditure 2016-17 HMCPSI |
Amey |
| £335,965 |
|
BT Plc | £1,699 | £2,159 | £1,308 |
Capgemini | £88,914 |
|
|
Capita | £6,369,832 | £847* |
|
Fujitsu | £561,131 |
|
|
Microsoft | £62,178 |
|
|
Mitie | £186,854 |
|
|
Oracle | £34,126 |
|
|
Vodafone | £226,794 | £43,763 | £8,779 |
* The payment for this amount piggy backed on the contract that SFO had with Capita.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Normanton and Hemsworth)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, which members of his Department's board are responsible for ensuring the proper application of the business appointment rules for former Ministers and senior civil servants.
Answered by Robert Buckland
Applications by former Ministers are considered by the independent Advisory Committee on Business Appointments directly.
For applications from former Civil Servants: Departmental Audit and Risk Committees, which are chaired by Departmental Non Executive Directors, will monitor compliance issues relating to the Business Appointment Rules.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Normanton and Hemsworth)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, how many contracts his Department holds with government strategic suppliers.
Answered by Robert Buckland
The Government Legal Department (GLD) holds contracts with eight Government strategic suppliers and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) hold six contracts with Government strategic suppliers.
The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) holds three contracts with Government strategic suppliers.
HMCPSI holds two contracts with Government strategic suppliers; and the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) holds contracts with three suppliers.