Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much his Department has spent from the public purse on legal fees excluding sums relating to clinical malpractice in each year since 2012.

The question has been interpreted as relating to the core Department.

The Department has separately identified expenditure on legal fees in its accounts from the 2014-15 financial year. For earlier financial years, expenditure on legal fees was included in ‘other’ expenditure, and cannot be separately identified. Expenditure on legal fees is not analysed by the purpose of the fees, and it is therefore not possible to exclude any amounts relating to clinical malpractice. The total expenditure incurred by the Department on legal fees is as follows: