Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, for what reason the internal and external communications functions of Natural England have been moved into the centrally managed work of his Department; and if he will make a statement.

Corporate Services enable the Defra group to operate by providing critical IT systems, HR and finance support, property management, legal advice, and procurement and communications services. Historically, teams have been fragmented across the Defra group, with each delivery body running their own corporate services, working to different policies, processes and systems. Having recognised the cost of complexity from this way of working, we have integrated functional teams across the group in order to drive out inefficiency and improve support to the business. Through this approach we are on track to deliver £124m of savings over the Spending Review 2015 period. At the same time we expect corporate services teams to remain an integrated and integral part of the organisations they support through our business partner-led model.