Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what the Government's policy is on giving (a) bonuses and (b) reward-based pay to civil servants in the form of shopping vouchers.

As has been the case under successive administrations, non-cash vouchers of small amounts may be used to mark the significant contributions of staff who have worked on specific projects outside of formal performance management processes.

All individual awards follow an established approval process to ensure value for money.

It is also important to confirm that shopping vouchers are not used by government departments to pay traditional end of year performance bonuses - for those departments who still adopt that approach these end of year bonuses are paid as cash payments through payroll.