Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the estimated total cost is of restructuring his Department as announced in February 2016; and what the estimated cost is of the planned reduction in the number of employees of his Department in the (a) 2016-17 and (b) 2017-18 financial years.

The current estimate costs for the planned reduction in staff is £30 million in 2016-17 and £0.5 million in 2017-18. In addition there is a team leading the DH2020 transformation project and costs related to additional pension quotes for staff exiting, these taken together are not expected to exceed £1 million per annum. The total cost is therefore not expected to exceed £33 million.