HC Deb 20 April 2004 vol 420 cc469-70W
Mr. Stephen O'Brien

To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, whether the number of jobs in her Department that are to be(a) cut and (b) relocated are the same as the numbers given her Department's recent Business Plan 2004–07. [165119]

Ms Hewitt

The DTI business plan states that we will reduce the number of people in the Department's headquarters by 7 per cent by April 2005 and by 10 per cent by April 2006.

We have also established an Efficiency Project which has developed proposals to improve further the way we work. These proposals would deliver a further 4 per cent reduction in posts by April 2008 (to 14 per cent) and 18 per cent of posts relocated outside London and the South East by April 2010. They are dependent on sufficient funding being available to meet the costs of change.