§ Mr. BakerTo ask the Secretary of State for Social Security if she will estimate the cost of employee travel on office business, broken down into(a) fuel allowances, (b) unproductive time during travel, (c) other costs related to car transport and (d) costs related to public transport, for (i) 1994–95, (ii) 1995–96, (iii) 1996–97 and (iv) 1997–98. [32435]
§ Mr. FieldThe information is not yet available in the format requested. Such information as is available for staff numbers between 82,000 and 93,000 in the relevant years is as follows.
Claims for travel and related expenses are made and authorised locally across the Department with only the total amount paid being recorded in the accounting system. Changes have been made to the Department's payroll systems to provide greater analysis of the individual elements of expenses payment from April 1998 612W onwards. No information is held centrally on the journey times involved in official travel. Figures are not yet available for 1997–98.
Departmental UK travel £ Year Amount of UK travel 1994–95 24,500,782 1995–96 24,158,110 1996–97 21,147,786 For planning and estimating purposes the Department has a statistical model based on a sampling exercise which breaks down the total expenses paid into travel costs (fuel, rail journeys and other public transport) and subsistence costs (hotel, meal allowances etc). The information based on this estimating model is as follows.
Departmental travel and subsistence costs £ million Year subsistence costs Travel costs 1994–95 10.1 14.4 1995–96 10.0 14.2 1996–97 8.6 12.4 Note
1. Figures do not sum due to rounding.