Departmental Expenditure Limit (Hansard, 15 February 2001)

§ The Solicitor-General

Subject to parliamentary approval of the necessary Supplementary Estimates for Class V, Vote 4 (The Crown Prosecution Service), Class V, Vote 5 (Serious Fraud Office) and Class V, Vote 6 (HM Procurator General and Treasury Solicitor) the Attorney-General's Departments Departmental Expenditure Limit for 2000–01 will be increased by £8,823,000 from £369,547,000 to £378,370,000.

The Crown Prosecution Service's Departmental Expenditure Limit will increase by £4,438,000 from £343,790,000 to £348,228,000. The running costs limit will be increased by £2,504,000 from £245,165,000 to £247,669,000. This increase is required to fund delivery of the pledge on persistent youth offenders, deployment of Higher Court Advocates in the Crown court, diversity and equality issues and achieve improvements against 227W CPS and CJS targets. An increase in capital expenditure of £500,000 will be used to fund the introduction of joint CPS/police criminal justice and trial units.

The Serious Fraud Office's Departmental Expenditure Limit will increase by £17,486,000 from £1,833,000 to £19,319,000. The Running Costs Limit will increase by £611,000 from £11,324,000 to £11,935,000. The increase is required to fund the impact in 2000–01 of the decision to increase the office's targeted case load to 100 cases in 2003–04; to meet the cost of trials held over from 1999–2000; and to offset reductions in police resources available to combat serious and complex fraud. Capital expenditure will increase by £34,000.

HM Procurator General and Treasury Solicitor's Departmental Expenditure Limit will increase by £552,000 from £8,271,000 to £8,823,000. The Running Costs Limit will increase by £1,550,000 from £6,432,000 to £7,982,000. The increase in net running costs is due to an increase in capital charge following a revaluation of TDS's premises (Queen Anne's Chambers). The increase is offset by a matching non-running cost receipt. Capital expenditure will increase by £294,000.

A transfer of £250,000 will be made to the Attorney-General's Departments Departmental Unallocated Provision from the Modernising Government Fund and a transfer of £1,750,000 will be made to the Attorney-General's Departments Departmental Unallocated Provision from the Capital Modernisation Fund.

The increases will be partly offset by transfers totalling £1,206,000 from the Home Office, surrender of £4,565,000 of the Attorney-General's Departments end year flexibility, an allocation of £500,000 from the Capital Modernisation Fund and an allocation of £250,000 from the Modernising Government Fund.

The remainder of the expenditure will be charged to the Reserve and will not, therefore, add to the planned total of public expenditure.