§ Lord Hogg of Cumbernauldasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether there are any plans to change the Law Officers' departments departmental expenditure limit and administration costs limits for 2001–02. [HL1647]
§ The Attorney-General (Lord Goldsmith)Subject to parliamentary approval of the necessary Supplementary Estimates, the Attorney-General's departments DEL will be increased by £25,375,000 from £426,088,000 to £451,463,000 and the administration costs limits will be increased by £22,476,000 from £299,627,000 to £322,103,000. Within the DEL change, the impact on resources and capital are set out in the following table:
HM Procurator General and Treasury Solicitor's Department DEL will be increased by £1,578,000 from £14,167,000 to £15,745,000 and the administration costs limits will be increased by £729,000 from £9,900,000 to £10,629,000. The increase in administration costs is to facilitate action being taken by the Treasury Solicitor's department as part of its Modernising Government Action Plan. The increase in capital expenditure of £849,000 will be used to fund continued expansion of the department's IT systems.
The increases will be partly offset by an allocation of £22,000,000 from the criminal justice system reserve, an allocation of £250,000 from the Civil Service Modernisation Fund, a transfer of £105,000 from the Home Office, an allocation of £300,000 from the Capital Modernisation Fund, the drawn-down of £1,750,000 of the Attorney-General's departments 45WA capital departmental unallocated provision and the surrender of £99,000 of the Attorney-General's departments capital end year flexibility of £4,406,000 as set out in Table 6 of the Public Expenditure 2000–01 Outturn White Paper Cm 5243 published July 2001.
The remainder of the expenditure will be charged to the reserve and will not, therefore, add to the planned total of public expenditure.