§ Mr. BercowTo ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (1) what has been the(a) cost and (b) saving from the pursuit of the Department's Public Service Agreement targets in each year since they were introduced; [61044]
(2) what the (a) cost and (b) saving has been from the Department's pursuit of Service Delivery Agreement targets in each year since they were introduced. [61640]
650W
§ Jane KennedyThe Northern Ireland Office's Public Service Agreement (PSA) was first published in October 2000 to cover the three-year period 2001–02 to 2003–04. As the PSA targets effectively embrace virtually all of our departmental activities the cost of seeking to meet our PSA objectives is essentially the same as our total departmental expenditure. For 2001–02 (the first year of our PSA) this is currently estimated at £1,052 billion.
The efficiency elements within our current PSA are already reflected in the profiling of the budget set for the Department whereby anticipated reductions in spending in one area are redirected to offset emerging pressures in other areas.