§ Baroness Byfordasked Her Majesty's Government:
Further to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs' departmental report 2002, why capital spending, both in terms of actual outturn and planned outturn for 2002–03 and 2003–04 is in every case more than £1 million above the departmental expenditure limit; and [HL4811]
Further to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs' departmental report 2002, why consumption of resources by executive agencies is estimated for 2001–02 and planned for 2002–03 and 2003–04 to be almost double that of 2000–01 although the number of agencies has remained constant. [HL4812]
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Whitty)Tables 5.1 to 5.5 in the departmental report for 2002 contain a number of errors. These arose from differences in the way information is loaded on central data bases, complications with compiling historical information following the recent Machinery of Government changes, and the re-structuring of Defra with revised objectives that followed. Unfortunately, the tight timetable for producing these tables interfered with the quality assurance procedures that would normally have applied.
The department's quality assurance procedures are being revised to prevent similar errors in future. Meanwhile, work is in hand to re-issue corrected tables. This is a significant task involving the re-loading of central data bases which are subject to a 252WA number of timetable constraints. The intention is to provide revised figures by the autumn.