HC Deb 17 June 2004 vol 422 c1088W
Brian White

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how much time his Department spent dealing with honours in the last year for which figures are available, broken down by civil service grade. [173041]

Fiona Mactaggart

The Home Office Honours Section provides advice and support to the Home Secretary, Permanent Secretary and Home Office stakeholders on all issues relating to the application of the UK honours system. To this end, it co-ordinates nominations for the new year and birthday honours lists, departmental nominations for the yearly round of royal garden parties and for other ad-hoc events.

The Home Office honours team comprises two full-time staff: one higher executive officer; and one administrative officer.

During the period April 2003 to March 2004 a total of six hours was spent formally discussing honours nominations. These discussions involved three permanent secretaries; three directors (senior civil service) and the honours secretary (higher executive officer).

The majority of the work on honours is undertaken by the departmental honours team. Information is not available on time spent on honours related work by departmental staff who are not members of the Department's honours team.