§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Bach)My honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Ivor Caplin) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
The key targets set for the chief executive of the Veterans Agency (VA) for the financial year 2004–05 are as follows:
Service
Key target 1: To issue decisions on claims to war pensions in an average of no more than 63 working days. This represents a cumulative improvement of 38 per cent against our 2000–01 baseline level of 100 working days.
Key target 2: To issue decisions on war widows' claims in an average of no more than 25 working days. This represents a cumulative improvement of 31 per cent against our 2000–01 baseline level of 36 working days.
Key target 3: To achieve an externally validated claims accuracy rate of at least 97 per cent.
Key target 4: To achieve an externally validated medical adjudication accuracy rate of at least 95 per cent.
Valuing our people
Key target 5: To undergo a successful, externally managed IiP reassessment exercise by June 2004.
76WSWorking in Partnership
Key target 6: To work with the Department for Constitutional Affairs' Court Service to reduce the average time it takes an appeal to pass through the war pensions appeals process. By 31 March 2005 the average time should reduce to no more than 240 working days. This is an improvement of 10 working days on our 2003–04 target; and it represents a cumulative improvement of 57 per cent against our 2000–01 baseline level of 565 working days.
Efficiency
Key target 7: To use the agency output costing methodology developed in 2002–03 to help to identify and generate such administrative efficiencies and other savings as will enable the agency to achieve a 3 per cent reduction in 2004–05 against its 2003–04 final outturn figure.