Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Streatham and Croydon North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the transparency data entitled Defra: spending over £25,000, February 2024, published on 13 May 2024, what the purpose of Project Hazel is; and how much his Department has spent on Project Hazel since 2020.
Answered by Mark Spencer
Project Hazel refers to Capita’s share divestment from Fera Science Ltd, a joint venture with Defra. Defra spent £1.57 million on Project Hazel from 2020.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Streatham and Croydon North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make an estimate of the cost to the public purse of the use of private consultants by his Department in the last 12 months.
Answered by Mark Spencer
The department publishes expenditure on consultants in the annual report and accounts. The most recently published period is 2022-23 when the core department spent £23.7 million (page 108).
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Streatham and Croydon North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what the cost to the public purse was of government procurement card spending by his Department in each year since 2010.
Answered by Mark Spencer
The table below sets out total expenditure using government procurement cards for the given financial years. Information relating to 2010 to 2016 is not readily available.
Financial Year | Amount |
2016-17 | £147,167 |
2017-18 | £474,619 |
2018-19 | £1,324,366 |
2019-20 | £1,311,324 |
2020-21 | £698,353 |
2021-22 | £584,345 |
2022-23 | £660,352 |
2023-24 | £646,102 |
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Streatham and Croydon North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate he has made of the cost to the public purse of projects that have been written off within his Department in each year since 2010.
Answered by Mark Spencer
Prior to preparing to leave the EU Defra had no major projects, with outcome delivery led through its Arm’s Length bodies and executive agencies. Defra now manages a portfolio of priority projects spanning policy to delivery which are critical to delivering our outcomes to ‘improve the environment, deliver net zero, reduce the likelihood and impact of flooding, increase the sustainability, productivity and resilience of the agriculture, fishing, food and drink sectors, enhance biosecurity at the border and raise animal welfare standards’. All losses are reported in our Annual Reports and Accounts but we are unable to provide a breakdown of losses specifically relating to ‘writing off projects’ since our reporting data for losses is not disaggregated in this manner.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Streatham and Croydon North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate he has made of the overspend on procurement within his Department in each year since 2010.
Answered by Mark Spencer
The information requested is not held centrally and to obtain it would incur disproportionate costs.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Streatham and Croydon North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what the cost to the public purse has been of contracts cancelled by his Department since 2010.
Answered by Mark Spencer
The information requested is not held centrally and to obtain it would incur disproportionate costs.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Streatham and Croydon North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make an estimate of the cost to the public purse of administrative errors made by his Department in each year since 2010.
Answered by Mark Spencer
The information requested is not held centrally and to obtain it would incur disproportionate costs.
Defra reports losses from error to the Public Sector Fraud Authority. We are unable to provide a breakdown of losses from administrative errors only – errors we report consist of aggregated losses arising from unintentional events, processing errors and official government errors. Data on fraud (including error) has only been published since 2017 and may be found in the Cross Government fraud landscape reports here: Cross-government fraud landscape annual report 2017, Cross-government fraud landscape annual report 2018 , Cross-government fraud landscape annual report 2019, Executive-Summary-Fraud-Landscape-Bulletin 2019-20, Cross-Government Fraud Landscape Report 2021-2022.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Streatham and Croydon North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make an estimate of the cost to the public purse of accidental damage to equipment made by his Department in each year since 2010.
Answered by Mark Spencer
The information requested is not held centrally and to obtain it would incur disproportionate costs.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Streatham and Croydon North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make an estimate of the cost to the public purse of mobile phone contracts for (a) Ministers and (b) staff in his Department since 2010.
Answered by Mark Spencer
The attached table contains mobile phone contract costs for the last three financial years for staff in core Defra. Information prior to 2021-2022 is not held.
Ministers’ costs are also included in the core Defra all users totals.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Streatham and Croydon North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make an estimate of the cost to the public purse of his Department's use of (a) marketing businesses and (b) communications agencies in each year since 2010.
Answered by Mark Spencer
The information requested is not available as it is not possible to split the costs of the department’s use of marketing businesses and communications agencies from the total cost of spend on campaigns.
Such information as is available is in the attached table. These figures are the total cost of each campaign for the financial years 2015/16 to 2023/24. This includes any spend with marketing businesses and communications agencies, as well as media and advertising costs, materials and marketing collateral, and events. Information prior to 2015/16 is not available.
These figures do not include departmental resource or spend as part of the GREAT Food & Drink campaign which is jointly funded with Cabinet Office.