Question to the Attorney General:

To ask the Attorney General, what the value is of duplicate supplier payments identified by the Law Officers' Departments since 2010; and what proportion of such payments have since been recovered in each of the last two financial years.

The Treasury Solicitor’s Department (TSol) does not hold a register of duplicate payments. Appropriate controls are in place to prevent duplicate payments and if any are identified, action is taken to recover overpaid monies. As at 18 July 2014, there are no known unrecovered duplicate payments.

Identification of the value of duplicate payments made by TSol, the Attorney General’s Office and HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate since 2010 would require detailed analysis of accounting and other records which would incur disproportionate cost. However, in the 3 months since April 2014, TSol have identified and recovered duplicate payments with a total value of £13,068 representing 0.05% of the value of payments made during this period.

Available records show that, since April 2010, the Serious Fraud Office has identified and recovered £46,000 in duplicate supplier payments. No other duplicate payments have been identified.

The following table shows the value of duplicate payments identified by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) since 2009/10 and the proportion of such payments recovered in each of the last two financial years is presented below.