Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to (a) improve administrative efficiency and (b) reduce expenditure on legal costs.

The Spending Review settlement for Administration costs set out a trajectory for the Department and its arm's length bodies (excluding clinical commissioning groups) to deliver a 30% real terms (25% cash terms) saving by 2019-20.

In order to meet this challenge the Department launched a change programme in February 2016 to both reduce in size and find more efficient ways of working while continuing to deliver on our priorities. As well as undertaking a restructuring exercise to reduce the number of permanent staff the change programme also includes projects to improve internal business processes, improvements in the use of technology to enable staff to work flexibly and the co-location of all London based staff in a single building.

The Department’s arm’s length bodies have been allocated savings targets for administration costs across the Spending Review period and are working within their organisations to deliver these efficiencies.

The Department calls on the Government Legal Department for almost all of its requirements for legal services. It currently has a budget of around £10 million which is set at the beginning of each financial year based on business planning for the work it expects to undertake in the year ahead. This process entails careful consideration as to the most effective use of this of this resource, bearing in mind the need to make efficiencies in line with the spending review targets set by HM Treasury.