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Departmental Press: Subscriptions

Answer

The figures available for cost of press cuttings services to the Department extend as far back as 2006 due to the introduction of a new Procurement and Finance IT system in December 2005. All details of expenditure prior to this time have been archived, and therefore disproportionate costs would be incurred to produce figures prior to 2006. There were significant costs incurred in the financial year 2009-10, this was due to increased press activity in relation to the recession.The Department is committed to driving down costs and delivering efficiencies. A new contract was agreed in April 2010 which dramatically reduced the amount of employees with access to the press cuttings and also reduced the number of cuttings actually received. We expect this to substantially reduce our costs compared to 2009-10. We continue to monitor all expenditure with a view to delivering maximum value for the taxpayer.The cost of press cuttings services to the Department from 2006 shown in the following table are inclusive of VAT, however it should be noted that the VAT is recovered by the Department for these services:

Financial year	Cost (inc VAT) (£)
2006-07	124,851.88
2007-08	136,565.13
2008-09	195,906.65
2009-10	334,010.70
2010-11 (first seven months)	109,597.68

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

28153; 521 c111W

Session

2010-12

Subjects

Department for Work and Pensions Press Subscriptions

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk