Written question asked by Priti Patel (Conservative) on Monday, 11 March 2013, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Wednesday, 13 March 2013. It was answered by Dominic Grieve (Conservative) on Monday, 18 March 2013 on behalf of the Attorney General.

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Question

To ask the Attorney-General how many officials in (a) the Law Officers' Departments and (b) each of its agencies and non-departmental public bodies qualify for privilege days; and what the total cost to the public purse was of the number of privilege days utilised each year by such officials.

[147731]

Answer

All officials working in the Law Officers' Department qualify for privilege days. The current entitlement is 2.5 privilege days per year in addition to bank holidays and their annual leave entitlement. The privilege days are the Queen's birthday, a day at Christmas and a half day on Maundy Thursday. As part of the Civil Service Reform Plan the entitlement will reduce to one day during 2013-14.

The number of officials who currently qualify for privilege days and the cost for each Department is shown in the following table. The cost of the current arrangements can only be estimated by taking the total salary cost and giving an average cost for each day's pay.

Department	Number of officials who qualify for privilege days	Estimated cost of privilege days (£)
Treasury Solicitor's Department1	1,024	390,000
Serious Fraud Office	303	107,000
Crown Prosecution Service	7,346	2,191,000
1 The data include the Attorney-General's Office and Her Majesty's Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate

Secondary information

Type: Written question
Reference: 147731; 560 c364W
Session: 2012-13
Subjects: Attorney General Leave
Contains statistics: Yes
Link: View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk

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Secondary information

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