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Energy Conservation
Mrs. Gorman : To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what amount of the energy conservation budget he allocates to the promotion of competition in the market for production of methods of conserving energy.
Mr. Peter Morrison : The market in energy efficiency goods and services is already highly competitive. Hence the Energy Efficiency Office does not allocate funds for the specific purpose of promoting competition.
Electricity Privatisation
Mr. Dobson : To ask the Secretary of State for Energy, pursuant to his answer to the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras of 5 February, Official Report, column
Column 778
457, when he wrote to the Electricity Council and the Central Electricity Generating Board drawing the question to their attention.Mr. Wakeham : An official from my Department wrote to the Electricity Council and the CEGB on 5 February 1990.
Power Stations
Mr. Dobson : To ask the Secretary of State for Energy which stations have been fitted with low-sulphur electrostatic precipitators and for what reasons.
Mr. Wakeham : I am advised that all National Power and PowerGen coal fired power stations have electrostatic precipitators fitted which enable their plant to burn a proportion of low-sulphur coal. The CEGB have been working for many years with Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution on a programme to enhance the performance of their precipitators. This programme is being continued by National Power and PowerGen.
Column 779
Combined Heat and Power
Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones : To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if, pursuant to his reply to the hon. Member for Stockton, South (Mr. Devlin), Official Report, 26 February, column 96, he will publish the dates and places for the planned regional CHP marketing to which he refers.
Mr. Peter Morrison : The following is a preliminary and provisional list of planned CHP marketing events.
Year 1990-91
Month |Region
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
May |Yorkshire and North West
June |Scotland and West Midlands
July |South East
September |Scotland and South West
October |South West and Not Decided
November |Yorkshire and Not Decided
December |West Midlands
January |Wales
February |South East
Non-fossil Fuel Obligation
Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones : To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what is the total in megawatts capacity of renewable sources of energy, under the non-fossil fuel obligation.
Mr. Baldry : Bids from sponsors of renewables-sourced generating projects for contracting under the non-fossil fuel obligation amount to between 1 and 2 GW of capacity. However, the level of the obligation in respect of renewables will not be determined until it is clear, in the light of consultations, how many of these projects are ready to go forward.
ATTORNEY-GENERAL
Land (Access Rights)
Mr. Gareth Wardell : To ask the Attorney-General how many representations he has received on the issue of the non-existence of general rights of access to neighbouring land.
The Attorney-General : The Lord Chancellor receives approximately 40 representations each year from the public and members of Parliament on the subject of rights of access to neighbouring land.
Mr. Gareth Wardell : To ask the Attorney-General if he intends to implement the findings of the Law Commission published in December 1985 on the rights of access to neighbouring land in Law Commission paper No. 151.
The Attorney-General : The Government have accepted the recommendations of the Law Commission in its report on rights of access to neighbouring land. It is intended to implement them when resources and parliamentary time allow.
Column 780
Law Commission
Mr. Gareth Wardell : To ask the Attorney-General if he will publish in the Official Report a list of the reports published by the Law Commission for each year since 1979, indicating whether any recommendations in each report have been implemented.
The Attorney-General : Appendix 3 to the "Law Commission's Twenty- fourth Annual Report for 1989" (Law Com. No. 190), published on 28 February 1990, contains a complete list of all the commission's reports, including those published since 1979 to date. The right-hand column of appendix 3 shows the extent to which the recommendations in each report have been implemented by legislation.
Mr. Gareth Wardell : To ask the Attorney-General if he will publish in the Official Report the costs incurred by the Law Commission for each year since 1979.
The Attorney-General : The figures for the cost of the Law Commission prior to November 1982 could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.
The Law Commission has published a table showing the cost of the commission in each annual report since its 18th annual report for 1982-83. The figures are as follows :
|£
------------------------------
1982-1983 |1,819,600
1983-1984 |1,889,800
1984-1985 |1,886,200
1985-1986 |1,986,600
1986-1987 |2,062,300
1987-1988 |2,034,600
1988 |2,123,500
1989 |2,248,200
Notes:
1. The first six of these
figures relate to the period
from 1st November in one year
to 31st October in the
following year. The figures
for 1988 and 1989 are for the
calendar years.
2. Each of these figures
includes an element for the
cost incurred by the Lord
Chancellor's Department in
the administration of the Law
Commission.
3. These figures do not
include the salary of the
chairman of the Law
Commission who, as a High
Court judge, is paid directly
out of the Consolidated Fund.
4. The cost for 1984-85 is
the amended figure given in
the annual report for 1985-86,
and excludes the pensions of
former Law Commissioners.
They are also excluded from
the figures for subsequent
years. They are however
included in the figures for
1982-83 and 1983-84.
FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS
Africa
Sir David Steel : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will publish a table showing the flow of gains and losses in income for Africa, taking account of development assistance, private lending, debt service payments and commodity price changes, for each year since 1985 to the current year.
Mr. Waldegrave : Figures for the whole of Africa are not available, as north Africa and the middle east are treated as a single region by the main organisations compiling such data. Figures for sub-Saharan Africa are as follows :
Column 781
A. Net resource flows<1>
$ billion
|1985|1986|1987|1988
---------------------------------------------------------
Official development finance<2> |12.1|15.4|18.1|20.4
Export credits |1.1 |-0.1|-0.2|0.6
Private flows<3> |1.6 |4.2 |4.0 |4.2
|-- |-- |-- |--
Total net resource flows |14.8|19.5|21.9|25.2
Interest payments<4> |2.9 |2.6 |3.1 |3.5
|-- |-- |-- |--
Net financial transfer |11.9|16.9|18.8|21.7
Source: OECD: 1988 survey of financing and external debt
of developing countries.
B. Trade<5>
$ billion
|1985|1986|1987|1988
---------------------------------
Exports |31.9|28.3|28.5|n/a
Imports |28.0|29.2|32.5|n/a
Source: World Bank World
Development Reports, 1987, 1988,
1989.
<1> Total gross resource flows
less capital repayments.
<2> Bilateral and multilateral
official development assistance (
ODA), plus other official
development finance.
<3> International bank lending,
direct investment, grants by
non-governmental organisations,
plus other private investment.
<4> Interest payments on long-
and short-term credit (but not
including capital repayments).
<5> Includes intra-regional
trade.
All figures exclude South Africa which is not regarded by OECD as a developing country.
COCOM
Mr. Atkinson : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the outcome of the recent COCOM meeting.
Mr. Waldegrave : The COCOM executive committee met on 14 and 15 February. It noted that the political and military environment for which the COCOM controls were devised is changing, and agreed to adapt COCOM's procedures and to accelerate streamlining of the controls, particularly in the sectors of machine tools, telecommunications and computers.
The executive committee agreed that the time limits for consideration of cases submitted to COCOM should be reduced from 12 weeks to eight weeks ; that working groups should prepare recommendations for liberalisation of the controls on machine tools, telecommunications and computers to be ready by the next COCOM policy meeting in June 1990 ; that that meeting would consider further priority sectors for changes to the controls ; and that, separately, considerations would be given to whether relaxation could be introduced in return for reassurances against the diversion of strategically sensitive goods and technologies.
Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine
Mr. Alton : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the Overseas Development Administration's future funding of the Liverpool school of tropical medicine.
Mr. Waldegrave : As the authorities of the Liverpool school have been told, we are prepared to make a substantial increase in the level of financial support which the school receives from the aid programme. Its provision is subject to an agreement with the school on a set of work
Column 782
programmes to replace the present system of providing aid finance to cover the costs of the salaries of specific individuals and of specific units in the school.The work programmes are being designed by the school and will aim to make maximum use of their capacity to help address key health issues and problems in developing countries.
Nuclear Non-proliferation
Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if, pursuant to his reply to the hon. Member for Ynys Mo n, Official Report, 28 February, column 210, he will set out the dates on which the European Political Co-operation Committee's working group on nuclear non-proliferation met in each year since 1985.
Mr. Waldegrave : The working group on non-proliferation met on the following dates :
7-8 February 1985
9-10 May 1985
15-16 October 1985
7-8 November 1985
26-27 March1986
17-18 June 1986
8-9 September 1986
6-7 November 1986
5-6 February 1987
21-22 May 1987
10-11 September 1987
18-19 November 1987
18-19 February 1988
19-20 May 1988
14 September 1988
12 December 1988
16 February 1989
26 May 1989
8 September 1989
15 December 1989
31 January-1 February 1990
Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if, pursuant to his reply to the hon. Member for Ynys Mo n, Official Report, 28 February, column 210, on grant in aid provision for non-proliferation matters, he will set out the specific purposes to which he refers for which funding has been made available to the programme for promoting nuclear non-proliferation.
Mr. Waldegrave : Funding has been made available to the programme for promoting nuclear non-proliferation (PPNN) to meet part of the cost of a conference on issues likely to arise during the 1990 non-proliferation treaty review conference, and to assist with the production of documentation on the non-proliferation regime.
UN Fund (Women)
Mrs. Clwyd : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will list the United Kingdom contribution to the United Nations development fund for women in real and monetary terms, for every year since 1975 ; and if he will make a statement.
Mr. Maude : The information is as follows :
Column 783
United Kingdom contributions to UN Development
Fund
for Women<1> 1975-1988
£ thousand
Year |In current |In constant
|prices |1988 prices
------------------------------------------------
1975 |10 |32
1976 |200 |560
1977 |- |-
1978 |- |-
1979 |200 |386
1980 |200 |323
1981 |- |-
1982 |- |-
1983 |- |-
1984 |- |-
1985 |100 |116
1986 |50 |56
1987 |50 |53
1988 |50 |50
<2>1989 |50 |47
<1>Before to 1986 known as the Voluntary Fund
for UN Decade for Women.
<2>Provisional.
Women Staff
Mrs. Clwyd : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to his reply on 13 February, Official Report, column 131, if he will give a breakdown of the jobs held by the 18 per cent. of overseas Overseas Development Administration staff who are women ; and what percentage of technical specialists working for the Overseas Development Administration overseas, and what percentage of agriculturalists, are women.
Mr. Maude : My right hon. Friend the Minister for Overseas Development's reply of 13 February noted that currently there are nine women members of the ODA serving overseas. They occupy the following positions :
British Development Division in the Caribbean :
Senior Economic Assistant
Executive Officer
British Development Division in Eastern Africa :
Senior Economic Assistant
British Development Division in Southern Africa :
Head of Division (Grade 5)
Senior Health and Population Adviser
Senior Economic Assistant
British Development Division in the Pacific :
Head of Division (Grade 5)
Executive Officer
South East Asia Development Division :
Higher Executive Officer
Twenty-eight of the ODA's own staff overseas are technical specialists of whom four are women (14.3 per cent.). Within this group there are eight ODA agricultural specialists ; none are women. One woman natural resources adviser from the ODA is currently on secondment to a technical co-operation assignment in Bangladesh.
Overseas Projects (Women Beneficiaries)
Mrs. Clwyd : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what is the number and percentage of overseas projects supported by the Overseas Development Administration in which 50 per cent. of intended beneficiaries are women.
Column 784
Mr. Maude : Assuming that the project area has a normal gender balance, about 50 per cent. of the beneficiaries, either directly or indirectly, of most overseas projects are women. The Overseas Development Administration has an integrated policy on women in development which takes account of the role of women in all aid activities.
The ODA will be introducing the new statistical reporting system of OECD for women in development in 1990. This system has rigorous criteria for classifying projects which assist women but even this will not provide the data necessary to give a precise answer to this question.
Training Programmes (Women Participants)
Mrs. Clwyd : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what was the number and percentage of women participating in the Overseas Development Administration training prgrammes in developing countries, in the United Kingdom, and in total, for each year since 1979.
Mr. Maude : Gender-differentiated statistics on training in the United Kingdom under the aid programme are readily available from 1986 only. They show :
Students and Trainees Financed in United Kingdom 1986-88
Total Allocable by sex
|Total |of which |Per cent.
|women |women
------------------------------------------------------------
Financed During:
1986 |11,534 |11,070 |1,816 |16.4
1987 |13,144 |13,144 |2,373 |18.1
1988 |13,541 |13,541 |2,480 |18.3
Equivalent data are not available for training provided in developing countries. From limited information for 1988-89, the proportion of women receiving in-country training appears to be significantly greater than the proportion receiving training in the United Kingdom under the aid programme.
Ethiopia
Sir David Steel : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if, in the light of the fall of the port of Massawa, Her Majesty's Government will make it their policy to use the distribution network of the Relief Society of Tigray to distribute famine relief in those areas of Ethiopia under rebel control.
Mr. Waldegrave : The fall of the port of Massawa is a serious blow to the relief effort and donors, including ourselves, are urgently considering the scope for maintaining and increasing the flow of relief supplies through all available channels.
Ivory
Mr. Tony Banks : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to his reply of 2 February, Official Report, column 404, if he will provide a breakdown by country, type and quantity of the ivory exported from Hong Kong since 1 June 1989.
Mr. Waldegrave [holding answer 22 February 1990] : Between 1 June 1989 and 14 January 1990 the Hong Kong authorities issued licences for the export of ivory as follows :
Column 785
Country |Raw ivory |Worked ivory
|(tonnes) |(tonnes)
----------------------------------------------------
China |12.56 |-
Macau |0.42 |-
India |0.06 |-
Taiwan |5.12 |0.87
Singapore |6.11 |0.11
Japan |26.36 |-
Korea |- |0.02
Spain |- |3.56
Mexico |- |0.17
|------- |-------
Total |50.63 |4.73
Licences were also granted for exports to the Federal Republic of Germany and Thailand but have not yet been used. They have therefore been deleted from the above summary.
Mr. Tony Banks : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to his reply of 1 February, Official Report, column 308, how much ivory has now been exported from Hong Kong since he announced the six-month exemption.
Mr. Waldegrave [holding answer 22 February 1990] : Two hundred and twenty-five kilogrammes of worked ivory have been exported between 17 January and 26 February. Destinations were South Korea (208 kg) and Taiwan (17 kg).
Mr. Tony Banks : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to his reply of 15 February, Official Report, column 326, when he expects the entire commercial stocks of ivory in Hong Kong to be entered into the computer system.
Mr. Waldegrave [holding answer 22 February 1990] : Mid-March 1990.
Mr. Tony Banks : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to his reply of 2 February, Official Report, column 404, if he will provide a breakdown by country of origin of the seizures made by the Hong Kong authorities of elephant ivory and rhino horn.
Mr. Waldegrave [holding answer 22 February 1990] : The Hong Kong authorities have not been able to determine the countries of origin of confiscated ivory and rhino horn. The only indication from shipping documentation is of the immediately previous country of export from which consignments have arrived in Hong Kong. On this basis the Hong Kong authorities have compiled the following list of figures in the six months to 22 January 1990 :
Country of export to Hong Kong |Quantity in
|Kilogrammes
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Elephant Ivory, 27 seizures
Japan |13.25
Taiwan |12.8
India |3.4
Thailand |16.65
Korea |11
China |1,231.15
Philippines |2.4
United States of America |105.7
Spain |55
France |4
Dubai |1.6
Singapore |702
|----
Total |2,158.95
Rhino Horn, two seizures
Singapore |21.2
Mr. Tony Banks : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to his reply of 2 February, Official Report, column 404, if he will state the last recorded date of ivory export covered by the reply.
Mr. Waldegrave [Holding answer 22 February 1990] : 14 January 1990.
Mr. Tony Banks : To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to his reply of 2 February, Official Report, column 404, what access is being given by the Hong Kong authorities to those organisations involved in animal welfare and conservation to enable them to monitor the trade in ivory during the six-month exemption period ; and if he will make a statement.
Mr. Waldegrave : [holding answer 22 February 1990] : The Hong Kong Management Authority maintain close and regular contact with organisations involved in animal welfare and conservation, particularly with the Hong Kong branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature. The authority is arranging for relevant statistical material to be supplied to these organisations.
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