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Mrs. Mahon : To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if administration of training vouchers will be the responsibility of the TECs, what funds will be available and what is the predicted financial impact on organisations which currently make no charge for guidance.
Mr. Jackson : TECs will be responsible for the administration of vouchers for adult guidance issued under the "Gateways to Learning" pilots. The funding will be made available to TECs which successfully bid under the gateways to learning initiative to pilot improvements to the local provision of adult guidance and assessment and to test the use of vouchers for these services. The funds will also be used for central support to the pilots and for an external evaluation of the initiative.
Financial arrangements will be for local negotiation between the TECs and other local organisations involved in the pilots, including organisations currently offering guidance to adults without charge.
Mrs. Mahon : To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what were the changes in funding from 1989-90, 1990-91 and 1991-92 for high technology national training courses for adults ; and what effect changes in funding for training have had on provision at this level.
Mr. Jackson : The funding for HTNT for the three years is as follows :
|£ million
------------------------------
1989-90 |17
1990-91 |20
1991-92 |18
Provision has been maintained at broadly similar levels throughout the period.
Mrs. Mahon : To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what proportion of trainees on adult training are finished early from schemes because there are no relevant work experience placements available.
Mr. Jackson : This information is not available.
Mrs. Mahon : To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will give details of how the £2 million for guidance and training voucher schemes will be spent.
Mr. Jackson : The funding will be made available to TECs which successfully bid under the "Gateways to Learning" initiative to pilot improvements to the local provision of adult guidance and assessment and to test the use of vouchers for these services. The funds will also be used for central support to the pilots and for an external evaluation of the initiative.
Mrs. Mahon : To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what has been the reduction in employment training and youth training places over the last three years.
Mr. Jackson : The average number in training on employment training over the last three years and youth training scheme in 1989-90 and youth training in 1990-91 and 1991-92 are given in the table.
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Average in training: 000s Year |ET |YT -------------------------- 1989-90 |203 |367 <1>1990-91 |196 |325 <2>1991-92 |149 |326 <1> Estimated. <2> Planned.
Mrs. Mahon : To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what proportion of people entering adult training gain national vocational qualifications ; and at what level.
Mr. Jackson : Twenty-seven per cent. of all people leaving employment training gained a qualification or credit towards one. There is no information available about the proportion which are national vocational qualifications.
Mrs. Mahon : To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many unemployed people are refused adult training places because there are no relevant national vocational qualifications in place either in a particular vocational area or at an appropriate level.
Mr. Jackson : There is no justification for denying an unemployed person a training place on the grounds that no national vocational qualification is available. National vocational qualifications covering 40 per cent. of the employed work force at levels 1 to 4 are currently available. In order to fill the current gaps in NVQ provision, this Department issues listings of existing vocational qualifications which are accepted for use in adult and youth training until the appropriate NVQ becomes available.
TECs
Mrs. Mahon : To ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will give the salaries of the chief executives of the training and enterprise councils in England and Wales.
Mr. Jackson : Chief executives who are on secondment to training and enterprise councils from the Employment Department are paid the civil service salary appropriate to their grade. The salary of a directly employed chief executive is a matter for the TEC itself to decide.
Mrs. Mahon : To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what are the running costs of administration excluding money spent on programmes of training and enterprise councils ; and what are the total administration costs of the training and enterprise councils.
Mr. Jackson : The total Government contribution to the running costs of training and enterprise councils for England and Wales in 1991-92 is £124.342 million.
Mrs. Mahon : To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what is the private sector financial contribution to the running costs or programme costs of the training and enterprise councils.
Mr. Jackson : The private sector does contribute to the costs of training, enterprise and education programmes in a variety of ways, for example, either direct to a TEC by contributions to a specific project or by meeting some of the costs of individual trainees. Information on these contributions is not available centrally.
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Mrs. Mahon : To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many staff are employed by the training and enterprise councils in total.Mr. Jackson : We do not hold figures for the staff TECs employ in posts which are not publicly funded. On 1 November training and enterprise councils had 3,456 in publicly funded posts, 532 direct and 2,924 secondees.
Mrs. Mahon : To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what is the total cost of training and enterprise council board members expenses ; and how many (a) women and (b) members of ethnic minorities there are.
Mr. Jackson : Reimbursement of expenses incurred by training and enterprise council board members is a matter for each TEC and central records are not maintained. Currently 122 board members are women. Information collected in summer 1991 showed that 40 board members were from an ethnic minority background.
Training, Enterprise and Education Directorate
Mrs. Mahon : To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what has been the reduction in the Training, Enterprise and Education directorate administration--not programme--budget since training and enterprise councils were set up.
Mr. Jackson : Precise comparison of Training, Enterprise and Education Directorate administration/running costs with the period prior to the setting up of TECs is not possible. Area offices which preceded TECs were part of the Training Agency which was responsible for a different range of functions to those administered by TEED.
Mrs. Mahon : To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many staff are employed by the TEED in areas relating to training ; and what do they cost.
Mr. Jackson : Setting aside staff seconded to TECs, a total of 2060.5 staff are employed in regional and Head Offices at a cost of £52.9 million for salaries and general administrative expenses on a broad range of functions covering training education and enterprise.
Mrs. Mahon : To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what has been the reduction in the TEED programme-provision budget since TECs were set up.
Mr. Jackson : Total expenditure in Great Britain on TEED programmes in 1990-91 during which the first
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TECs were established was £2.8 billion compared with planned provision for 1991-92 of £2.9 billion and for 1992-93 of £2.8 billion.Child Care
Mrs. Mahon : To ask the Secretary of State for Employment what is the employment training child care budget ; and whether its level has been maintained over the period 1989-90 to 1991-92.
Mr. Jackson : The proportion of the adult training budget used to provide child care support is the responsibility of individual training and enterprise councils.
From April 1991, the scope to support the child care costs on trainees of ET was extended, from the original provision for lone parents to all trainees.
Mrs. Mahon : To ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many child care places were funded from the employment training budget in 1989- 90, 1990-91 and 1991-92.
Mr. Jackson : The Employment Department does not collect information on the number of ET trainees receiving child care support.
NATIONAL FINANCE
Job Applications (Civil Service and Inland Revenue)
Mr. Illsley : To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is (a) the total number of applicants for employment within (1) the civil service and (2) the Inland Revenue broken down by age and sex over the last five years, (b) the total number of applicants interviewed for employment within (1) the Inland Revenue and (2) the civil service over the last five years and (c) the total number of applicants for employment actually appointed by (1) the civil service and (2) the Inland Revenue over the last five years.
Mr. Maples : No information is held centrally about the total number by age and sex of either applicants for employment or the number of applicants interviewed. This information could not be obtained without disproportionate cost. However, some data for selected grades are available for the civil service as a whole in the Civil Service Commission annual reports. Copies are available in the House of Commons Library.
Data on entrants to the non-industrial home civil service and Inland Revenue are given in the tables.
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Non-Industrial Staff (all grades)
|16-19 |20-24 |25-29 |30-34 |35-39 |40-44 |45-49 |50 and over|Total |Men |Women
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Entrants to the Inland Revenue
1986-87 |1,616 |1,574 |580 |361 |336 |255 |145 |177 |5,044 |1,899 |3,145
1987-88 |1,631 |1,898 |696 |443 |435 |409 |207 |247 |5,966 |2,202 |3,764
1988-89 |2,250 |2,223 |917 |581 |574 |535 |353 |418 |7,851 |2,949 |4,902
1989-90 |1,702 |1,523 |740 |536 |532 |466 |279 |344 |6,122 |2,141 |3,981
1990-91 |1,460 |1,216 |506 |392 |430 |410 |222 |244 |4,880 |1,651 |3,229
Entrants to the Home Civil Service
1986-87 |15,264 |16,115 |6,400 |4,078 |3,873 |3,002 |1,710 |2,515 |52,957 |21,098 |31,859
1987-88 |13,720 |16,199 |6,470 |3,900 |3,682 |3,431 |2,054 |2,947 |52,403 |21,711 |30,692
1988-89 |9,615 |12,914 |6,120 |3,910 |3,621 |3,686 |2,396 |3,786 |46,048 |20,026 |26,022
1989-90 |9,600 |12,335 |6,293 |4,275 |3,810 |3,873 |2,438 |3,832 |46,456 |19,356 |27,100
1990-91 |6,780 |9,490 |5,332 |3,584 |3,034 |3,245 |1,991 |2,872 |36,328 |15,527 |20,801
Source: MANDATE
Fiscal Transfers
Mr. Butler : To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will state the Government's policy as to whether economic convergence in the EC and European monetary union will require increased regional fiscal transfers.
Mr. Maude : Economic convergence requires sound economic and monetary policies. If economic and monetary union is subject to proper convergence decisions, it should create the conditions for the growth by all member states ; there is no reason why it should justify further expenditure on the structural funds, which will double in real terms between 1987 and 1993.
Knives
Mr. Cohen : To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many illegal knives have been seized at ports over the last two years ; and what plans he has to tighten up controls on imports of knives as offensive weapons.
Mrs. Gillian Shephard : The numbers of knives seized at ports, airports and other points of entry are as follows :
Year ending |Number 31 March ------------------------------------ 1990 |903 1991 |2,082
Customs are continually seeking to improve the effectiveness of their controls in this and other areas, principally by better, risk-based targeting of resources.
Intergovernmental Conference
Mr. Burns : To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on the outcome of the meeting of the intergovernmental conference on economic and monetary union on 25 November.
Mr. Norman Lamont : I attended a meeting of the intergovernmental conference on economic and monetary union on 24-25 November. Four main issues were discussed : the role of the Commission and the European Council in EMU, exchange rate policy in stage 3, the procedure for investigating member states' budget deficits, and the transitional provisions in the draft statute of the European system of central banks.
On institutional issues, I argued that the treaty provisions should be considered on a case-by-case basis to achieve a workable solution ; the Commission should not always have the exclusive right of proposal of legislation.
The discussion of exchange rate policy was brief and the issue was remitted to personal representatives for further work.
In the discussion of the procedure for investigating budget deficits I argued that market forces and Council recommendations were the most appropriate discipline on member states and that the procedure should be concerned only with gross errors of budgetary policy. On the transitional provisions in the draft statute, the conference discussed a number of issues concerning the arrangements for non-participants in stage 3.
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In a discussion of the Soviet Union, I argued for the earliest possible disbursement of the Community's food credits to meet genuine humanitarian needs. Agreement was reached on the mandate for the Commission's negotiations with the Soviet Union on the 500 mecu loan already agreed by the Community.Civil Servants (Loans)
Mr. Robert B. Jones : To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will set out in tabular form the official rates of interest on loans provided to civil servants by their employers by category of loan.
Mr. Maples : Departments as employers do not normally make loans to their staff. They may provide advances of salary for travel costs, including season tickets and bicycle purchase, for house purchase where a member of staff is being compulsorily transferred in the public interest, and to assist with car purchase and miscellaneous additional expenses on posting overseas. No interest is paid on these advances. Departments and agencies also have discretion to take over any excess bridging loan after sale charging nominal interest rates in circumstances where staff face financial hardship following a move in the public interest if they have a bridging loan in excess of the sale value of their old property. Information on the use of the discretion is not held centrally.
Oil (VAT)
Mr. Barry Field : To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on the VAT rules for oil deliveries to domestic premises (i) below and(ii) above 2,300 litres.
Mrs. Gillian Shephard : All supplies of 2,300 litres of oil or less are always considered to be for domestic use and thus zero-rated for VAT purposes to all customers. However, where the quantity of oil delivered is more than 2,300 litres, the supply will still be zero-rated if the oil is indeed for domestic use, although the supplier may ask for a certificate from the customer to that effect.
Child Care Costs
Sir Ian Gilmour : To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will publish the information he has for each of the member states of the European Community, and for Norway, Sweden and Finland, on the tax treatment of work-related child care costs.
Mr. Norman Lamont : The latest available information is given in the table. To make a valid comparison between countries it would be necessary to take into account the standard tax allowances and tax reliefs given to parents and the level of child benefits given through the social security system.
All amounts have been converted to sterling using the latest available purchasing power parities.
Column 695
Country and treatment of work-related child care expenses BelgiumUp to 80 per cent. of expenses are deductible in respect of children under three years old, subject to a maximum of £4.94 per child per day of care.
Denmark
No tax relief is given.
France
There is a tax reduction equal to 25 per cent. of expenses limited to £1,293 per year (1990 figure) for each child under seven years old. The tax reduction is available to single, widowed, divorced or separated taxpayers who work outside the home and to a couple where each spouse either works or attends a full-time course of higher education.
Germany
Expenses are deductible up to £1,064 per year for the first child and £532 for each additional child. A minimum lump-sum deduction of £128 (without proof of expenditure) is allowed. The deductions apply to single parents and couples if one spouse (or partner) is sick or disabled.
Greece
Taxpayers are exempt from income tax on 50 per cent. of the annual cost of sending a child to a nursery or kindergarten, up to a maximum of £549 per child per year.
Ireland
No tax relief is given.
Italy
No tax relief is given.
Luxembourg
Childcare expenses (apparently whether work-related or not) are deductible for single persons, and persons with a child under 14 years old in the household. The total deduction for childcare expenses and domestic help may not exceed £270 per year.
Netherlands
Expenses are deductible, but part of the costs (which must be proved) must be borne by the parent(s). The amount to be borne by the parent(s) ranges from 10 pence per hour for those with an annual combined income of less than £9,091 to £1.18 per hour for those with an annual combined income of over £29,091. If the expenses relate to more than one child, the amount to be borne by the parent(s) is increased by 10 pence per hour for each additional child.
Portugal
A deduction is allowed for educational expenses (including creches and nurseries, and apparently whether work-related or not) to a maximum of £700 (for single taxpayers) and £1,400 (married). These maximum amounts are cumulative with deductions allowed for other expenses eg life insurance, medical expenses.
Spain
With effect from 1 January 1992 a deduction is allowed for 15 per cent. of expenses incurred to a maximum of £137 in respect of each child under three years old if the parents work away from home and the taxpayer's net income does not exceed £10,966.
United Kingdom
Employees are exempt from income tax on the benefit of a workplace nursery place provided by their employer. No other tax relief is given.
Finland
No tax relief is given.
Norway
No tax relief is given.
Sweden
No tax relief is given.
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Corporation Tax
Mr. Day : To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on the outcome of the consultations on tax returns under corporation tax pay and file.
Mr. Maude : The Inland Revenue published proposals earlier this year on tax returns under corporation tax pay and file. These were generally well received, although there were comments on various points of detail. The Inland Revenue has revised the draft return form to take account of these comments. Companies and their advisers will be invited early next year to complete the revised return form on an experimental basis, to help them to familiarise themselves with the new procedures and to help to identify and correct any mistakes and misunderstandings before the start of pay and file.
There was one criticism which could not be dealt with at this stage as it would involve a change in the law. A number of respondents were concerned that the requirement for returns to be signed by the company secretary could put burdens on companies. The Inland Revenue will be discussing this with bodies representing businesses and their advisers to see whether a solution can be found which would not put undue burdens on the Inland Revenue or risks on the Exchequer. Any legislation needed could be introduced before the start of pay and file.
Exchange Rate Mechanism
Mr. Austin Mitchell : To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will list the changes in exchange rates with the ERM for each currency since the start of the system, the date of each realignment and the exchange rate between the ecu and the US dollar on each occasion.
Mr. Maples [holding answer 28 November 1991] : The table shows the changes in each ERM currency's central rate against the ecu since the start of the system (or its entry to the system) :
Ecu central rate<1>
Currency |1979 (or |Now
|entry date)
-------------------------------------------------------------
Deutschmark (DM) |2.5106 |2.0559
French Franc (FFC) |5.8552 |6.8951
Sterling (UKL) |(0.6969) |0.6969
Dutch Guilder (HFL) |2.7208 |2.3164
Belgian Franc/Luxembourg |39.458 |42.403
Franc (BFR/LFR) |- |-
Italian Lira (LIT) |1148.2 |1538.2
Danish Krone (DKR) |7.0859 |7.8420
Irish Punt (IRL) |0.6626 |0.7674
Spanish Peseta (PTA) |(133.80) |133.63
<1> the method of calculation of central rates against the
ecu in the ERM is such that they all adjust if there is a
realignment. Bilateral central rates between any two
currencies that have not realigned remain unchanged.
There have been 12 realignments since the ERM started in 1979. The dates, the currencies that realigned their bilateral central rates, and the ecu/$ exchange rates at the time of realignment are listed below. Information on ecu/$ exchange rates in 1979 is not readily available and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.
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Date of |Currencies that realigned |ecu/$ rate at
realignment |time of
|realignment
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1979
13 March |start off ERM |-
24 September |DM, DKR |-
30 November |DKR |-
1981
23 March |LIT |0.8243
5 October |DM, DFL, FFC, LIT |0.9159
1982
22 February |BFC, DKR |0.9678
14 June |DM, DFL, LIT, FFC |1.0220
1983
21 March |DM, DFL, DKR, BFC, FFC, LIT, IRL|1.0612
1985
22 July |BFC, DKR, DM, FFC, IRL, DFL, LIT|1.2856
1986
7 April |DM, DFL, BFC, DKR, FFC |1.1109
4 August |IRL |0.9850
1987
12 January |DM, DFL, BFC |0.9204
1989
19 June |entry of Peseta |0.9578
1990
8 January |LIT (to narrow band) |0.8264
8 October |entry of sterling |0.7405
Mr. Austin Mitchell : To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what representations he has received for a realignment of currencies within the ERM ; what representations he has made on this to other member states ; and what consultation procedures are required before any realignment can be made.
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