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Pay Services Directorate
Mr. David Martin: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement about defence agency status for the Pay Services Directorate. [12906]
Mr. Arbuthnot: The Pay Services Directorate will become a defence agency of the Ministry of Defence on 1 February 1996 following the restructuring of the Defence Accounts Agency, DAA. The agency, to be known as the Pay and Personnel Agency, PPA, is located in Bath; Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire, and Worcester, with a small satellite office in Malta and will have a staff of some 960 MOD civil servants. The agency is responsible for providing pay services and personnel information support services in respect of civilian staff of the MOD and for other public sector customers. Pay services encompass payroll, all aspects of principal civil service pension scheme administration and expenses management. In addition, the agency will provide financial management information to budget holders and other customers.
A chief executive has been selected by open competition. He will be required to develop the current organisation's professional expertise and improve the high performance standards to fulfil the agency's aim of providing its customers with an efficient service which offers the best value for money. The chief executive will be set the following key targets: to deliver the range of agency services to the required time scales and to the set standards of accuracy, as published in the pay services
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customer charter; to achieve annual efficiency savings year on year of 3.5 per cent. of cash allocation through a reduction in operating costs; to obtain quality registration to BS EN ISO 9001 standard in one further sector of the agency by 31 March 1996; to meet the Treasury accounts direction and to install a computerised, full-cost, accruals accounting system by 31 March 1996; to have new business systems hardware--known as POPSI--delivered and installed and the personnel system completed to the specification required to achieve savings, by 31 December 1996; to complete an investigation into the best commercial practices for measuring customer satisfaction with agency services by 31 December 1996; to introduce the new principal civil service pension scheme administration system--known as QUASAR--to the required specification, by 31 March 1997; to obtain quality registration to BS EN ISO 9001 standard in two further sectors of the agency by 31 March 1997; and to set an accruals baseline to permit the use of accruals--based performance targets for the agency accounts, by 31 March 1997.
I am arranging for copies of the agency's framework document to be placed in the Library of the House.
Mr. Malcolm Bruce:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what is his estimate of the annual cost to his Department and his Department's agencies and non-departmental public bodies of their empty and under-utilised properties for (a) 1979-80, (b) 1989-90, (c) 1991-92, (d) 1993-94, (e) 1994-95 (f) 1995-96 and (g) 1996-97. [11420]
Mr. Soames:
No estimate is made of the cost of empty and under-utilised property and the information could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.
Mr. William Ross:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many of the mobile phones which have been supplied to his Department in each of the last four years have been cloned; and on what dates. [11007]
Mr. Arbuthnot
[holding answer 23 January 1996]: During 1995, 24 mobile telephones supplied to the MOD were cloned as follows:
| Number | |
|---|---|
| January | 8 |
| February | 2 |
| March | 11 |
| May | 2 |
| June | 1 |
Figures before 1995 are not available.
Gulf War Syndrome
Dr. David Clark: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will instigate an epidemiological study into alleged Gulf war syndrome. [12122]
Mr. Soames
[holding answer 29 January 1996]: My Department has been conducting a continuing and detailed investigation into the health aspects of service in the Gulf.
30 Jan 1996 : Column: 608
The medical assessment programme, under which more than 350 individual veterans have been examined, was endorsed by the Royal College of Physicians in a clinical audit last July.
The royal college recommended that we contact leading civilian specialists in specific areas of medicine relevant to conditions alleged to have been caused by Gulf service. Separate discussions have since been held with eminent specialists in toxicology, immunology, tropical diseases, epidemiology and birth defects, and a comprehensive medical statistical database has been prepared which will provide the basis for epidemiological studies.
As part of this continuing work, the Surgeon General convened a meeting last Thursday with the following leading medical and scientific experts: Professor A. Kay, Imperial college of science, technology and medicine (immunology); Professor L. Borysiewicz, university of Wales (immunology); Professor D. Warrell, John Radcliffe medical school, Oxford (tropical diseases); Professor A. McMichael, London school of hygiene and tropical medicine (epidemiology); Dr. A. Proudfoot, director, Scottish poisons information bureau (toxicology); Professor Sir C. Berry, Royal London hospital (birth defects); and Professor P. Blain, Newcastle upon Tyne medical school (environmental and occupational medicine).
Having reviewed the work undertaken to date, the experts fully approved the basis of our approach. They also agreed that there is no evidence at present to indicate the existence of a unique and previously unknown condition or illness associated with service in the Gulf, and noted that this echoed the US experience of its much larger assessment programme of 17,000 veterans.
We accept that a number of Gulf veterans are ill, and that there is public concern about the possible effects of Gulf service on the children of veterans who have been born with birth defects. As the next stage of its work, my Department will commission a series of epidemiological studies comparing the health of Gulf veterans with similarly matched control groups of service personnel who did not go to the Gulf. The aim of these studies, some of which will be conducted in-house and some by commissioning external research, will be to establish whether there is any increased prevalence of illness among Gulf veterans or of birth defects among their children.
We will also commission research into the alleged causes of Gulf-related illness, including the possibility of interaction between the vaccinations received by service personnel and the nerve agent pretirement sets--NAPS--taken for protection against the very real threat of chemical attack. We shall of course work very closely with the US, but will not duplicate its efforts.
The cost of the research will be met by my Department. The Medical Research Council has been invited to oversee and review the conduct of the programme, and the results will be published.
We will continue to offer assessment and counselling services under the medical assessment programme, and wish to encourage any serving or ex-service personnel who may be concerned about their health as a result of Gulf service to come forward to the solicitors acting for those who are ill asking them to urge their clients to participate in the programme.
30 Jan 1996 : Column: 609
Mr. Mike O'Brien:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how long, on average, Inland Revenue staff have spent training to deal with self-assessment. [8314]
Mr. Jack:
The Inland Revenue has in place a four-year training programme for staff dealing with self-assessment. The programme started in April 1994 and runs through to October 1998. So far staff have spent, on average, three and a half days in training covering the basic elements of self-assessment.
From April this year, the training programme will address the specific needs of different staff groups to equip them with the knowledge and skills required to do their jobs when this is first needed.
On average, staff will receive seven days' training during 1996-97, four days in 1997-98 and three days from April to October 1998. The training programme is designed as a staged incremental progress to ensure that staff are able to handle the work as it first arises.
On-the-job support, guidance and information to consolidate this learning will be provided by the training organisation and line managers.
Mrs. Bridget Prentice:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many and what proportion of (a) manual part-time workers and (b) non-manual part-time workers, broken down into men and women, work less than (i) eight hours a week and (ii) 16 hours a week in each London borough. [11861]
Mrs. Angela Knight:
Estimates available from the labour force survey relating to Greater London as a whole are shown in the table. Equivalent estimates for individual London boroughs are not available.
| Working less than eight hours a week | Working less than 16 hours a week | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thousands | Per cent. | Thousands | Per cent. | |
| Men | ||||
| Manual part-time | n/a | n/a | 27 | 41 |
| Non-manual part-time | 13 | 16 | 34 | 40 |
| Women | ||||
| Manual part-time | 15 | 11 | 57 | 42 |
| Non-manual part-time | 33 | 11 | 102 | 33 |
n/a Not available, estimate below 10,000.
30 Jan 1996 : Column: 610
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