24 Oct 1996 : Column: 1
Written Answers to Questions
Thursday 24 October 1996
HOME DEPARTMENT
Metropolitan Police
Mr. Dykes: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the recent report by Her Majesty's chief inspector of constabulary on the specialist operations department of the Metropolitan police. [229]
Mr. Maclean: Yes. I have today placed in the Library a note of the recommendations from the report, together with the Commissioner's responses and the police authority responses, which take into account the advice my right hon. and learned Friend and I have received from the Metropolitan police committee.
Immigration Laws
Mr. Dykes: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the outcome of the programme of work arising from the scrutiny of enforcement of immigration laws which he announced on 18 July 1996. [230]
Miss Widdecombe: The programme of work announced by my right hon. and learned Friend in July 1995 was designed to implement the findings of an efficiency scrutiny which examined ways in which the Government as a whole could work more effectively to strengthen immigration control and to prevent those temporarily or illegally in this country from receiving state benefits to which they should not be entitled.
I am pleased to say that the scrutiny process is now complete. It has successfully:
24 Oct 1996 : Column: 2
expenditure savings of over £100 million in the next three years. They will strengthen our immigration control and will greatly reduce the incentives for those seeking to enter or remain unlawfully in the United Kingdom.
Some of the work is incomplete because it will necessarily stretch beyond the normal time limits of the scrutiny process. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment is considering linking eligibility for both student awards and home fee status classification to those who are lawfully settled in the United Kingdom under the immigration laws. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health is considering better ways to identify those persons from abroad who are not eligible for free medical treatment. Such work will be taken forward by the Departments concerned.
The Government believe that it is wrong that people who are admitted to this country on the basis that they can provide for themselves or who are here illegally should receive benefits paid for by the taxes of lawful residents. The measures we have now taken and the work currently in hand will see that they do not.
Mr. Faber:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement on the future of the Building Research Establishment. [388]
Mr. Gummer:
On 2 October, the Construction Industry Council sent to me the business plan developed by the construction industry for a national centre for construction, thus meeting the deadline I set out in my reply of 2 April to a question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Mr. Garel-Jones). I am grateful for the work the industry's representatives have put into the preparation of this plan which I have considered very carefully, but I have concluded that it does not provide a satisfactory basis on which to enter a single tender negotiation to transfer BRE to the private sector. As I advised the House of 2 April, my next option is to privatise BRE through a competitive sale. I am therefore putting in hand at once the action necessary to seek tenders.
Mr. Congdon:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what progress has been made in implementing in the United Kingdom the European Commission stage 1 petrol vapour recovery directive. [652]
Mr. Clappison:
We are laying regulations in Parliament today, under the Environmental Protection Act 1990, to implement the EC directive (94/63/EC) on the control of volatile organic compound emissions resulting from the storage of petrol and its distribution from terminals to service stations. These are important measures which aim to reduce emissions of the volatile organic compounds which contribute to the formation of ground level ozone.
24 Oct 1996 : Column: 3
The directive requires the fitting and use of equipment, in the distribution and storage of petrol, which is designed to capture and recover petrol vapours rather than venting them into the air as at present. The provisions of the directive will be implemented in a phased programme running through to 2004.
The Government have decided to apply a derogation in the directive which exempts from its provisions small service stations in areas where emissions are unlikely to contribute significantly to environmental or health problems.
The regulations laid today include a map showing the areas in which the derogation will apply to new small service stations. These are in rural areas in the northern half of Scotland where petrol vapour emissions do not contribute significantly to ozone formation and ground level ozone is not itself a problem. The directive applied immediately to any proposals for new service stations which are not eligible for the derogation.
The provisions of the directive do not apply to existing small service stations until 2004. The areas in which the derogation will be applied to these stations will be defined closer to that date, using the best scientific information then available.
Legislation to implement the directive with regard to petrol tankers was introduced in August in amendments to the Carriage of Dangerous Goods Regulations.
Mr. Devlin:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what further action he proposes to take against those local authorities whose direct labour and direct service organisations failed to meet their statutory financial objectives in 1994-95. [653]
Sir Paul Beresford:
On 30 July this year, 22 statutory notices were served on 17 local authorities concerning the failure of their direct labour and service organisations to meet the required financial objectives in 1994-95, and one notice was served on an authority for submitting a qualified account for work which it was carrying out. My right hon. Friend has now considered the responses to those notices, and has decided to give 16 directions to 12 local authorities.
The directions take the following forms:
24 Oct 1996 : Column: 4
created a coherent legal framework which bars immigration offenders and temporary visitors from access to important and expensive benefits such as child benefit, family credit and publicly subsidised housing assistance;
made it an offence under the immigration laws for temporary visitors to have unauthorised recourse to public funds;
established a general policy on the identification of persons subject to immigration control who claim benefits or services to which they are not entitled through the revision of departmental instructions, the production of a guidance booklet and the opening of the immigration and nationality directorate's status inquiry service to more registered users;
strengthened the arrangements, within existing data protection legislation, for the exchange of information between Government Departments, agencies and local authorities in order more effectively to administer benefits policy and more quickly to identify and locate immigration offenders. A copy of a circular about the exchange of information with IND issued to local authorities has been placed in the Library.
Exchanges of information with IND are all conducted within the provisions of the data protection laws. The Commission for Racial Equality has been consulted about proposals on which its advice was important to ensure the maintenance of good race relations in this country. The measures taken have laid the basis for anticipated public
Restricting the type of work the authority can carry out, and preventing the authority from carrying out any part of the work if it fails to meet the financial objective in 1996-97 or 1997-98:
The London borough of Brent (building maintenance).
Preventing the authority from carrying out the work if it fails to meet the financial objective in 1997-98 or 1998-99:
Great Yarmouth borough council (grounds maintenance).
Preventing the authority from carrying out the work if it fails to submit unqualified accounts in 1995-96 or 1996-97:
Mid Devon district council (building maintenance).
Requiring authorities to retender the work and to seek the consent of the Secretary of State if proposing to award the work in-house:
Amber Valley district council (refuse collection), Harborough district council (grounds maintenance), Stockton on Tees borough council (vehicle maintenance).
Requiring authorities to retender work if they fail to meet the financial objective in specified years, and to seek the Secretary of State's consent where the work has to be retendered and where the authority subsequently wish to award work- in-house:
1996-97 and 1997-98: Knowlsey MBC (highways and sewers), Rossendale borough council (highways and sewers), The London borough of Tower Hamlets (building maintenance).
1997-98 and 1998-99: Rotherham MBC (grounds maintenance).
The Secretary of State has also decided to take no further statutory action in respect of financial failure in 1994-95 by:
Bedfordshire county council (vehicle maintenance), Cambridge city council (building cleaning, refuse collection, other cleaning), Chorley borough council (highways and sewers), Halton borough council (vehicle maintenance) and North East Derbyshire district council (refuse collection).
| Next Section | Index | Home Page |