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Customs and Excise (Northern Ireland)
Mr. Mallon: To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what measures are in place to monitor and enforce fair employment and equal opportunities policies in Customs and Excise in Northern Ireland. [1912]
Dawn Primarolo [holding answer 6 June 1997]: Customs and Excise, along with all other civil service departments and agencies with staff in Northern Ireland, submit an annual return via the Cabinet Office to the Fair Employment Commission. This covers the perceived religious composition of the workforce in Northern Ireland and those who apply for vacancies.
Customs also undertakes a full review of its policies and procedure relating to equality of opportunity in employment in Northern Ireland for the Fair Employment Commission every three years. The last such review was in 1996.
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Individual personnel systems, such as appointments, personal appraisal, pay and grading and training and development opportunities are monitored in respect of community background for Northern Ireland, taking account of the Codes of Practice from the Fair Employment Commission and the Equal Opportunities Commission.
As a matter of policy all Customs staff in Northern Ireland are receiving equal opportunities training.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what has been (a) the rate of and (b) the revenue raised through capital gains tax in each financial year since 1987-88. [2791]
Dawn Primarolo
[holding answer 9 June 1997]: Figures on receipts are shown in Table 1.2 and rates of capital gains tax in Appendices A.5 and A.2 of the Inland Revenue Statistics 1996, a copy of which is in the Library.
Mr. Winterton:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what information his Department has obtained concerning capital gains tax rates, thresholds and tapers in each of the other member countries of the European Union; and if he will make a statement. [2795]
Dawn Primarolo
[holding answer 9 June 1997]: The taxation of capital, including capital gains, varies widely between different member States.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what has been (a) the rate of and (b) the revenue raised through inheritance tax in each financial year since 1987-88. [2792]
Dawn Primarolo
[holding answer 9 June 1997]: Figures on receipts are shown in Table 1.2 and rates of inheritance tax in Appendix A.6 of Inland Revenue Statistics 1996, a copy of which is in the Library.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will review the relationships between capital gains and inheritance tax rates, investment decisions and Exchequer revenues in advance of the Budget. [2794]
Dawn Primarolo
[holding answer 9 June 1997]: This is a matter for the Chancellor in considering his Budget.
Mr. Baker:
To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department what is the number of documents passed to the Public Record Office in 1996 from all Government departments. [2504]
Mr. Hoon:
The Question concerns a specific operational matter on which the Chief Executive of the Public Record Office is best placed to provide an answer and I have accordingly asked the Chief Executive to reply direct.
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Letter from Sarah Tyacke to Mr. Norman Baker, dated 10 June 1997:
Mr. Hoon:
The Question concerns a specific operational matter on which the Chief Executive of the Public Record Office is best placed to provide an answer and I have accordingly asked the Chief Executive to reply direct.
Letter from Sarah Tyacke to Mr. Norman Baker, dated 10 June 1997:
Mr. Hoon:
No document falls due for transfer to the Public Record Office until it is 30 years old. The suitability of a document for selection for permanent preservation under the terms of the Public Records Act 1958 will be reviewed during that period. The Act does
11 Jun 1997 : Column: 451
not require statistics to be kept in the form requested. To do so would incur disproportionate cost. However, in order to comply with their duties under the Act, departments are obliged to make arrangements for the safekeeping of their records, with a view to their possible selection and transfer to the Public Record Office and eventual release to the public. The general arrangements for extended closure or retention of public records are set out in Chapter 9 of the White Paper Open Government of July 1993 (Cm 2290).
Mr. Wallace:
To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department what plans the Government have to extend the eligibility for civil legal aid to hearing before (a) industrial tribunals and (b) social security appeal tribunals; and if he will make a statement. [2843]
Mr. Hoon:
There are no immediate plans to increase the scope of the legal aid scheme. There is to be a review of civil justice and legal aid and we will be able to consider the current scope of the scheme in the light of the outcome of that review.
Mr. Amess:
To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department what plans he has to review in the public interest the effectiveness of the self-regulatory Office for the Supervision of Solicitors and the powers of the Legal Services Ombudsman. [2220]
Mr. Hoon:
The effectiveness of the Office for the Supervision of Solicitors is, in the first instance, a matter for the Law Society. My Department intends later this year to carry out the first review of the office of the Legal Services Ombudsman since it was established at the beginning of 1991.
Mr. Vaz:
To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department if he will call for a report from the Legal Aid Board into the case of Abbas Gokal. [1913]
Mr. Hoon:
It is the courts not the Legal Aid Board that consider applications for legal aid in criminal cases. The Central Criminal Court granted legal aid in the case of Mr. Gokal. I obtained a report from the court about Mr. Gokal's application for legal aid in the light of the publicity following the jury's verdict in the case. I have since asked the Administrator at the court to review the court's procedures in relation to legal aid. I have also asked for all Crown Court centres to be alerted to the need for great care in the processing of applications for legal aid.
Mr. Baker:
To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department of the documents passed to the Public Record Office from all Government departments in 1965 what percentage he estimates have been (a) released under the 30-year rule in their entirety, (b) released under the 30-year rule in part only, (c) retained with a specific future date identified for release into the public domain, (d) retained with no specific future date identified for release into the public domain, (e) destroyed, (f) otherwise disposed of and (g) otherwise unaccounted for; and what is the total of (a) to (g) as a percentage of all those documents passed to the Public Record Office in 1965. [2505]
I have been asked by the Lord Chancellor's Parliamentary Secretary to reply for the Public Record Office to your question about the above.
103,997 documents were passed to the Office in 1996.
A "document" is an archival unit, usually comprising a file, a volume or a bundle of papers rather than an individual sheet of paper.
Mr. Baker:
To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department what percentage and how many documents in 1996 he estimates were (a) passed on to the Public Record Office intact, (b) passed on to the Public Record Office in censored form, (c) retained by his Department in full, (d) retained by his Department in part, (e) destroyed, (f) otherwise disposed of, and (g) otherwise unaccounted for. [2508]
I have been asked by the Lord Chancellor's Parliamentary Secretary to reply for the Public Record Office to your question about the above.
Regarding (a) and (b), records passed to this Office in 1965 were subject to a fifty year rule. The thirty year rule came into force in 1968, under the Public Records Act 1967.
Regarding (c) and (d), records passed to this Office could not as the same time have been 'retained' by government departments. Retentions were for specified periods, which were renewable.
Regarding (e), 44 Cause Books of the Chancery Division of the Supreme Court (J 12), dating from 1939, were destroyed in 1972, following the recommendations of the Committee on Legal Records in 1966 (Cmnd 3084). In addition, items from among the War Office, Registered Papers, General Series (WO 32), dating from 1855 to 1925, were destroyed in 1967 following a re-review of the contents of the class, as were a small number of items from the War Office reports and Miscellaneous Papers (WO 33), dating between 1925 and 1930, in 1968.
Regarding (f) and (g), no records passed to this Office in 1965 have been disposed of otherwise than by destruction, or are otherwise unaccounted for.
Details of the records transferred to the Public Record Office in 1965 appear as appendix II to the Report of the Keeper of Public Records for that year, laid before Parliament in 1966.
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