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UfI Ltd.
Mr. Bill Michie: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if he will set out the framework, including controls, within which the Department will provide financial support to UfI Ltd. [104449]
Mr. Wicks: UfI Ltd. is a private company limited by guarantee established by the Secretary of State in October 1998. The company is seeking charitable status. By making use of information and communications technologies it will encourage innovative and cost- effective ways to learn.
The Department exercises a number of controls over UfI Ltd. The company's Memorandum and Articles of Association were approved by the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State also has the right to appoint the Chairman and between 30 and 49 per cent. of the Board Directors/members of the company, and to approve the appointment of the Chief Executive.
The Funding Agreement between the Secretary of State and UfI Ltd. provides for a number of checks and controls on the spending of public funds. It specifies that a Financial Plan, which sets out the company's financial proposals and reflects the guidance the Secretary of State may give UfI Ltd., shall be submitted to the Secretary of State annually. The Financial Plan must take into account guidance issued by the Secretary of State annually. The Financial Plan must be approved by the Secretary of State and it is subsequently monitored by the Department. The Financial Plan relates UfI Ltd.'s costs to its activities in the year covered by the plan. The Funding Agreement and the Financial Plan provide the basis for financial support.
In recognition of the market in which UfI Ltd. will operate, the company will own the assets it creates (mainly intellectual property rights on learning products) and retain any receipts from the disposal of assets. The Department will take account of any income received by the company as a result of Government investment, including asset disposal proceeds, in fixing the level of future financial support. This regime will apply only so long as the company receives Government support; any such income received by the company after it has achieved financial independence will be treated as its own.
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The Funding Agreement also provides for UfI Ltd.'s intellectual property rights to be assigned to the Secretary of State if the Funding Agreement is terminated due to UfI Ltd.'s breach of contract or insolvency. The Memorandum of the company provides that if the company is wound up or dissolved the Secretary of State has a right of veto over the disposition of any remaining assets.
Mr. Hilary Benn:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment if he will estimate the additional annual cost of support for students attending higher education institutions in England if the support arrangements applicable in 1979, including grants uprated by inflation, were to be applied to the number of students in the 1998-99 academic year. [101950]
Mr. Wicks
[holding answer 13 December 1999]: The student support system for English and Welsh students has changed significantly over the past 20 years and the levels of grant received by higher education students in 1979 are not known precisely. However, assuming that approximately 800,000 eligible English and Welsh students in 1998-99 received the main rates of maintenance grant for the academic year 1978-79 uplifted for inflation over 20 years, we estimate that they would receive slightly less on average in real terms than from the current loans and grant fee package.
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If these 800,000 eligible students had been offered a grant for maintenance and free tuition instead of the current package of a repayable loan for maintenance and private contributions towards the cost of tuition, the additional costs to the Department might have been about £660 million; and we estimate that such a system would cost about £1.6 billion more than full implementation of the new arrangements for fees and income-contingent loans applying for students starting in the current (1999-2000) academic year.
Our student support policies share the costs of higher education more equitably between students who benefit from it and the taxpayer. That has enabled us to halt the decline in investment in higher education and helped provide for a 22 per cent. increase in cash funding by 2001-02.
Mr. MacShane:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment, pursuant to his answer of 6 December 1999, Official Report, column 416W, on local education authority administration costs, if he will list, for each local education authority, the percentage of its education budget spent on administration, ranked in decreasing order. [102859]
Ms Estelle Morris:
The following table gives, for each local education authority in England, information on administration expenditure, encompassing central management and administration and service, strategy and regulation costs, in decreasing percentage order for the financial year 1997-98.
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