NINTH SPECIAL REPORT
The Agriculture Committee has agreed to the following
Special Report:—
The Committee has received the following letter to
the Chairman from the Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture,
Fisheries and Food, and memorandum from MAFF constituting the
Government's Reply to the Tenth Report from the Committee of the
1999-2000 Session, Regional Service Centres, made to the
House on 27 July 2000. MAFF's earlier response, referred to in
the Minister's letter and returned to MAFF by the Committee for
amplification, and a supplementary memorandum submitted by MAFF
in September 2000, are appended to this Special Report.
* * *
Letter from the Minister of State, The
Rt Hon Joyce Quin MP, to the Chairman of the Agriculture Committee
Thank you for your letter of 15 October.
I am sorry if you felt that the MAFF response to
your Tenth Report failed to address in depth the concerns which
you had raised. The restructuring programme is, of course, still
at an early stage and the funding to implement it does not become
available until 2001/02. The detailed response to some of the
issues highlighted in your report will in practice emerge from
the planning and design work which is currently being undertaken.
You have of course already discussed some of these areas with
MAFF officials at the informal session on 2 October, for which
we supplied a supplementary memorandum.
I have however reviewed the earlier response, as
you requested. I enclose an updated version which follows the
order of your Tenth Report, and which updates some of the material
which we provided earlier. It also contains a detailed response
on the questions about customer take-up of electronic forms and
on the NURAD project which were raised when you met officials
in October.
I hope this further material will be helpful to you.
I will continue to keep you informed on key developments on the
restructuring programme, including the appointment of the CAPPA
Chief Executive where we hope to make an announcement shortly.
I will also send you, in the near future, an analysis of the response
to the external consultation exercise which we carried out over
the summer.
JOYCE QUIN
21 November 2000
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