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Miners' Compensation

Mr. Hepburn: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many miners are claiming compensation under the medical assessment procedures for chest disease, in each region. [150905]

Mr. Hain: To date, IRISC, the Department's claims handlers, have registered over 134,000 compensation claims for respiratory disease. Of these, almost 66,000 claimants have been tested and the results have generated 11,500 expedited offers. In terms of payments, the Department has been able to make over 30,900 individual payments, including bereavement awards, interim settlements and full and final payments amounting to £113.7 million.

The number of miners claiming compensation under the medical assessment procedures for chest disease broken down by region is as follows:

Respiratory Disease

Postal region	Total number of claims
Wales
South Wales	26,788
Other	1,129
Scotland
Fife	2,254
Other	8,384
England
Nottinghamshire	15,776
Yorkshire	35,405
North East	18,985
North West	7,644
Midlands	13,742
South	3,454
Other	781
Total	134,342

26 Feb 2001 : Column: 411W

Mr. Hepburn: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how much was paid out to miners, in each region, (a) for vibration white finger and (b) for chest disease from January 2000. [150906]

Mr. Hain: In total, the Department has now made around 74,500 individual payments, including bereavement awards, interim settlements and full and final settlements to claimants in respect of compensation for respiratory disease and vibration related disease, totalling over £334 million. The Department continues to pay out around £1 million per day in compensation.

The amount paid out to miners, broken down by region for Vibration White Finger, and respiratory disease is as follows:

£

Postal region	Vibration white finger	Respiratory disease
Wales
South Wales	28,016,362	25,566,345
Other	458,683	958,183
Scotland
Fife	2,501,118	2,006,834
Other	13,063,472	6,100,425
England
Nottinghamshire	31,237,276	12,322,057
Yorkshire	68,142,657	30,821,716
North East	55,325,465	15,733,786
North West	6,098,231	5,852,241
Midlands	13,369,646	11,881,276
South	2,317,047	2,388,273
Other	87,532	80,401
Total	220,617,490	113,711,838

Mr. Hepburn: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many medical assessment procedures were conducted under the miners' compensation for chest disease agreement from January 2000 to date in each region. [150907]

Mr. Hain: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for East Carmarthen and Dinefwr (Mr. Williams) on 7 February 2001, Official Report, columns 553-56W.

Mr. Hepburn: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what efforts he is making in speeding up compensation payments to miners in the North East Region for (a) chest disease and (b) vibration white finger. [150904]

Mr. Hain: To date, IRISC, the Department's claims handlers, have registered over 134,000 claims for respiratory disease of which almost 19,000 are from claimants in the North East region. In relation to Vibration White Finger, around 19,000 claims of the 116,000 claims received are from claimants in the North East region.

With regard to claims for respiratory disease, there have been problems getting the Medical Assessment Process, MAP, up to speed. One of the most significant problems affecting the UK as a whole, is the limited number of respiratory specialists who are able to assess claimants to the degree for which the Department was found liable. Healthcall, the company contracted to undertake the Medical Assessment Process, MAP, continues to actively

26 Feb 2001 : Column: 412W

recruit respiratory specialists and lung function technicians. We are considering with them how to increase specialist resources for the North East centres. In addition, the Department has been continuously streamlining the process to maximise the efficiency of these scarce resources.

Currently, there have been over 3,900 individual payments, including bereavement awards, interim and full and final settlements, to claimants in the North East region for respiratory disease amounting to £15.7 million.

With regard to progress in the North East region for Vibration White Finger, I would point out that the centre catering for this area is one of the three centres with the greatest testing capacity overall in the UK. To date, the Department has made over 9,200 individual payments, including interim settlements and full and final payments amounting to £55.3 million in this region.

RR Spey Turbofan Engines

Mrs. Gillan: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many RR Spey turbofan engines have been sold to China; and if he will make a statement. [150533]

Mr. Alan Johnson [holding answer 15 February 2001]: Licences to export arms and other goods whose export is controlled for strategic reasons are issued by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry acting through DTI's Export Control Organisation (ECO). Any export from the UK of RR Spey turbofan engines would normally require a licence under ML10 of the Military List (Part III of Schedule 1 to the Export of Goods (Control) Order 1994). Information about a particular company's commercial transactions is commercial in confidence under Exemption 13 of the Code of Practice on Access to Government information and the company concerned should be approached for such information.

Departmental Polices

(Blackpool, North and Fleetwood)

Mrs. Humble: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will set out, including statistical information, the effect on the Blackpool, North and Fleetwood constituency of his Department's policies and actions since 2 May 1997. [150716]

Mr. Caborn: The Department does not maintain statistical information at constituency level.

My hon. Friend's constituents, like many others throughout Lancashire, will have benefited from my Department's employment rights policies which include national minimum wage, working time directive, part time working regulations and improved maternity leave.

In addition, all wards in the borough of Blackpool are eligible for the Enterprise Grant Scheme.

In the North West region, my Department's policies have contributed to growth in employment by 107,000 and a fall in unemployment by 63,000; reductions in youth unemployment by 75 per cent. and long-term unemployment by 54 per cent.

Ilisu Dam

Mr. Llwyd: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry when the (a) Environmental Impact Assessment

26 Feb 2001 : Column: 413W

Report and (b) Resettlement Action Plan on the Ilisu Dam project will be published; and if he will make a statement. [150646]

Mr. Caborn: We expect that a presentation on the Environmental Impact Assessment Report will be made to the export credit agencies shortly, and that the Environmental Impact Assessment Report will be made publicly available after this presentation, and before any decision is taken regarding export credit support from the UK. As we are not the owners of the reports we cannot be more specific about timing.

We do not know whether the owners of the Resettlement Action Plan will make it publicly available, although we have advocated that they do so. However, we expect the Environmental Impact Assessment Report to cover resettlement issues.

Mr. Llwyd: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many people will be affected by the construction of the Ilisu Dam; how many will need to be resettled; and if he will make a statement. [150673]

Mr. Caborn: I refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave him on 6 February 2001, Official Report, column 466W.

Post Office Closures

Miss McIntosh: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many post office closures there were between (a) April 1999 to the end of March 2000 and (b) April 2000 to the end of December 2000. [150868]

Mr. Alan Johnson: I understand from the Post Office that the number of post office closures in the year ending March 2000 was 382 and between April and December 2000 was 434.

Mobile Phone Operators

Dr. Tonge: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will list the frequency bands the Government have sold to mobile phone operators in the last 10 years. [150667]

Ms Hewitt: Frequency bands licensed exclusively to the mobile phone operators for which licence fees have been paid in the last 10 years are as follows:

MHz

872.0-888.0

890.0-915.0

917.0-933.0

935.0-960.0

1710.0-1785.0

1805.0-1880.0

1899.9-1979.7

2110.3-2169.7.

With the phasing out of analogue mobile the 872-888 and 917-933 MHz blocks are being reassigned for other radio uses including digital mobile services. Mobile operators also have access to some spectrum channels for network fixed links on a shared basis with other radio users.

26 Feb 2001 : Column: 414W

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