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Trade Partners UK

Matthew Taylor: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if she will place in the Library a copy of the standard contract letter which is drawn up between Trade Partners UK and secondees from private companies before they start their secondment. [78150]

Ms Hewitt: Trade Partners UK is the Trade and Development arm of British Trade International—the joint DTI/FCO Trade Development and Inward Investments body. Depending on the nature of the secondment the contracts can be with either DTI or

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FCO. I have today arranged for the standard contract letter between the DTI and the secondee, and the standard contract between the Department and the company to be placed in the Library of the House. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs has arranged for standard contract letters with the FCO also to be placed in the Library.

General Agreement on Trade in Services

Dr. Tonge: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, pursuant to her answer to the hon. Member for Morley and Rothwell (Mr. Challon) of 31 October 2002. Official Report, 989, if she will define what the (a) commercial and (b) competitive bases are for supplying public services under the GATS agreement. [79906]

Ms Hewitt: The GATS agreement contains no definition of these terms. WTO Members retain the right to define their own public services.

Special Advisers

Mr. Tyrie: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry on how many occasions between 31 March 2001 and 31 March 2002 (a) departmental and (b) non-departmental special advisers have travelled abroad in an official capacity; what places were visited; and how much each visit cost. [80361]

Ms Hewitt: Between 31 March 2001 and 31 March 2002 a Departmental Special Adviser accompanied me to Brussels on one occasion, to Madrid on two occasions and to Washington on one occasion. It is not practicable separately to identify the cost of these visits, but each journey complied with the Civil Service Code.

Corporate Governance

Keith Vaz: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what representations she has made on the European Commission's plans to enhance regulation on corporate governance. [80042]

Miss Melanie Johnson: I welcome publication on 4 November 2002 by the Commission of the Report of the High Level Group of Company Law experts (''A Modern Regulatory Framework for Company Law in Europe'') on matters related to company law and corporate governance. I recognise the considerable work that has gone into this against a very demanding timetable and will be reviewing its recommendations in detail.

I consider that the United Kingdom is well placed to contribute to the debate on corporate governance regulation within the European Union. Important UK initiatives include:

Publication of the White Paper (''Modernising Company Law'') in July following completion of the Company Law Review last year;

An independent review of Non-Executive Directors led by Derek Higgs which began in April;

The work of the Co-ordinating Group on Audit and Accounting Issues which issued an Interim report in July;

and Review of the Regulatory Regime of the Accountancy Profession which published a consultation document in October 2002.

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In order that this work can be reflected in the Commission's emerging plans. I have ensured that the Commission has been kept fully informed and aware of the ideas and thinking being generated by these, and other, domestic corporate governance initiatives through personal meetings and correspondence with the Commission, attendance at the Competitiveness Council on 30 September 2002 and follow up meetings at senior official level with the Commission.

Turkey

Keith Vaz: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what plans she has to visit Turkey. [79933]

Ms Hewitt: I have no plans to visit Turkey in the immediate future.

EU Agency Workers Directive

Ms Walley: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if she will place in the Library a copy of the EC legal appraisal of the competence of the proposed agency workers draft directive to cover pay; and if she will make a statement. [76662]

Alan Johnson: I am not able to put the requested information in the House of Commons library. As we said in the Explanatory Memorandum which we laid before this house in May 2002, ''there is an issue as to whether the directive can cover pay. The proposal applies an equal treatment principle to certain 'basic working and employment conditions' listed at article 3.1(d), including 'pay'. However, Article 137(6) provides that, 'the provisions of this article shall not apply to pay'. In the light of this, the Government took the view when agreeing to directives 97/81/EC and 99/70/EC on part-time work and fixed term work respectively, that these directives, which also have article 137 as a legal base, could not cover pay. On the face of it, it seems difficult to reconcile the specific inclusion of pay in the directive with the provision in Article 137(6).'' The House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee has endorsed this approach, following a scrutiny debate on 10 July 2002.

Employment Tribunals

Ms Walley: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if she will make provision to enable employment tribunal cases to be heard in North Staffordshire; and if she will make a statement. [79007]

Alan Johnson: Unfortunately I have not been able to glean the information necessary to answer before Parliament is prorogued, but I will write to my hon. Friend and place a copy in the Library of the House.

Ms Walley: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many cases were referred to the employment tribunals in Shrewsbury for dispute resolution from Stoke-on-Trent in each of the last five years. [79009]

Alan Johnson: It is not possible to interrogate the Employment Tribunals Service database at the Shrewsbury tribunal office to ascertain this information and a manual search of the public register of applications could only be done at disproportionate cost.

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However, a recent manual exercise which recorded the originating postcode of tribunal applications between 1 February and 28 June 2002 indicated that 275 cases came from postcode areas prefixed ST1–13 (covering Stoke-on-Trent and those surrounding ST postcode areas which fall within the jurisdiction of the Shrewsbury office). During the same period, the tribunals in England and Wales registered 31,609 applications.

Ms Walley: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, if she will revise the map advising those travelling to the employment tribunal in Shrewsbury to include details of how to arrive by car and by public transport from Stoke-on-Trent. [79008]

Alan Johnson: Unfortunately I have not been able to glean the information necessary to answer before Parliament is prorogued, but I will write to my hon. Friend and place a copy in the Library of the House.

Electricity Disruption (Herefordshire)

Mr. Wiggin: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if she will set up an inquiry into the response of the electricity industry to the situation in Herefordshire caused by the storms of 26 and 27 October. [79980]

Mr. Wilson: I have already launched a study into the performance of companies in their handling of the storms.

It will look at:

the robustness of the networks

the preparations for the storms–acting on weather warnings

the comparisons of performance with previous storms and events

the telephone system and provision of information to customers

the automated information systems

the availability of management and deployment of staff and resources

the availability of materials and the companies' perception of lessons learned.

The findings will be mapped across to those of a study carried out earlier into the resilience and robustness of our electricity infrastructure.

Intellectual Property Rights

Tony Worthington: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if she will seek to lift restrictions on the export of generic drugs within the TRIPS Agreement at the WTO mini-ministerial meeting in Sydney on 14 November. [79726]

Ms Hewitt: The Doha ''Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health'' made clear that the TRIPS Agreement should be interpreted and implemented in such a way as to protect public health and promote access to medicines for all.

The EU is currently working with all WTO Members to find a solution to the issue of how WTO Members with insufficient manufacturing capacities in the pharmaceutical sector (mainly developing countries and Least Developed Countries) can make effective use of compulsory licensing under the TRIPS Agreement. We are hopeful that an effective and workable solution will be reached by the deadline of the end of the year.

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Tony Worthington: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, what plans she has following the Commission on Intellectual Property rights report to call for a substantive review and revision of TRIPS; and what plans she has to recommend extending TRIPS implementation deadlines to all developing countries. [79727]

Ms Hewitt: The Government are currently considering the report of the Commission on Intellectual Property Rights (CIPR) and plans to respond to the recommendations contained in the CIPR report early in the New Year. However, the Government have no plans to call for substantive review and revision of TRIPS.

The TRIPS Agreement lays down procedures for extending implementation deadlines for the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). The general implementation deadline is 2005 but an extension to 2016 was agreed for pharmaceutical products at the WTO Ministerial Conference in Doha. There is no specific mechanism for extending TRIPS implementation deadlines for all developing countries.

The UK Government work through the EU on issues relating to the TRIPS Agreement. The UK Government support the development of objective criteria to form the basis upon which extensions on TRIPS transition periods should be agreed. The Government therefore support the introduction into TRIPS of a mechanism for extending transition periods for individual developing countries.

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