| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Debt Management Office
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Ruth Kelly): The second published Debt Management Account covering the year to the 31 March 2002 is being laid before the House and published today. Copies will be available in the Libraries of both Houses.
Tonnage Tax
The Paymaster General (Dawn Primarolo): The tonnage tax was introduced in 2000 as part of a package of measures
19 Dec 2002 : Column 82WS
designed to help revive the UK shipping industry. In order to place a check on the cost of the tonnage tax, there are rules that restrict the amount of capital allowances that can be claimed by a lessor for expenditure on a ship that is used for activities within the tonnage tax. These rules apply only to finance leases. Some lessors are, however, now offering long-term leases for ships that have the many of the characteristics of finance leases without being finance leases in form. Such leases can be used to allow lessors to claim significantly more in capital allowances than had been intended when the tonnage tax was introduced. The extra cost is not justified and does nothing to further the objectives of the regime. The next Finance Bill will, therefore, contain a provision extending the restrictions. The provision will take effect for leases entered into on or after today.
The Inland Revenue are today publishing further details of the proposal. Draft legislation containing the provision will be issued shortly and the Inland Revenue will consult with those concerned on the details of that legislation.
Home Care Services (VAT)
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Healey): The introduction of state registers for domiciliary care agencies provides the Government with the opportunity to extend the VAT exemption for welfare services to those services provided by state-regulated private welfare agencies. I am pleased to announce that when the House returns from the Christmas recess the Government will lay the necessary change before Parliament.
FOREIGN & COMMONWEALTH
Council of the European Union
The Minister for Europe (Mr. Denis MacShane):
19 Dec 2002 : Column 84WS
WORK AND PENSIONS
Housing Benefit
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Malcolm Wicks): I am pleased to announce that 88 of the 135 bids submitted to the Help Fund have been successful. As around a quarter of these
19 Dec 2002 : Column 85WS
are joint bids from groups of Local Authorities, the Fund will help 272 Authorities overall. The Help Fund was set up to address core problems in Housing Benefit delivery at a local level and is a practical demonstration of the Government's commitment to working with local authorities to improve the standard of Housing Benefit administration. The funded projects totalling over #4.6 million will make significant improvements in areas such as training, customer service and IT capabilities. I am placing a full list of the successful bids in the library today.
CULTURE, MEDIA & SPORT
DCMS/Strategy Unit Report
The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Tessa Jowell): The joint DCMS/Strategy Unit report on sport and physical activity will be published today.
Sport is an important part of many people's lives. It defines us as a nation. It teaches us about life. We learn self-discipline and teamwork from it. We learn how to win with grace and lose with dignity. It gets us fit. It keeps us healthy. It forms a central part of the cultural and recreational parts of our lives. Millions of us are involved in one way or another: as players, as coaches or officials, organising clubs, teams and fixtures, or just watching.
Sport and physical activity can help the Government achieve key objectives. Crucially, it can help us tackle serious health issues. It can also help to contribute to other areas, such as crime reduction, social inclusion and help with the development of young people in schools.
Because of our commitment to sport it is now receiving unprecedented levels of public funding—through both the Lottery and the Exchequer. This joint report on sport and physical activity is about how to get more of that cash to the front line and spend less on bureaucracy, on box ticking and procedures. It makes some fundamental recommendations of how to reform the public and other structures which handle money in sport. And it presents our view of how we would like the sporting world to develop over the next 15 to 20 years.
The key messages in the report are that we should:
- increase participation in sport, because of the health benefits it can bring and, together with its potential to help reduce crime, tapkle social exclusion and provide a better education for young people;
enhance our international success, building on our achievements at the Olympic Games in Sydney and the Commonwealth Games in Manchester;
adopt a more focused and strategic approach when bidding for major sporting events, with each of the role of each of the stakeholders being clearly defined;
remove layers of bureaucracy and help ensure that more funding and help gets to where it's needed most: to the athletes and the thousands of clubs up and down the country.
19 Dec 2002 : Column 86WS
Copies of the report are available on the website at www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/innovation/reports.
| Next Section | Index | Home Page |