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Written Ministerial Statements
Thursday 23 January 2003
FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS
British Council Art Exhibitions Overseas
The Minister for Europe (Mr. Denis MacShane): The British Council, although not a Government Department, receives a substantial grant-in-aid from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The Council regularly organises or sponsors exhibitions overseas of works of art loaned from national galleries and private collections in the United Kingdom. It provides certain assurances or guarantees in respect of loss or damage while these works are on loan.
In the six month period ended 30 September 2002 the British Council provided such assurances to seven national lenders and undertakings to 156 private lenders. The value of the contingent liabilities that remained outstanding as at 30 September 2002 in respect of national lenders was £181, 233, 500 and £158, 734, 660 in respect of private lenders; these were, for the most part, attributable to the Constable exhibition which opened in Paris on 7 October. The exhibition closed on 13 January 2003.
WORK AND PENSIONS
Benefit Fraud Inspectorate
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Malcolm Wicks): On behalf of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the Benefit Fraud Inspectorate (BFI) inspection report on the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham council was published today and copies of the report have been placed in the Library.
This report finds that, while having some significant challenges ahead, the council is well placed to develop its benefits administration and counter-fraud performance into that of a high achieving authority.
The BFI was impressed by the clear focus shown by the benefit service management team. The council had or was addressing a range of significant problems.
The report finds weaknesses in the council's claim forms and in the way the evidence to support claims is verified. Both these issues require urgent attention by the council.
Some progress is being made in improving overpayments recovery but there are some problems in overpayment calculation and classification. Supervisory checks were found to be poor and management information flawed. A high number of old housing benefit and council tax benefit overpayments had not been recovered.
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The report notes the good performance of the counter-fraud benefit investigation team. A large number of benefit fraud prosecutions had been undertaken, cautions issued and administrative penalties offered. A thorough case-review process had helped to ensure that the quality of investigations remained high.
In 2000–01, the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham council paid out £86.8 million in housing benefits. This is approximately 32 per. cent of its gross revenue.
The report makes recommendations to help the council address the remaining weaknesses and to improve further the administration of housing benefit and council tax benefit, as well as counter-fraud activities.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is now considering the report and will be asking the council for its proposals in response to the findings and recommendations of the BFI.
DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER
PSA Grants
The Minister for Local Government and the Regions (Mr. Nick Raynsford): Following a successful pilot exercise, I am pleased to announce that the Government has signed a further 49 Local Public Service Agreements (LPSAs) with individual councils, and that we hope to conclude Agreements with another 35 councils by the end of March.
I am today laying before this House a special grant report which seeks approval for pump-priming grants totalling £93 million which will help these councils to deliver their challenging LPSA targets to further improve their local services.
Electoral Pilots
The Minister for Local Government and the Regions (Mr. Nick Raynsford): The electoral pilot programme is a key part of the Government's efforts to modernise our electoral system. It will allow us to test the robustness of new voting methods, including e-voting, and build public confidence in them. In conjunction with the Electoral Commission and the Local Government Association, we have invited local authorities in England and Wales to take part in this programme by running pilots at local elections during 2003.
Today I am able to announce that I have accepted 18 applications to hold e-voting pilots at the May 2003 local elections. In addition, I have accepted a further 2 applications to hold non e-voting pilots in addition to the 41 contained in my previous announcement on 18 December 2002. The names of these additional 20 successful local authorities and the type of pilot that they are planning to hold are listed at the end of this statement.
In total, I have now accepted 61 applications, covering 6.5million electors. This is a significant increase over the 30 pilots (covering 2.5million electors) held at the May 2002 local elections. The next step will
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be for us, working with authorities and in consultation with the Electoral Commission, to draw up the statutory orders authorising these pilots.
We will shortly be concluding a competitive procurement, under the EC services directive, for a number of suppliers to be contracted as part of a framework agreement to support e-voting pilots over the next three years. A list of contracted suppliers will be placed in the Library of the House and on the Office's website. Local authorities conducting e-voting pilots will need to match up with suppliers on this framework agreement as soon as it is made public.
This year's local elections will be the largest test of the Government's e-voting plans yet, confirming the UK's position as one of the pioneers of e-voting in Europe. The 18 local authorities that will trial the new technologies produced proposals that demonstrated they are ready, willing, and able to offer their electors the opportunity to trial 21st century voting techniques.
We are building on the positive response to the relatively small-scale trials held by nine authorities last year, which demonstrated the huge potential that e-voting has for giving people wider opportunities to vote. This year's pilots which are being conducted on a much larger scale, will help us to gain a better knowledge and experience of e-voting with a much larger number of people.
The pilots are an important step towards our aim of holding an e-enabled general election sometime after 2006. These innovations will help to make elections more relevant, straightforward and accessible for voters.
Electoral Pilot Applications Accepted Today
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ENVIRONMENT, FOOD AND RURAL AFFAIRS
Animal Movements Regime
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Margaret Beckett): The Government propose—subject to satisfactory further consultations with the livestock industry—to make significant changes to the animal movements regime in England and Wales with effect from 4 March 2003:
- A reduction of the 20 day whole farm standstill to six days for cattle, sheep and goats but with far fewer exemptions;
A joint commitment by government and the industry to a package of measures to improve the level of biosecurity and disease surveillance; and,
A readiness to increase the length of the standstill back to 20 days if the disease threat increases.
Since the end of the 2001 foot and mouth disease outbreak animal movement controls have been in place, underpinned by a 20-day standstill period for premises following the arrival of incoming animals. These controls were imposed on the basis of strong veterinary and scientific advice.
There have been successive relaxations and exemptions from the 20-day regime in England and Wales and separately in Scotland, notably a system of isolation or separation for incoming animals, in order to meet industry concerns about the costs imposed by the standstill rule.
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Recommendations of the Independent Inquiries
The two independent inquiries into FMD—the Lessons Learned and Royal Society Inquiries—reporting in July 2002 endorsed the retention of the 20-day standstill on disease control grounds, until such time as the Government had carried out a detailed risk assessment and wide-ranging cost-benefit analysis of the impact of different standstill periods.
As a result, Defra commissioned two interrelated assessments:
A risk assessment of the impact of different standstills on the "Silent Spread" of the disease, before it is known to be in the country;
A cost benefit analysis of the cost to the industry and disease control benefit to GB as a whole of different standstills;
Separately Defra had already commissioned a risk assessment of the probability of disease reaching GB livestock either from illegal imports or from meat imported legally from third countries; emerging results from that risk assessment were also relevant to this work. In its response to the FMD inquiries the Government said they would draw on the emerging findings from these studies to inform a decision on the movement regime for Spring 2003, because of the significant numbers of animal movements that take place at that time of year.
Emerging Findings from the Risk Assessments
These risk assessment and cost benefit studies have been tackling novel and complex problems, in a relatively short time. The emerging findings do not provide unequivocal answers to the questions posed.
None the less, on animal movements the risk assessment and cost benefit analysis provide evidence for four conclusions. First, they suggest that standstill rules can play a useful part in limiting the spread of foot and mouth disease during the period before its presence in the country has been identified. Secondly, however, initial disease spread is likely to be dominated by early animal movements over which standstills have limited impact, and by other spread mechanisms which they do not affect. Standstills therefore appear to have rather less effect than might have been anticipated in confining outbreaks to local areas. Third, in disease spread terms in the majority of scenarios the differential benefit between a six and a 20-day standstill is relatively small and in cost benefit terms a six day standstill is more effective in most (but not all) scenarios. Fourth, and perhaps most important, the model shows that the key factor affecting the ultimate scale of an outbreak is the time to detection of disease, not the length of standstill.
The Government's veterinary and scientific advisers do not consider that the currently emerging conclusions from the movements risk assessment are sufficiently robust definitively to determine the optimum length of standstill period. However, the balance of view of the experts in risk assessment is that, while the second phase of the risk assessment work should continue to the end
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of May 2003 as planned, there is unlikely to be a significantly better basis on which to make a decision about the standstill then than is available now. The Government therefore is faced with making a decision now on the evidence available to it, balancing scientific, veterinary, economic and other factors.
The Government consider in the light of the evidence that a standstill period provides a valuable long-term element in the movement regime. The emerging results from the cost-benefit analysis suggest a reasonably robust cost-benefit case for a six day standstill (compared with no standstill). But, bearing in mind the uncertainties on the movements risk assessment, the emerging results cannot at this stage provide a robust conclusion on whether or not the economic benefits of 20 day standstill (net of costs) are greater, or less, than for 6 days. The results do, however, strongly indicate that it is equally important to address factors such as disease surveillance, biosecurity standards on farms, in markets and in the transport of livestock, and above all efforts to raise awareness and commitment in the livestock community to reporting suspicion of disease.
It is recognised that an early move to reduce the standstill from 20 to six days would carry some risks. However, the Government have concluded that the best approach is to put in place a standstill of 6 days for cattle sheep and goats, with effect from early March, provided that over the next couple of weeks the industry demonstrates a commitment to an effective programme of controls and further work to improve disease detection and biosecurity. If we are to go beyond the most precautionary approach, there must be a real gain to be had from doing so. The 20 day standstill will remain in place for pigs.
Measures to Improve Disease Detection and Biosecurity
The change Ministers are announcing today is therefore dependent on the adoption of an accompanying package of measures by early March, the main points of which are:
- a responsibility will be placed on lorry drivers, farmers and others to ensure that they, and the exterior of their vehicles, are clean when entering livestock markets;
livestock market operators will be required to sign a formal undertaking to comply with strict operating procedures;
there will have to be complete separation in time and space between dedicated slaughter markets and other livestock markets.
- tackle non-compliance more systematically by removing farmers' right to move animals under general licence if they break the rules; put in place a joint campaign with the
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- industry to promote high levels of compliance and accepted tough treatment of those breaking the rules.
- the introduction of revised FMD biosecurity guidance by 1 July 2003, as required under the Animal Health Act 2002;
a ban on animals being kept on market premises overnight;
a requirement for all vehicles to be cleansed and disinfected before leaving markets and abattoirs;
a requirement for market operators to ensure that a vet attends every market;
a requirement for farmers to consult a vet at least annually for advice about disease detection, biosecurity and farm health plans.
The Government will commission further work into:
the impact of dealers on the pattern of livestock movements, and the options for controls;
the possibility of imposing a distance limit of (say) 150 kilometres on the movement of animals through markets, or of making such moves subject to special licences.
There would also need to be a commitment that the industry will engage constructively in consultations on the delivery of the animal health and welfare strategy and on future systems of risk sharing between government and the industry of the costs of animal disease.
At the same time, the Government recognise the need to maintain and enhance its efforts to minimise the risk of an FMD outbreak posed by illegal imports of meat and animal products, building on the illegal imports action plan and the conclusions of the risk assessment on illegal imports. We intend to consult further with stakeholders on a revised and updated version of the action plan.
Return to the 20 Day Standstill if Risk Increases
The Government will also put in place arrangements—along the lines recommended by the Royal Society Report—for triggering a 20-day standstill should the threat of disease increase or the evidence base otherwise change so as to justify a longer standstill, or if there is significant non compliance with the new or existing biosecurity provisions. The regulations setting out the move to a 6 day standstill will have an expiry date of 31 July 2003, so that the position can be reviewed at the end of May.
The Government are publishing today a summary document describing the emerging findings from the risk assessments and cost benefit analysis and the advice we have received on them from peer reviewers and from our veterinary, scientific and economic advisers. We will also set out more fully the proposed new measures on detection and biosecurity. Detailed reports on the risk assessments from the external contractors will be published within the next couple of weeks when quality assurance is complete.
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