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Regional Government

The Minister for Local Government and the Regions (Mr. Nick Raynsford): Following changes made to the Regional Assemblies (Preparations) Bill, I am writing today to all Members in the English regions outside London to follow up my earlier letter about the soundings exercise on the level of interest in holding a referendum about establishing an elected regional assembly. Voters in two-tier local authority areas will now have a say about the form of unitary local government relating to their area that would be introduced if an elected assembly is established.

Those who have already responded to this exercise are also being contacted again. In both cases, we are making it clear that we will consider further evidence or comments if people's views have changed in light of the amendments. We do not expect this to cause many people to change their minds about their response to the soundings exercise, but if people have changed their minds we would be happy to receive further views, information and evidence on this matter. If their response remains the same, they do not need to take any action—their original response will be considered as before. Additionally, any individual or organisation who did not previously submit comments, but now wishes to put forward views, information or evidence on the level of interest in a referendum can do so.

Copies of the revised pro-forma have been deposited in the Libraries of both Houses. They are also available from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's website via http://www.odpm.gov.uk. Responses to this additional phase of the soundings exercise are requested by 16 May, since the Secretary of State is likely to take his decision shortly after that.

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ENVIRONMENT, FOOD AND RURAL AFFAIRS

Energy Efficiency Targets

The Minister for the Environment (Mr. Michael Meacher): Following announcement of the Climate Change Levy, an energy tax that came into force on 1 April 2001, the Government agreed that companies in energy intensive industries could enter into 10-year energy efficiency agreements in return for an 80 per cent. reduction in the levy rate. Forty-four sector associations signed agreements, representing over 5,000 companies, who operate over 12,000 individual facilities.

The first target period ended on 31 December 2002 and companies that met the terms of their agreements were re-certified on 1 April 2003 for the reduced rate of Levy payments for the two forthcoming financial years.

There were a total of 5,742 "target units" in the Agreements when the results were submitted by sector associations in February 2003. (A target unit is one or more facilities that share a single target) Overall, 5,042 target units were re-certified, or 88 per cent. of the total. This represents a total of 10,500 facilities. Of the 700 target units that were not re-certified, 581 dropped out of their agreement or did not return information to their sector association and 219 failed to meet their targets.

The CCAs as a whole saved 13.5 million tonnes of CO2 (3.7 mt Carbon ¹ ) against an estimated 2000 baseline, or 15.8 million tonnes of CO2 (4.3mt C) against pre-CCL baselines. This is 10m tonnes more than projected. However, a large majority of this reduction came from the steel sector. Even without this contribution the other sectors have exceeded their targets by almost 1 million tonnes of CO2.

If the sectors with energy efficiency targets had produced their 2002 output at their efficiency in their baseline year they would have emitted an extra 5.2 million tonnes of CO2. This demonstrates real gains in energy efficiency.

Companies were able to purchase allowances in the UK emissions trading scheme in order to help meet their target, and 600,000 allowances were bought and retired this purpose. Companies were also able to convert any over-achievement into allowances that can be sold or used against future targets. A total of 4.0 million tonnes of CO2 has either been sold or retained for future use, subject to independent verification.

A summary of the performance of the sectors is attached. A full analysis is available in the document Climate Change Agreements—Results of the First Target Period Assessment and at http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/ccl/results.htm. Please note that this is a preliminary analysis at this stage. Defra will continue to update this document when more complete analyses have been completed.

¹ The UK Climate Change Programme uses units of carbon rather than CO2 to measure greenhouse gas emissions, so both units are presented here.

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The performance by sector is given in the following table.

Sector	Number of FacilitiesRe-certified	% of target units re-certified	Absolute Saving kt(CO2) (a)
Aerospace	21	100%	15
Aluminium	57	100%	2000
Craft Baking	2967	100%	-9
Brewing	62	100%	29
Cement	17	100%	1600
Ceramics	223	97%	188
Chemicals	285	100%	2000
Cathode Ray Tubes	3	100%	21
Dairy Industry	133	99%	35
Egg Processing	9	100%	1.9
NFU—Eggs	277	68%	53
Eurisol (Mineral Wool)	6	100%	8.9
Food & Drink	1081	100%	160
Foundries	217	95%	139
Glass	45	100%	39
Gypsum Products	6	100%	-21
Leather	11	100%	6
Lime	8	100%	170
Malting	33	100%	4.2
Poultry Meat Processing/Feed	81	98%	-30
British Meat Fedtn	185	97%	27
Metal Forming	107	100%	23
Metal Packaging	23	95%	18
Motor Manufacturers	19	100%	36
NFU—Pigs	608	100%	64
Non-Ferrous	111	100%	130
Paper	84	100%	-930
NFU—Poultry Meat	520	83%	53
Poultry Meat Rearing	1050	99%	72
Printing	105	96%	-22
Rendering	20	100%	14
Reprotech	1	100%	-
Rubber	8	100%	171
Semiconductors	18	100%	60
Slag Grinders	6	100%	3.5
Spirits	68	100%	42
Steel	60	100%	9400
Supermarkets	1342	100%	5.7
Surface Engineering	187	100%	29
Textiles	153	100%	114
Agricultural Supply	178	100%	23
Vehicle Builders And Repairers	60	100%	0
Wallcoverings	15	100%	28
Wood Panel	9	100%	-22
Total	10,479		15,749

DEFENCE

Clyde Naval Base

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Dr. Lewis Moonie): The Ministry of Defence's Contract for the provision of new jetties in support of the Royal Navy's nuclear submarine fleet at HM Naval Base Clyde was awarded on 31 March 2003 to AMEC plc.

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AMEC have been awarded the design, construction and commissioning contract worth approximately £100 million as part of its existing Prime Contract.

The contract will provide a floating jetty facility that provides four alongside berths, two of which are double berths, thereby giving six fully serviced berthing positions. The construction is due to be completed by 2007.

Welfare Support (Gulf)

The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Mr. Adam Ingram): Further to the announcement made by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on 2 April, I can now set out the way in which we intend to implement a service to allow families to send packets free of charge to troops deployed in the Gulf. This service will be limited to letters and packets of up to 2kg in weight and will be implemented when the operational situation allows. The priority at this time must remain the operational requirements of our Service personnel.

The system will allow families to send addressed letters and packets to individuals serving in the Gulf through Post Office Counters free of charge. The Royal Mail Group will transport these parcels to British Forces Post Office (BFPO) at Mill Hill. BFPO will arrange onward transportation to the Gulf and distribution in theatre. Mechanisms are being put in place to handle the anticipated increase in mail. Further details will be announced nearer the time when we are ready to implement the new procedures.

For the free service to work for the benefit of all, I would ask families to restrict the number of packets they send in order that the system does not become overwhelmed, thus creating delays in delivery of mail.

This scheme is aimed only at those closest to the Service personnel who are serving in this operation. We will not be providing a service for packages which do not have a named recipient. This will help to ensure that the new scheme for letters and packets is well targeted without overloading the logistics support network and delaying vital messages and packages from loved ones. For those who might wish to show more general support for our troops I would encourage contributions to the UK Forces Gulf Fund (details available at http://www.ukforcesgulffund.org and 0800 107 0200) which has recently been set up to allow the public to support those injured as a result of their deployment in support of military operations in the Gulf, and the families and dependants of those who have been killed.

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