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Creative Education

Mrs. Helen Clark: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of creative education partnerships. [124253]

Estelle Morris: I have been asked to reply.

In its first year of operation, our Creative Partnerships programme has involved 412 schools, 70,835 pupils and over 2,600 teachers, through nearly 900 projects. Arts Council England is currently

8 Sept 2003 : Column 120W

conducting a national review of the first year of Creative Partnerships and this will inform the expansion of the programme from 2004. In addition, the National Foundation for Education Research is conducting a major evaluation of the impact of the programme and will report in spring 2005.

Deficit Budgets

Mr. Damian Green: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills how many schools have set deficit budgets for the academic year 2003–04. [127879]

Mr. Miliband: This information is not collected centrally.

Departmental Costs

Mr. Flight: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what the cost was to his Department for (a) ministerial cars and drivers, (b) taxis, (c) train travel, (d) the use of helicopters, (e) airline tickets and (f) chartered aeroplanes in each year since 1997. [123083]

Mr. Stephen Twigg: The cost within my Department for each of the travel categories since 1997 is as follows:

(a) Ministerial cars—I refer the hon. Member to the answer provided by the Cabinet Office,

(b) Taxis—this information is not held centrally and can be obtained only at a disproportionate cost,

(c) Train travel—the information provided can only be given from August 1998, as no central data was held prior to this date.

Year	Cost on rail travel (£)
1998–99	3,055,026
1999–2000	5,882,502
2000–01	6,140,805
2001–02	8,071,544
2002–03	6,749,194

The annual cost for each year includes NDPB spend as it has not been possible to identify DfES spend separately. The former Employment Service left the contract on 31 March 2002 and they accounted for approx 30 per cent. of the spend.

(d) Helicopters—no costs incurred.

(e) Airline—the information provided can be given only from August 1998, as no central data was held prior to this date:

Year	Cost on air travel (£)
1998–99	835,981
1999–2000	1,265,621
2000–01	2,013,043
2001–02	1,720,275
2002–03	1,056,124

The annual cost for each year includes NDPB spend as it has not been possible to identify DfES spend separately. The former Employment Service left the

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contract on 31 March 2002 and they accounted for approx 30 per cent. of the spend.

(f) Chartered planes—I refer the hon. Member to the answer provided by the Cabinet Office.

Departmental staff have a responsibility to give due consideration to cost when planning any official travel and extensive guidance is provided on how to get the best out of official travel. All ministerial travel is undertaken in accordance with the rules set out in the Ministerial Code and Travel by Ministers, copies of which are available in the Libraries of the House.

Departmental Flexibility

Mr. Brady: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what estimate he has made of his Department's end year flexibility for (a) 2003–04, (b) 2004–05 and (c) 2005–06. [127929]

Mr. Charles Clarke: Planned spending for the next three years, including the planned use of previously uncommitted End Year Flexibility, is set out in my Departmental Annual Report published on 14 May (Command Number 5902). In addition I have recently agreed that some programmes can carry forward resources into 2003–04 where expenditure is occurring later than originally planned. This includes over £100 million of programmes funded through the Learning and Skills Council and, as I set out to the House on 17 July 2003, Official Report, column 456, I am drawing on additional funding available from end year flexibility and other redirection of existing resources to finance the reversal of the previously announced reduction of standards fund support to schools in 2004–05 and 2005–06.

The details of this commitment will be announced in due course.

Departmental Framework Contracts

Mr. Brady: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills pursuant to his answers of 22 May 2003, Official Report, column 1001W, and 12 June 2003, Official Report, column 1023W, for each departmental framework contract, what the total expenditure is on paid publicity services, categorised according to media, including design and print, for each of the last five years for which he has figures available. [128158]

Mr. Miliband: The Department's Marketing and Publicity Specialist Buying Unit initiate and manage 140 framework agreements with a range of suppliers covering several media areas. The following figures show expenditure by framework media area placed by Marketing and Publicity Division. (It should be noted that from 2002–03, an increasing proportion of such work is handled outside of Marketing and Publicity Division through a system of devolving non priority work to individual policy teams.)

£ million

	Print	Binders and Plastics	Design	Writers	Video/Audio Visual
2000–01	10.5	1.6	3.3	251,000	1.1
2001–02	12.6	2.7	2.7	389,000	955,000
2002–03	5.7	1	1.3	521,000	864,000

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£ million

	Typesetting and Translation	Photography	Conferences	Exhibitions	PR
2000–01	225,000	124,000	5.8	1.4	318,000
2001–02	315,000	103,000	4.7	926,000	1.5
2002–03	63,000	109,000	1.6	536,000	2

Note:

The PR costs for 2000–2001 differ from previous PQ responses as the figures above do not include PR expenditure via CO1 but expenditure through framework agreements only.

Early Years Education

Mr. Flook: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what percentage of three-year-olds have access to early years education in (a) Somerset, (b) Devon, (c) Wiltshire, (d) Cornwall, (e) Dorset, (f) North Somerset, (g) Bath and North East Somerset and (h) Bristol. [127772]

Mr. Miliband: The information is not available in the form requested.

The available information is shown in the table.

Number of free early years education places⁽²¹⁾ taken up by three-year-olds, January 2002

Local education authority area	Number of free early years education places taken up by three-year-olds
Somerset	2,400
Devon	2,800
Wiltshire	2,000
Cornwall	3,400
Dorset	1,300
North Somerset	1,100
Bath and North East Somerset	730
Bristol, City of	3,800

⁽²¹⁾ A free early education place is defined as a part-time place at a maintained nursery school or primary school or a part-time equivalent place, i.e. five sessions (half days) a week, at a provider other than a maintained nursery or primary school.

We have made the commitment that by April 2004, six months ahead of our original target, all three-year-olds whose parents want one, will have access to a free, part-time early education place.

The latest figures on early years provision in England were published by the Department in the Statistical First Release 15/2003, "Provision For Children Under Five Years Of Age In England—January 2003 (Provisional)", copies of which are available from the Library and the Department's website: www. dfes.gov.uk/statistics

EU Committees

Mr. Bercow: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills if he will list (a) the names, titles and grades of the officials who sit on the EU Socrates committee, (b) the number of times, and the dates, on which it has met since January 2002, (c) the agenda items it has considered since January 2002, (d) the decisions it has made since January 2002 and (e) the means used to communicate the decisions to the House. [110282]

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Alan Johnson: Meetings of the Socrates committee are attended by delegates drawn from the 30 participating states of the 15 European Union countries, the European Economic Area countries of Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein, the 10 acceding countries, Romania and Bulgaria. Usually two officials of the Department for Education and Skills attend the committee.

The Socrates committee met five times on 17–18 January 2002, 14 June 2002, 7–8 November 2002, 16–17 January 2003 and 12–13 June 2003. In addition, there was an informal meeting of the committee in May 2002 to discuss evaluation of the Socrates programme.

The role of the Socrates committee is to oversee the powers delegated to the European Commission by the Council of Ministers to implement the Socrates programme. The committee's business is largely concerned with the technical details of the programme operation, such as project selection for programme support, publicity, information and budget allocation. In common with other Comitology committees its decisions are not routinely deposited for scrutiny under established scrutiny procedures, unless they are politically significant.

Together with member states, the Commission has been conducting a review to bring existing legislation on the conduct of Comitology committees into line with Council Decision 1999/468/EC, to "simplify the requirements for the exercise of implementing powers conferred on the Commission". The working group on the Friends of Comitology is meeting later this month to discuss proposals for interim reform.

As an obligation to this decision, the Commission undertook to publish an annual report on the working of the committee. The second report was deposited in the Libraries of both Houses on 10 January 2003 ref 5060/03, COM(03)733.

As part of the review process, the UK Government have encouraged the Commission to produce and maintain an electronic database of every Comitology committee, its agendas and recent actions, to be accessible through its website.

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