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11 Dec 2003 : Column 560Wcontinued
Mr. Laurence Robertson: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if she will make a statement on the pension rights of employees of British Energy following the financial restructuring of that company. [143119]
Mr. Timms [holding answer 9 December 2003]: British Energy's proposed restructuring is intended to restore the company to long-term viability in the private sector. The pension rights of its employees will remain the responsibility of the company as at present.
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Sir Michael Spicer: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry when she will reply to the letter of 7 October from the hon. Member for West Worcestershire. [143433]
Ms Hewitt: My hon. Friend the Minister of State for Trade, Investment and Foreign Affairs responded to the hon. Gentleman's letter of 7 October on 17 November. I will however be responding shortly about his query on EU subsidies on sugar.
Malcolm Bruce: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many businesses in the United Kingdom were trading online (a) in each quarter in 2003 and (b) in each year since 1997, broken down by region. [143140]
Mr. Timms: The DTI's International Benchmarking Study has been produced annually since 1997 and is used to measure the take-up and use of ICT's by business.
(b) Trading online figures by region, are only available for the period 2000 to 2002 (earlier studies did not capture this type of information). Copies of the International Benchmarking Study for 2000 (URN 00/147), 2001 (URN 01/147) and 2002 (URN 02/147) are available from the Libraries of the House.
Malcolm Bruce: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what estimate she has made of (a) total energy production, (b) total energy primary consumption and (c) total final energy consumption in the (i) industrial sector, (ii) service sector, (iii) domestic sector and (iv) transport sector in each month in 2003. [143004]
Mr. Timms: The energy data requested are published on a quarterly basis and are currently available for the first two quarters of 2003.
Q1 2003 | Q2 2003 | |
---|---|---|
Total Indigenous Energy Production | 73.0 | 63.0 |
Total Primary Consumption | 71.6 | 55.1 |
Total Final Consumption | 50.7 | 37.2 |
Of which: | ||
Industrial Sector | 10.6 | 8.0 |
Service Sector (including Agriculture) | 6.4 | 4.2 |
Domestic Sector | 17.9 | 8.6 |
Transport Sector | 12.9 | 13.7 |
Further information is published in table 1.3a of Energy Trends, copies of which are available in the Libraries of the House. The latest edition was released on 25 September 2003; the next edition containing data for Q3 2003 will be released on 8 January 2004.
Mr. Bellingham: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if she will make a statement on the
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future of United Kingdom Hallmarking in the context of discussions on the draft Directive on Articles of Precious Metals following the European Council of 27 November. [142129]
Mr. Sutcliffe: Following the decision of the Committee of Permanent Representatives not to send the draft Directive to the Council of Ministers on 27 November, the draft Directive has now effectively been shelved again, and UK hallmarking will continue as before. After the Accession countries join the EU next year (nine of the 10 have compulsory independent hallmarking systems) there will be more support for compulsory third party marking.
Mr. Caton: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if she will make a statement on the export of British military equipment to Indonesia. [143144]
Mr. MacShane: I have been asked to reply.
All export licence applications for Indonesia are rigorously assessed on a case by case basis against the Consolidated EU and National Arms Export Licensing Criteria, taking account of the circumstances prevailing at the time and other announced Government policies.
All strategic exports licensed to Indonesia in 2002 are set out in the Annual Report on Strategic Export Controls, which is available on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website: www.fco.gov.uk/Trade-and-Investment/Export Controls. The report also shows that the approximate value of exports of UK military goods to Indonesia in 2002 was £2,130,000.
Mr. Redwood: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many pages of (a) primary and (b) secondary legislation her Department put through Parliament in 200203. [141121]
Ms Hewitt: My Department sponsored four Bills during the 200203 Session, which made a total of 632 pages once enacted.
In the case of secondary legislation, my Department was responsible for the making of 141 General Statutory Instruments which would have been considered either by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments or the Select Committee on Statutory Instruments. These instruments made a total of 1,295 pages.
It should be noted that the instruments produced by my Department include many which consolidated and revoked previous instruments and which may have been produced at the prompting of Parliamentary Committees.
Dr. Tonge: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (1) what assessment she has made of the loss to pharmaceutical companies in the UK from parallel trade of medicines from abroad; [141698]
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Ms Rosie Winterton: I have been asked to reply.
In terms of the impact on national health service expenditure, information is not routinely collected on the source of products, but from the data currently available the Department of Health estimates that parallel imports saves the NHS in England approximately £60 million per year in the community sector. No estimate is available for the hospital sector.
The Government have not made their own assessment of the loss to pharmaceutical companies in the United Kingdom from parallel trade. The NHS does not reap the full benefit of the price differentials associated with parallel trade, as much of the difference is lost within the supply chain across Europe.
Ministers in the Department of Health meet representatives of the pharmaceutical industry frequently to discuss issues affecting that sector, including parallel trade in Europe. The most recent meeting was on 2 December, between my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health my noble Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Health (Lord Warner) and representatives of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry.
Chris Ruane: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many completed successful investigations into underpayment of the national minimum wage there have been, broken down by constituency; and how much was recovered in each case. [142634]
Mr. Sutcliffe: Between the start of the minimum wage in April 1999 and September 2003 the Inland Revenue have carried out 8,471 successful investigations, in which underpayments of over £14.3 million was identified.
These statistics are not available at constituency level.
Julie Morgan: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what percentage of its annual budget the National Environment Research Council has given to each university in England and Wales. [142911]
Ms Hewitt: The most recent details of the expenditure by university are set out in the NERC Annual Report and Accounts for the year 200203 on pages 44 and 45. During this period NERC received £224.513 million grant in aid. Copies of the NERC Annual Report and Accounts were laid before both Houses of Parliament on 16 July 2003 and are also available at http://www. nerc.ac.uk/publications/annualreport2003/pages.pdf.
Mr. Bellingham: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what estimate her Department has made of the total annual value of unpaid overtime by British workers. [142853]
Mr. Sutcliffe: According to the Labour Force Survey over the four quarters to summer 2003 the average number of employees who actually worked unpaid overtime in a week was 3.82 million. On average, they
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worked 7.7 hours of actual unpaid overtime a week and their gross hourly pay for the hours they did get paid for was £14.95. By multiplying these numbers together (and by multiplying by 52 weeks) we get an estimated value of annual actual unpaid overtime worked by employees in the UK of £22¾ billion. If managers and senior officials who receive a salary rather than an hourly rate are excluded then the value of annual unpaid overtime falls markedly, to £12½ billion. These workers (2.55 million) on average worked 7.1 hours of actual overtime per week and their gross hourly pay for the hours they did get paid for was £13.40.
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