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Cannabis

Mrs. Gillan: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what the schedule of advertising was for the 2004 cannabis advertising campaign; and what the full cost of the campaign was, broken down by media outlet. [153984]

Caroline Flint [holding answer 9 February 2004]: The schedule and costs for advertising are as follows:

Radio advertising started on the 22 January for four weeks, on 48 national and regional commercial radio stations in England. Total costs including production, media and research: £387,000.

Press advertising consisted of two insertions in five national press titles (Sun, Mirror, News of the World, Guardian and Telegraph) and one insertion in each of the 108 regional titles. These insertions were on or near the reclassification dated 29 January. Total costs including production, media and research: £305,000.

Other costs including briefings for police, teachers and other professionals; 2.5 million leaflets to be distributed through youth clubs, schools and community groups; postcards appearing in 660 pubs and bars in England and Wales and a contingency fund for reprints: £300,000.

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Mr. Peter Duncan To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how much (a) has been spent in the last 12 months and (b) will be spent in the next 12 months on public information advertising relating to cannabis. [155475]

Caroline Flint: The costs for public information activities relating to cannabis are as follows:

Radio advertising for four weeks. On 48 national and regional commercial radio stations in England. Total costs including production, media and research: £387,000.

Press advertising consisted of two insertions in five national press titles (Sun, Mirror, News of the World, Guardian and Telegraph) and one insertion in each of 108 regional titles. These insertions were on or near the reclassification dated 29 January.

Total costs including production, media and research: £305,000.

Other costs including briefings for police, teachers and other professionals; 2.5 million leaflets to be distributed through youth clubs, schools and community groups; postcards appearing in 660 pubs and bars in England and Wales and a contingency fund for reprints: £300,000.

No decision has been made to date as to how much will be spent over the next 12 months.

Correspondence

Mr. Kaufman: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he intends to reply to the letter to him dated 6 January 2004 from the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton with regard to Mr. Raymond McGinty. [154062]

Mr. Blunkett: I wrote to my right hon. Friend on 25 February 2004.

Immigration and Nationality Directorate

Mr. Love: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) if he will make a statement on recent staff turnover at the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, with particular reference to caseworkers dealing with asylum applications; [153700]

(2) what measures his Department is taking to minimise disruption to asylum applications resulting from turnover of Immigration and Nationality Directorate caseworkers. [153702]

Beverley Hughes: Staffing levels in the Immigration and Nationality Directorate are continually monitored so that staff turnover can be anticipated and planned for to minimise disruption.

The Asylum Casework Directorate utilises business planning forecast models to anticipate and plan for staff turnover. Staff turnover has, as a result, been carefully managed to minimise disruption to the processing of asylum applications. About 80 per cent. of new applications are currently decided within two months (against a target of 75 per cent.).

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Prisons

Mr. Mark Oaten: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the Prison Service review of the open prison estate; and if he will place a copy in the Library. [155065]

Paul Goggins: In his statement on 6 January, in response to concern about prisoners absconding from open prisons, my right hon. Friend, the Home Secretary said that he had asked the new chief executive of the National Offender Management Service to "report on the operation of open prisons". This was a request for advice from officials not for a formal report or review. I am at present considering the advice but it would be inappropriate to publish it and I have no plans to do so.

Venezuelan Nationals

Mr. Evans: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many of the Venezuelan nationals admitted to the United Kingdom during 2002 returned to their country of origin within the period of their visa requirements. [155404]

Beverley Hughes: No data are available on the numbers of persons who return to their country of nationality before their leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom expires. We do not routinely manually count passengers into and out of the United Kingdom.

We are keeping the option for embarkation controls under review while exploring the extent to which new technology could provide us with more efficient ways of checking those leaving the country.

Visa Requirements

Mr. Tynan: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department pursuant to the answer of 27 January 2004, Official Report, column 269W, on visa requirements, whether anti-trade union activity is regarded as not being conducive to the public good. [155561]

Beverley Hughes: Each case is considered on its individual merits. A person engaged in anti-trade union activity may be refused entry if their presence in the UK was not considered to be conducive to the wider public good.

HOUSE OF COMMONS

Fairtrade Products

Mr. Jim Cunningham: To ask the Chairman of the Catering Committee if he will recommend to the Refreshment Department that it stocks Fairtrade fruit and chocolate bars in all catering outlets on the Parliamentary Estate. [155813]

Mr. Dennis Turner: The Refreshment Department was one of the first organisations to support the Fairtrade movement and has done so for many years. We already stock chocolate made by The Day Chocolate Company throughout our cafeterias, and purchase Fairtrade bananas whenever they are available from our suppliers. All fresh coffee served by the

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Department is made from beans approved by the Fairtrade organisation, and we stock fairly traded "Clipper" teas and "Geobars" (a cereal snack bar).

The Refreshment Department will be actively supporting the Fairtrade Fortnight, which is being held from Monday 1 March to Sunday 14 March, by promoting our Fairtrade Mark products under their banner "A taste for life". We will also be selling other fairly traded goods, including dried fruits, cookies, pasta, oranges and grapes, which are not always available to the catering market. We believe that these will prove popular with our customers and we hope by this means to encourage our suppliers to stock these products.

INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Nicaragua

Mrs. Curtis-Thomas: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development if he will make a statement on the national level workshop in Nicaragua supported by his Department in 2003. [155244]

Mr. Gareth Thomas: The Nicaraguan workshop took place on 3 March 2003. It brought together, for the first time in Nicaragua, Government officials, the private sector, labour organisations, representatives of international certification programmes and retailers. Its aim was to identify possible ways to strengthen the implementation and monitoring of corporate codes of conduct in Nicaragua and thereby improve both the conditions of workers in export industries and the ability of these industries to be competitive internationally.

The workshop made a number of recommendations for action to be taken by the Government, private sector and civil society in Nicaragua: the need to clarify the roles of those involved in monitoring corporate codes of conduct, to improve cooperation between national government officials and international certification programmes, to rationalise monitoring to avoid duplication and conflicting recommendations to factories, and to increase the knowledge of workers of corporate codes of conduct and national labour legislation.

One impact of the workshop was that the women workers association (the Maria Elena Cuadra Movement of Women Workers and Unemployed) integrated the recommendations into its training, advisory and policy work to improve the conditions of workers in the garment industry of the tax free zones.

ENVIRONMENT, FOOD AND RURAL AFFAIRS

Agricultural Market Price Support

Mr. Key: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs if she will list the instruments of agricultural market price support; and how each is (a) defined and (b) calculated. [151647]

Alun Michael: The Common Agricultural Policy includes several instruments whose objective is to support market prices for agricultural products. These are: (i) intervention storage, where public intervention

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agencies guarantee to buy products at a set price; (ii) export refunds, which bridge the gap between EU internal market and world market prices, (iii) import tariffs which are a fixed or variable levy on each unit of imported product, and (iv) aid for private storage.

The OECD produces annual estimates of the transfers to agricultural producers which result from market price support in the EU. The estimates are calculated as the difference between the EU domestic price and the equivalent world price multiplied by the level of EU production. The OECD estimates EU market price support for the major commodities in 2002 at around Euro 61 billion.

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