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Written Answers to Questions
Friday 26 March 2004
CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS
Magistrates Courts
Simon Hughes: To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Department for Constitutional Affairs which magistrates courts have been closed in Greater London since 1997. [163764]
Mr. Leslie: Closures of magistrates' courts are a matter for local Magistrates Courts Committees (MCC). Three magistrates' courts have closed in Greater London since 1997. These were Marlborough Street on 31 March 1997, Clerkenwell on 31 December 1998 and Hampstead 31 March 1997.
Ministers may only intervene in the event of an appeal by the Paying Authority. Ministers have allowed appeals against closure of four magistrates' court houses in London, during the period. These are at Kingston Upon Thames on 8 April 2003, Sutton on 8 March 2004, Harrow on 8 March 2004 and Barking and Dagenham on 8 March 2003.
TRANSPORT
Chief Scientific Adviser
John Thurso: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will make a statement on the previous work experience and knowledge of the Department's Chief Scientific Adviser that is relevant to the position. [164040]
Mr. McNulty: The Department for Transport's Chief Scientific Adviser is Professor Frank Kelly, who divides his time between this role and his position as Professor of the Mathematics of Systems at the University of Cambridge. He obtained his doctorate in 1976 from the University of Cambridge, and since then has held positions in the University's Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Mathematics.
Professor Kelly's research interests are in random processes, networks and optimization, and especially in applications to the design and control of networks and the understanding of congestion phenomena. He and colleagues at Cambridge developed, jointly with British Telecom, the routing scheme implemented in BT's main digital telephone network. His current research is directed at understanding methods of self-regulation in large-scale complex networks, which include both transport networks and the communication infrastructures upon which our experiences of transport increasingly depend.
Frank Kelly has received several prizes for his work. In 1989 he was awarded the Guy Medal in Silver of the Royal Statistical Society, and in the same year he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1992 he
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was awarded the Lanchester Prize of the Operations Research Society of America, he gave the 1995 Clifford Paterson Lecture of the Royal Society, the 1996 Blackett Lecture of the Operational Research Society, and was awarded the 1997 Naylor Prize of the London Mathematical Society. He received an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Heriot-Watt University in 2001.
Professor Kelly served as Director of the Statistical Laboratory in the University of Cambridge from 1991 to 1993. He has served on the Scientific Board of Hewlett-Packard's Basic Research Institute in Mathematical Sciences, the Scientific Council of EURANDOM, the Conseil Scientifique of France Telecom, the Council of the Royal Society and the Council of the Royal Statistical Society. He has chaired the Royal Institution/University of Cambridge Mathematics Enrichment Project, and the management committee of the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences.
John Thurso: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if he will make a statement on the process by which the Department's Chief Scientific Adviser was employed; and if he will publish the application details of the other short-listed candidates. [164041]
Mr. McNulty: This was an open competition to recruit a Chief Scientific Adviser at Senior Civil Servant Pay Band 2 level for the Department.
The process was managed and chaired by Alastair Macdonald, the Civil Service Commissioner. The other panel members were Lord Oxburgh, Sir David King, the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser and the previous DfT Permanent Secretary Rachael Lomax and the current Permanent DfT Secretary David Rowlands.
The successful candidate was Professor Frank Kelly who took up post on 1 August 2003. It is not the Department's practice to declare the names of the other short listed candidates, as all applications are made in confidence.
Departmental Officials
Mr. Cousins: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport which former officials of the Department have asked for permission to join (a) PricewaterhouseCoopers, (b) Deloitte & Touche, (c) Ernst and Young and (d) KPMG. [156904]
Mr. McNulty: The Department for Transport formed on 29 May 2002. All information provided dates from 29 May 2002.
All civil servants are subject to the Business Appointment Rules, which set out the circumstances in which they must seek permission to accept outside appointments within two years of leaving the Civil Service. A copy of the Rules is available in the Libraries of the House. Information about appointments taken up by the most senior staff is published in the annual reports of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments. The next annual report will be published shortly.
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According to Department for Transport records and records kept by the Cabinet Office, no former officials of the Department have asked for permission to join (a) PricewaterhouseCoopers, (b) Deloitte & Touche, (c) Ernst and Young or (d) KPMG.
Home Zone Area-Based Initiative
Mr. Goodman: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what funding has been allocated in (a) 2000–05, (b) 2005–06 and (c) total to the Home Zone area-based initiative. [163661]
Mr. McNulty: Local authorities are generally expected to fund Home Zones from mainstream funding, particularly the Single Capital Pot, and allocations are
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not identified or recorded centrally. Through the one-off Home Zone Challenge programme, a total of £30 million funding was allocated to individual schemes in England for the period 2001–05, and was not based on yearly allocations.
Road Accidents
Simon Hughes: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport how many pedestrians were (a) killed and (b) injured in road traffic accidents in each year since 1997 in Greater London, broken down by borough. [163765]
Mr. Jamieson: The information requested is shown in the following table.
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