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EDUCATION AND SKILLS
Children (Residential Care)
Mr. Sanders: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills how many children were placed in residential care by each local authority in the last year for which figures are available. [167135]
Margaret Hodge: The number of children in residential care in each local authority at 31 March 2003 is shown in the following table.
(12) Residential care includes secure units, homes and hostels, residential schools, and other residential settings.
(13) Figures in this table exclude children looked after under an agreed series of short-term placements.
(14) Figures over 1,000 are rounded to the nearest 100. Figures between 1 and 5 have been suppressed. All other figures are rounded to the nearest 5.
Source:
Children Looked After by Local Authorities, Year Ending 31 March 2003.
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Pre-school Places
Mr. Pike: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills how many (a) free nursery and (b) pre-school places were available for (i) three and (ii) four-year-olds in Burnley in each of the last seven years. [167918]
Mr. Hendrick: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills how many (a) free nursery and (b) pre-school places were available for (i) three and (ii) four-year-olds in Preston in each of the last seven years. [168135]
Margaret Hodge: The information is not available in the form requested.
Figures on the number of free nursery education places taken up by three and four year olds in Lancashire local education authority area are shown in the table.
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The latest figures on provision for three and four-year-olds in England were published in a Statistical Bulletin "Provision for children under five years of age in England—January 2003" which is available on the Department's website www.dfes.gov.uk/rsgateway/.
Since the beginning of April 2004, six months ahead of our original target, all three-year-olds in England whose parents want one, are eligible for a free, part-time early education place.
| Position in January each year | ||
|---|---|---|
| Three-year-olds | Four-year-olds | |
| 1997 | 4,400 | 12,400 |
| 1998 | 4,400 | 13,500 |
| 1999 | 4,400 | 16,000 |
| 2000 | 4,300 | 15,900 |
| 2001 | 9,400 | 15,700 |
| 2002 | 9,400 | 13,000 |
| 2003 | 10,100 | 12,600 |
(15) Part-time equivalent number of free nursery education places taken up by three and four-year-old children.
(16) A free nursery education place comprises five two and a half hour sessions of early years education per week, for 33 weeks of the year, usually three terms of 11 weeks.
ENVIRONMENT, FOOD AND RURAL AFFAIRS
Illegal Meat Imports
Mr. Whittingdale: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (1) what estimate she has made of the amount of meat illegally imported into the UK in each of the last 10 years; [160630]
(2) what estimates she has made of the quantity of meat illegally imported into the UK in the last 12 months. [165199]
Mr. Bradshaw: Estimates of the amount of illegal meat imports may be made on the basis of the amount of such meat detected. However prior to 2001 information on seizures of illegal meat imports by enforcement authorities was not collected centrally. In August 2001, Defra set up the first national database to capture data on seizures of illegally imported products of animal origin (POAO).
The Veterinary Laboratories Agency's 'Risk Assessment for the Import of Meat and Meat Products Contaminated with Foot and Mouth Disease Virus into Great Britain and the Subsequent Exposure of GB Livestock', published in-March 2003, used the seizure database to estimate that the total amount of illegal meat entering GB each year is 7,431 tonnes on average, with 90 per cent. certainty that this is between 2,771 and 14,484 tonnes per year.
Information on seizures of illegal imports continues to be collected centrally and will be published in Defra's annual review of controls on imports of animal products.
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