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3 Mar 2005 : Column 1268W—continued

Cancer

Dr. Gibson: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what policies her Department has in place for supporting employees with cancer. [218674]

Alun Michael: Support for employees with cancer is the same as support for employees with any long term (and possibly terminal) illness, through the following policies and services:

Welfare Services provide individual support.

Reduced working hours for medical reasons.

Reasonable adjustments to the workplace.

Special leave arrangements (including disability leave).

Retirement on medical grounds.

In each case the Department takes account of the wishes of the individual.
 
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Committee on Radioactive Waste Management

Llew Smith: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what information she has received from the Chairperson of the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) concerning (a) the suspension of Dr. Keith Baverstock from the Committee and (b) the current status of Professor David Ball on CoRWM; and if she will make a statement on progress made to date by CoRWM in meeting its planned timetable. [217827]

Mr. Morley: CoRWM's sponsoring Ministers in Defra and the devolved administrations have jointly commissioned a review with the terms of reference:

To consider (i) concerns identified by Dr. Keith Baverstock concerning the operation of the CoRWM Committee and (ii) the role and personal contribution of Dr. Baverstock in delivering the corporate aims and objectives of CoRWM. To report the outcome of this review, and to provide recommendations to CoRWM's sponsoring Ministers".

This follows receipt of representations from both the CoRWM Chair, Gordon MacKerron, and Dr. Keith Baverstock. Dr. Baverstock has been suspended from the Committee pending the outcome of this review.

The review is being carried out by the independent assessor, approved by the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments (OCPA), who was involved in the CoRWM appointments process. The assessor will be considering the information provided by relevant parties in arriving at his recommendations to Ministers.

Subsequent to the commissioning of this review, Professor David Ball informed Defra that he has voluntarily suspended himself from CoRWM's activities while the situation giving rise to Dr. Baverstock's suspension is resolved.

In the meantime CoRWM's work continues unchanged from the programme set out in its First Annual Report 2004, available on its website—www.corwm.org.uk. This will lead to the Committee publishing its short list of options and proposed assessment methodology for public and stakeholder consultation during the course of March 2005.

Climate Change

Mr. Weir: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what funding was allocated to programmes dealing with (a) the risk of human-induced climate change, (b) assessment of the impact of climate change on the environment and (c) identification of mitigation and adaptation options for climate change since 1997; and if she will make a statement. [217553]

 
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Mr. Morley: The Department's climate change science research programme analyses the risk of human-induced climate change, assesses its potential impacts, and means of adaptation and mitigation. The following table details this research programme's spend over the last three financial years.
£

Financial year	Cost of research assessing the risk of human-induced climate change	Cost of research assessing the impact of climate change and identification of mitigation and adaptation options
2002–03	9,780,160	3,143,938
2003–04	10,484,174	3,562,397
2004–05	11,732,070	3,947,992

Information for the financial year 1996–97 to 2001–02 is not available without disproportionate costs of retrieval. It is impossible to separate climate change impacts and adaptation research as these are complementary. An aggregate figure, therefore, describing research spend on both impacts (b) and adaptation/mitigation (c) has been presented. Data presented for the financial year 2004–05 are estimates of expected annual spend.

Mr. Weir: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs if she will list government-funded (a) organisations and (b) projects whose sole duty is (i) to analyse and (ii) to combat the effects of climate change in the UK; how much funding was allocated to each in 2004–05; and if she will make a statement. [217554]

Mr. Morley: Information on all of the Government's spending on addressing the impacts of climate change is not held centrally—work to analyse these impacts and then to build in adaptation is rightfully carried out by many Departments in the course of their policy planning and implementation.

The Department supports a broad climate change science research programme, which includes funding a number of organisations to undertake projects to assess the impacts of climate change in the UK, and potential adaptation responses. It is not possible to separate the funding into discrete categories of that which supports analysis of the impacts of climate change, and that which supports the investigation of adaptation responses to tackle these impacts, since in almost all cases, projects address both.

The following table provides a breakdown of the relevant research projects, giving the project title, the organisation contracted to carry out the research, and the Department's allocated funding for this financial year, 2004–05.

Project	Contractor	Cost (£)
Climate Prediction Programme	Met Office	10,793,000
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group 2 Technical Support Unit	Met Office	341,700
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group 2 Co-chair	Parry Associates	46,875
Stabilisation Scoping Study	University of East Anglia	35,190
Climate Impacts LINK Project	Climate Research Unit (University of East Anglia)	98,006
UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) 2002	Environmental Change Institute (University of Oxford)	644,812
Climate Change and the Visitor Economy in England's Northwest	Sustainability Northwest	70,000
Review of the UK Climate Impacts Programme (2004)	ESYS	39,972
UK Cross-Regional Research Programme: Project A—Adaptation Responses To Climate Change for New Development in the Growth Areas	Land Use Consultants	24,521
UK Cross-Regional Research Programme: Project B—Climate Change and Business	Risk Solutions	73,550
UK Cross-Regional Research Programme: Project C—Climate Change and Water Resources	HR Wallingford	29,108
UK Cross-Regional Research Programme: Project D—Countryside and the Rural Economy	Land Use Consultants	31,820
UK Cross-Regional Research Programme: Project E—Costs of Impacts and Adaptation	Metroeconomica	13,500
UK Cross-Regional Research Programme: Project F—Linking Adaptation Research and Practice	Tyndall Centre (University of East Anglia)	25,808
Development of a Metamodel Tool for Regional Integrated Climate Change Management	Cranfield University	165,000
Publication of outputs arising from Agriculture—Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Programme and related programmes	Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research	13,000
Re-assessing Drought Risks for UK Crops Using UKCIP02 Climate Change Scenarios	Rothamsted Research	18,000
The development of a soil properties database for England and Wales for climate change impact studies	Cranfield University	68,000
Spatial Temporal Rainfall Modelling with Climate Change Scenarios	University of London: Imperial College and University College	45,141
Marine Biodiversity and Climate Change (MARCLIM)	Marine Biological Association	10,000
Assessing Climate Change Effects on Land Use and the Ecosystems (ACCELERATES)	University of Oxford	4,831
Climate Change And Migratory Species	British Trust for Ornithology	41,700
Marine Biodiversity and Climate Change: Assessing and Predicting the Influence of Climate on the Marine Environment	Marine Biological Association	10,739
The Impacts of Climate Change on Soil Functions	National Soils Resources Institute	29,981
Total		12,674,254

 
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The implementation of adaptation actions falls to a wide range of organisations in both public and private sector.

The figures provided here do not cover the Government's funding for organisations and projects that analyse the causes of climate change and contribute to its mitigation through reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.

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