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6 Mar 2007 : Column 1849W—continued
Digital Broadcasting
Peter Luff: To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what steps her Department is taking to encourage public service broadcasters to make their services available in high definition format. [124822]
Mr. Woodward:
The question whether to offer services in high definition format is one for individual broadcasters to consider. The BBC's Public Purposes under the Charter include the general obligation of
helping deliver to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies and services.
Olympic Games: Devon
Mr. Cox: To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport if she will estimate the likely effect on Lottery funding awarded to recipients in (a) Torridge and West Devon constituency and (b) England over the next (i) three, (ii) six and (iii) nine years of the National Lottery funding for the 2012 Olympic Games. [125648]
Mr. Caborn: It was always understood when we bid that National Lottery funding for London 2012 would involve some loss of income to the non-Olympic good causes, though it is not possible to estimate this on a constituency-by-constituency basis. Overall though, non-Olympic Lottery distributors may lose an average of 5 per cent. of their income because of sales diversion to Olympic Lottery games over the period 2005-06 to 2012-13. In addition, we have already announced that £410 million will be taken from non-Olympic Lottery proceeds between 2009 and 2012. No decision has been made about how that amount will be shared between the various non-Olympic good causes.
The Government are currently considering how the additional Olympic costs of £900 million should be met. No conclusions have yet been reached on the further use of Lottery funding.
Olympic Games: Greater London
Mr. Swire: To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what spectrum will be available for programme making and special events during the 2012 Olympic Games. [124759]
Mr. Caborn: The matter raised is the responsibility of the Office of Communications (Ofcom), as independent regulator for the communications sector. Accordingly, I have asked the Chief Executive of Ofcom to reply directly to the hon. Member. Copies of the Chief Executive's letter will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
Peter Luff: To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what assessment she has made of the impact of the Digital Dividend Review on the use of radio microphones and radio cameras during the 2012 Olympic Games. [124820]
Mr. Woodward: The matters raised are the responsibility of the Office of Communications (Ofcom) as independent regulator. Accordingly, my officials have asked the Chief Executive of Ofcom to respond directly to the hon. Member. Copies of the Chief Executive's letter will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
World Heritage Sites
Bob Russell:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport which locations in the UK have (a) been granted World Heritage site status, (b) been nominated for such status and (c) indicated to
her an interest in making an application for World Heritage site status. [125420]
Mr. Lammy: The information requested is as follows.
(a) The 27 UK World Heritage sites are listed in the table:
(b) The current UK nominations are Darwin at Downe, which will be considered by the World Heritage Committee in June 2007 and The Antonine Wall, which will be considered in summer 2008.
(c) Between my Department, English Heritage and the Devolved Administrations, we receive on average about one new inquiry each month on prospective sites for inclusion on the UK Tentative List, which is shortly to be reviewed. We currently have some 46 such sites on file, one of which is Colchester.
World Heritage Sites: Albania
Mr. Hancock: To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport if she will make it her policy to support the application by the Region of Berati (Albania) to UNESCO for World Heritage site status; and if she will make a statement. [125260]
Mr. Lammy: The UK is no longer a member of the World Heritage Committee, our four year term of office having ended in 2006. My Department has not seen the nomination for the Region of Berati, but wishes Albania success in its nomination process.
Prime Minister
Treaty of Rome: Anniversaries
Mr. Hague: To ask the Prime Minister if he will make oral statements in the House following the meeting of (a) the European Council on 8th to 9th March and (b) Heads of State and Government of the European Union marking the 50th anniversary of the Treaties of Rome on 24th to 25th March. [124849]
The Prime Minister: I shall inform the House about the outcome of both events.
Work and Pensions
Benefits
John Bercow: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions what the level of overpayment of benefits by his Department was in each of the last eight years. [46155]
Mr. Plaskitt [pursuant to the reply, 8 November 2006, Official Report, c. 1613-14W]: The information requested is only available from the fiscal year 2000-01.
The overpayments of benefit are identified in the following table. This is broken down between those that are recoverable under social security legislation, because of claimant error or fraud, and the total, which will include those overpayments that were not recoverable under social security legislation:
| £ million | ||
| Recoverable | Total | |
| (1) This represents 0.4 per cent. of total benefit expenditure. | ||
The Department initiated a programme in 2001 to bring increased focus to the management and recovery of benefit overpayments. This programme had delivered by 2005 a dedicated debt management organisation, with a new computer system rolled out by February 2006.
This has succeeded in heightening the profile of recovery of overpayments, particularly those arising through fraud or claimant error, which forms the majority of the overpayments that are identified, as shown. As part of this increased profile, the Department now uses private sector companies to help recover debts where the Department's own recovery attempts have been unsuccessful. This reinforces the message that we are taking recovery of debt seriously.
In addition, to help tackle the error problem the Department has taken a three pronged approach:
Set up a dedicated official error reduction task force with the specific aim of achieving demonstrable reductions in official error in short term by December 2006.
Established a dedicated benefit simplification team focused on exploring how the benefit system could be simplified.
Is developing a longer-term error reduction strategy which will set out medium and long term solutions to further improve benefit correctness.
Departmental Websites
Mr. Philip Hammond: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many user visits were recorded on the Jobcentre Plus website in each week of the last five years. [118789]
Mr. Jim Murphy: The Jobcentre Plus website was launched in March 2002. The software that measures the number of user visits was implemented in January 2003.
The information on the number of user visits each week since January 2003 has been placed in the Library.
Departments: Conferences
Mr. Philip Hammond: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions if he will list the conferences which were funded in whole or part by his Department in the last 12 months; how many people attended each; and what the cost to his Department was of each conference. [120448]
Mr. Jim Murphy: The information requested is not available centrally in the format requested and could be collected only at disproportionate cost.
Departments: Official Cars
Mr. Francois: To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions how many vehicles belonging to his Department were (a) lost and (b) stolen in each year since 1997; and what the (i) make and model and (ii) value was of each vehicle. [121408]
Mrs. McGuire: We have no records held prior to year 2000.
The following vehicles were all stolen. DWP has not lost any vehicles within the period stated:
| Make/model | Value (£) | |
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