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15 Dec 2008 : Column 468W—continued
Departmental Contracts
Mr. Hoban: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform what contracts to which his Department is a party will continue beyond 1 July 2010. [242149]
Mr. McFadden: This information is not held centrally and could be provided only at disproportionate cost.
Departmental Disabled Staff
Mr. Harper: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform what conclusions his Department has reached in fulfilment of its duty under section 3.111 of the statutory code of practice of the disability equality duty. [240991]
Mr. McFadden: My right hon. and noble Friend the Secretary of State published his report on Disability Equality on 1 December 2008. This sets out the conclusions reached by his Department in fulfilment of its duty under the disability equality duty. It also includes progress on the actions promoting equality of opportunity as set out in the Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform's (BERR) Annual Report and Accounts 2007-2008.
The Secretary of State's report can be accessed on the BERR website at:
Departmental Higher Education
Mr. Hoban: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform how many staff in his Department undertook courses funded by the Department for (a) undergraduate degrees, (b) postgraduate degrees or diplomas, (c) Masters degrees, (d) MBA degrees and (e) PhD degrees in the last 12 months, broken down by pay band. [242130]
Mr. McFadden: The Department has devolved the responsibility for funding of relevant courses leading to qualifications to each business area. Identification of the number of staff who have undertaken qualifications in the last 12 months in each pay band would be a disproportionate cost.
Insolvency
Mr. Hunt: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform how many individuals were declared insolvent in each of the last five years; and how many have been registered as insolvent in the current financial year. [240651]
Mr. McFadden: The following table records the total number of individual insolvencies in each financial year since 2003-04 in England and Wales.
| Financial year | Individual insolvencies( 1) in England and Wales |
| (1) Including bankruptcy orders and individual voluntary arrangements (IVAs). (2) Insolvency data for the current financial year are only available up to September 2008. | |
Insolvency: Hotels
Mr. Hunt: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform how many hotels went into (a) compulsory and (b) voluntary (i) administration and (ii) liquidation in each region of England and Wales in each of the last five years. [240654]
Mr. McFadden: Statistics are only available from Q3 2007 on a consistent basis and no sub-national information is available for “hotels”. The following table records the number of hotels that have entered into compulsory liquidation, creditors' voluntary liquidation or administration in each quarter since 2007 Q3 in England and Wales as a whole.
| Insolvency procedure | 2007 Q3 | 2007 Q4 | 2008 Q1 | 2008 Q2 | 2008 Q3 |
| Note: 1. There have been changes over recent years to the classification and extent of sectoral information collected and analysed. Consistent data are only readily available on a quarterly basis from 2007 Q3. 2. Industry-level data are not currently available on a regional basis. 3. Data for compulsory liquidations for 2008 Q3 are not yet available. 4. Companies may enter consecutively into more than one type of insolvency procedure. For example, an establishment may enter into administration, but subsequently become the subject of a creditors' voluntary liquidation. This means that counts should not be summed to a total number of company insolvencies in the sector. 5. Figures for corporate receiverships, and for small business bankruptcies among hotel proprietors are not included in the above figures. | |||||
Low Pay
Dr. Kumar: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform what recent estimate he has made of the number of people who are paid at a rate below the national minimum wage in (a) the UK, (b) the North East, (c) Tees Valley district and (d) Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland constituency. [242372]
Mr. McFadden: Information on earnings is taken from the ONS' Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE) dataset for 2008. Information for local authority level and individual parliamentary constituencies is not readily available in the ASHE dataset. However, information is available on a government office region basis and for the UK.
(a) The ONS estimates that around 288,000 jobs are paid below the National Minimum Wage (NMW) rates (£3.40/£4.60/£5.52) in the UK in 2007-08.
(b) In the North East, around 20,000 jobs are paid below the NMW rates.
These estimates do not measure non-compliance because some employees, undergoing certain apprenticeships and training, are either exempt or legitimately have lower rates.
Members' Interests
Mr. Maude: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform with reference to the answer to the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Adam Price) of 10 November 2008, Official Report, column 907W, on Members’ interests, if he will place in the Library a copy of the declaration made by the Secretary of State to the Permanent Secretary of his Department. [242046]
Mr. McFadden: As stated in the Ministerial Code, the personal information which Ministers disclose to those who advise them is treated in confidence. However, an annual statement covering relevant Ministers’ interests will be published.
Office of Fair Trading: Market Studies
Mr. Djanogly: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform what the purpose is of the use of market studies by the Office of Fair Trading. [242057]
Mr. McFadden: Section 5 of the Enterprise Act 2002 gives the OFT the function of obtaining and reviewing information relating to any of its functions, both in respect of competition and consumer matters. This information-gathering role, which may involve research, is with a view to the OFT having the information it needs to make decisions and carry out its functions.
Market studies were introduced by the OFT as a means of identifying and addressing all aspects of market failure, from competition issues to consumer detriment and the effect of Government regulations. Market studies can be either short (often fact-finding) or full.
Mr. Djanogly:
To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory
Reform whether an assessment has been made of the value for money offered by the market studies conducted by the Office of Fair Trading. [242540]
Mr. Thomas: No specific assessment has been made by the Department since the regime came into force. However, the overarching regulatory impact assessment prepared for the Enterprise Act 2002 said that the overall benefits of the measures in the Act would strengthen competitive pressures in the economy and improve consumer protection. The Office of Fair Trading has an evaluation programme which measures the impact of its interventions, which can be found at
http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/about_oft/oft862.pdf
Mr. Djanogly: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform what proportion of market studies undertaken by the Office of Fair Trading since 2003 related to public sector operations. [242594]
Mr. Thomas: This is matter for the independent Office of Fair Trading. I have asked the Chief Executive to reply to the hon. Member directly.
Official Visits: Russia
Mr. Hoban: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform which (a) individuals and (b) organisations Ministers met during the visit to Moscow between Monday 27 October and Wednesday 29 October 2008. [242146]
Mr. Thomas: My noble Friend the Secretary of State for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform met the following individuals and organisations during his visit to Moscow between 27 October and Wednesday 29 October.
Sergei Lavrov, Minister for Foreign Affairs
Igor Shuvalov, First Deputy PM
Alexsey Kudrin, Deputy PM and Finance Minister
Arkadiy Dvorkovitch, Assistant of the President
Anatoliy Chubais, CEO, RosNanoTech
German Gref, CEO, Sberbank
Aleksey Mordashov, General Director, Severstal
Evgeniy Yasin, Rector, Higher School of Economics
He also attended a number of events where he met multiple business representatives and organisations across a range of areas. These included British business investors in the Russian market, Russian and British representatives from the financial services industry; economic and political analysts, Russian SMEs, energy companies, academics and others.
Mr. Hoban: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform who the members were of the business delegation supported by his Department that visited Moscow between 27 October and 29 October 2008. [242147]
Mr. Thomas: Members of the accompanying business delegation were:
Richard Lambert, DG, CBI;
Tim Eggar, Chair and President of the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce (RBCC);
Alex Robinson, Executive Director, Aviva;
Richard Spies, President, BP Russia;
Robert Webb, General Counsel, BA;
Scott Halliday, UK Managing Partner, Ernst and Young;
Tim Burnhope, Deputy MD, JCB Sales;
Tracey Pierce, Head of Equity Primary Markets, LSE;
Simon Chivers, Country Manager, Mace Group;
Peter Hambro, Hambro Mining;
Maurice Topiol, Chairman, Rothschild Russia, NM Rothschild and Sons;
Sir Philip Thomas, Senior Advisor, Shell;
Reas Kondraschow, Group Development Director, Whitbread.
Post Offices
Mr. Paice: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform what estimate his Department has made of the number of (a) post office branches and (b) post office branches per head of population in England in (i) hamlets and isolated dwellings, (ii) villages, (iii) towns and fringe settlements and (iv) settlements of more than 10,000 inhabitants in each year since 1997. [243171]
Mr. McFadden: In 2007, in the context of a £1.7 billion funding package to support the post office network, the Government introduced minimum access criteria to maintain a national network of post offices and, in particular to protect vulnerable consumers in deprived urban, rural and remote areas. These access criteria apply nationally and are based on the proportion of the population within specified distances from the nearest post office outlet rather than on density per head of population.
The Department does not hold data on the post office network analysed by country or region since 1997. I have therefore asked Alan Cook, the Managing Director of Post Office Ltd. to write direct to the hon. Member. Copies of the letter will be placed in the Libraries of the House.
Mr. Lilley: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform how many complaints he has received about queues at post offices in each of the last three years. [243216]
Mr. McFadden: The Department does not hold this information in the form requested.
Mr. Lilley: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform whether he has discussed queues at post offices with the management of Post Office Ltd. [243217]
Mr. McFadden: I have frequent discussions with the management of Post Office Ltd on a range of issues relating to the post office network, including queuing at post offices.
Trade Policy
Mr. Clifton-Brown: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform whether UK Trade and Investment has changed its strategy in the light of the current world economic crisis. [241924]
Mr. Thomas: UK Trade and Investment keeps its strategy under review to ensure that it continues to add value for the economy and for business in an increasingly globalised and competitive world. Recent reviews have aimed to ensure that UKTI is providing the best possible support to help businesses through the current economic crisis.
Recent UKTI measures announced:
new funding rules for the Tradeshow Access Programme (TAP) announced on 7 November. The scheme supports more than 3,000 SMEs each year to exhibit at overseas trade fairs. The new rules, which will take effect from 1 April 2009, will double the maximum number of grants per company to six, as long as they are participating in tradeshows in more than one market;
a new £1 million package of UKTI support to help UK companies of all sizes access manufacturing value chain opportunities in India and China, announced in the Government’s Manufacturing Strategy in September 2008. The target is to help 600 businesses access opportunities through this new initiative;
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