| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
23 Nov 2009 : Column 31W—continued
Higher Education: Qualifications
Mr. Willetts: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (1) how many students (a) commenced and (b) completed HNC/HND qualification courses in each year since 2000; [300783]
(2) how many students (a) commenced and (b) completed a foundation degree course in each year since 2000. [300820]
Mr. Lammy: The latest available information from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) is shown in tables 1 and 2. Figures for 2008/09 will be available in January 2010.
Table 1 shows the number of students who commenced HNC, HND and foundation degrees in each year since 2000. The figures exclude the Open University due to inconsistencies in their entrants' data.
Table 2 shows the number of students who qualified at HNC, HND and foundation degrees in each year since 2000. These figures do include the Open University as qualifier data are consistent with other institutions.
Foundation degrees did not commence until the 2001/02 academic year, therefore figures for 2000/01 are not available.
Figures in tables 1 and 2 cover students studying at higher education institutions only and do not include students registered for HND, HNC and foundation degree courses at further education colleges.
The Higher Education Funding Council for England produces a regular report on Foundation degrees, which covers entrants to both English HEIs and English Further education colleges
However, figures in their report do not cover qualifiers. To demonstrate the volume of students studying at FECs, table 4 of the HEFCE report shows that approximately one quarter of entrants to foundation degrees in 2005/06 were registered at English FECs.
| Table 1: HND, HNC and foundation degree entrants( 1) . UK higher education institutions( 2) . A cademic years 2000/01 to 2007/08 | |||
| Academic year | HND | HNC | Foundation degree |
| n/a = Not available. Foundation degrees did not commence until the 2001/02 academic year. (1) Covers entrants from all domiciles, to both full-time and part-time courses. (2) Excludes the Open University due to inconsistencies in their coding of entrants across the time series. Note: Figures are based on a HESA standard registration population and have been rounded to the nearest five. Source: Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). | |||
| Table 2: HND, HNC and foundation degree qualifiers( 1) .( ) UK higher education institutions. Academic years 2000/01 to 2007/08 | |||
| Academic year | HND | HNC | Foundation degree |
| n/a = Not available. Foundation degrees did not commence until the 2001/02 academic year. (1) Covers qualifiers from all domiciles, from both full-time and part-time courses. Note: Figures are based on a HESA qualifications obtained population and have been rounded to the nearest five. Source: Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). | |||
Insolvency
Mr. Weir: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills what steps his Department is taking to encourage greater transparency in the insolvency sector. [300682]
Ian Lucas: I consider that the steps already taken by The Insolvency Service address this issue. In June this year The Insolvency Service published the first Review of Insolvency Practitioner Regulation, which the service intends to publish annually. The review sets out the essential features of the regulatory regime that governs insolvency practitioners; what the public and businesses can expect from it and what the service and the other regulators are doing to improve it.
In July the service also published a review of the operation of Statement of Insolvency Practice 16 (SIP 16) on pre-packaged sales in administrations. SIP 16 is
intended to ensure that creditors are given sufficient information to understand the circumstances surrounding the decision to sell the company's assets and the reasons why the particular course of action was adopted by the practitioner.
I also welcome the announcement by the Office of Fair Trading made on 12 November 2009 that it was to carry out a study into the corporate insolvency market.
Mr. Weir: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills how long on average it took for an insolvency case to be settled in the latest period for which figures are available. [300788]
Ian Lucas: Following the introduction of the Enterprise Act 2002, an administration has a statutory time limit of 12 months, although this may be extended with the permission of the court or by the agreement of creditors. Research funded by the Insolvency Service suggests that the average duration of an administration is around one year. That same research suggests that the average duration of an administrative receivership is around 18 months.
Liquidations do not have a statutory time limit, but research conducted by the Insolvency Service suggests that the average length of a liquidation is around two to two and a half years.
The Enterprise Act 2002 also introduced a statutory 12-month time limit for bankruptcy, and provides for even earlier discharge in some cases.
The World Bank "Doing Business Report 2009" ranks the UK joint out of 155 countries for the speed with which it deals with troubled businesses.
Mr. Weir: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills what plans his Department has to review the regulation of the Insolvency Service. [300681]
Ian Lucas: At present operation of The Insolvency Service is regulated through the requirement to produce, and lay in Parliament, an annual corporate plan, as well as annual fees orders, which sets the fees charged by official receivers for the work they carry out in dealing with bankruptcy and insolvency case administration. For The Services' work in company investigation and enforcement, and redundancy payments, funding is set through allocations made from BIS and HMRC respectively and the level of this allocation is made in response to submissions from The Service to each Department, as part of their wider budget setting.
For all areas of The Service, The Corporate Plan sets out its vision for delivering services for the next three years, with particular emphasis on its plans and targets for the coming year. The Plan is reviewed by BIS to ensure that its goals are realistic and that targets are achievable within the resources available, and yet are set at a level to stretch the organisation and not allow complacency. Performance against the targets and budgets thus set is reported to the Minister on a quarterly basis.
There are no plans to make substantive changes to this reporting process.
Insolvency: Fees and Charges
Mr. Weir: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills what regulation his Department undertakes of the level of fees charged by insolvency practitioners. [300678]
Ian Lucas: The Insolvency Service does not regulate the level of fees charged by insolvency practitioners.
Insolvency legislation sets out how the remuneration of an office holder (liquidator/administrator/trustee etc.) is to be fixed and provides that such remuneration shall be fixed by reference to the time properly given to the case, or as a percentage of the assets which are realised and distributed. In most insolvency cases it is for the liquidation or creditors' committee to determine the basis for fixing the remuneration or, in the absence of such a committee, the creditors decide the matter.
Although the court can review fees charged by insolvency practitioners the proposed amendments to the insolvency rules, which are due to come into force in April next year, include provisions that will enable creditors to obtain further information and thereby make it easier for greater scrutiny of office-holders' remuneration and expenses. The amendments also make it clearer how to challenge such remuneration and expenses.
As the amount of remuneration is subject to review by the court, my noble Friend the Secretary of State has no powers to regulate the amount of remuneration charged. I welcome the announcement by the Office of Fair Trading made on 12 November 2009 that it is to undertake a market study into the corporate insolvency market.
Insolvency: Licensing
Mr. Weir: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills how many licensed insolvency practitioners there are. [300790]
Ian Lucas: There were 1,738 licensed insolvency practitioners as at 1 January, which is the most recent figure available.
Mr. Weir: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills how many insolvency practitioners have had their licences withdrawn in each of the last 10 years. [300791]
Ian Lucas: The number of insolvency practitioners that have had their licences withdrawn in each of the last 10 years is set out in tabular form as follows:
| Number of licences withdrawn | |
Limited Liability Partnerships: Company Accounts
John Penrose: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills for what reasons limited liability partnerships do not have access to the webfiling service provided by Companies House. [300752]
Ian Lucas: Companies House has developed a WebFiling service which caters for a core range of high volume filing transactions. Over time it plans to expand this service to cover 100 per cent. of the information filed, not only by limited companies but also by limited liability partnerships (LLPs).
Over the last four years Companies House's IT resources have been concentrated on delivering two complex and mission-critical projects: to replace an aging mainframe database and to implement the Companies Act 2006.
The new Act came fully into effect in October and Companies House is now developing further enhancements to its services, including e-filing options for LLPs. These are timetabled for implementation in spring 2010.
Postcodes
Dr. Pugh: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills what assessment he has made of the merits of making the Royal Mail postcode database freely accessible for (a) not-for-profit and (b) profitable use. [300279]
Mr. McFadden: The Postcode Address File (PAF) dataset was designed and engineered by Royal Mail and is owned and managed by the company as a commercial asset of the business. Under Section 116 of the Postal Services Act 2000, Royal Mail must maintain the PAF and make it available to any person who wishes to use it on such terms as are reasonable. This requirement is replicated as a condition of Royal Mail's licence issued and monitored by the postal regulator, Postcomm. Provision exists for Royal Mail to recover a reasonable charge for the supply of PAF and it must not impose any term or condition other than reasonable restrictions to safeguard its intellectual property rights (IPR) and to ensure that the PAF and its updates are used to support effective addressing.
Postcomm carried out a consultation on the PAF in 2006, which took all the diverse uses of the PAF into account before reaching its decision in 2007, announcing more safeguards for the management of the address information held in the PAF with the aim of making sure that the PAF is maintained properly and made available on fair and reasonable terms. The findings of the consultation can be found on Postcomm's website:
| Next Section | Index | Home Page |