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15 Mar 2010 : Column 714W—continued
National Science and Engineering Week
Anne Main: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills what plans his Department has to mark National Science and Engineering Week. [320954]
Mr. Lammy: BIS funds the co-ordination of National Science and Engineering Week (NSEW), including a £100,000 fund for over 400 schools in challenging circumstances to organise their own science and engineering events. My noble Friend the Minister of State for Science and Innovation wrote to all MPs encouraging them to get involved with activities during NSEW. We identified opportunities, within already busy schedules, for BIS Ministers and departmental representatives to contribute to events during the week.
Underlining the Department's support for NSEW, there was considerable ministerial involvement at the annual Big Bang: UK Young Scientists and Engineers Fair, which took place on 11-13 March, and included the finals of the UK National Science and Engineering Competition. Ministerial involvement included:
My noble Friend the Minister of State for Science and Innovation engaged in outreach activities on 12 March as a STEM ambassador;
My noble Friend the Secretary of State attended the Big Bang event on 12 March and presented awards to finalists of the National Science and Engineering Competition; and
My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Regulatory Reform attended on 13 March.
NSEW is being promoted throughout Science week on the Department's website:
Overseas Companies: Ethiopia
Mrs. Gillan: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills which British companies were operating in Ethiopia on the latest date for which information is available. [322317]
Ian Lucas: UKTI is aware of 64 British companies that were operating in Ethiopia as of November 2009.
UKTI maintains details of its interactions with individual companies. However, UKTI does not disclose information provided on an individual basis as it often is of a confidential nature and provided to us in connection with client's business interests. UKTI will not disclose any such information to any other person for any purpose without the prior written consent of the company.
Radio Frequencies
Mr. Laurence Robertson: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills what steps he is taking to ensure that opportunities for market entry are maximised under the proposed combined auction by Ofcom of spectrum for wireless broadband usage. [321050]
Mr. Timms: The release of spectrum into the market by auction is handled by Ofcom, including auction design. However, the Direction to implement the Spectrum Modernisation Programme which we have recently consulted upon, requires Ofcom to implement temporary spectrum caps which are to limit the ability of operators to gain excessive amounts of spectrum below 1 GHz and below 3 GHz. These will help ensure a competitive and fair auction, giving opportunity for new entrants, should they wish to bid.
Mr. Laurence Robertson: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills for what reasons he is providing direction to Ofcom to implement wireless radio spectrum modernisation. [321052]
Mr. Timms: To implement our spectrum modernisation programme as set out in the Digital Britain Report. Our objective is to enable the deployment of next generation mobile broadband services, which will deliver substantial benefits to business and consumers.
Science: Finance
Simon Hughes: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills from which areas of his Department's budget for science he expects to make savings. [320246]
Mr. Lammy: No decisions have been reached on the future size of the science budget. The Government will spend £6 billion on science and research by 2010/11, a doubling in real terms since 1997. The Government remain committed to the ring-fence and the ten-year Science and Innovation Investment Framework. We shall continue to prioritise funding to deliver a world-class research base, capable of addressing key challenges including environmental change, ageing and global security.
Students: Loans
Paul Holmes: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in respect of how many student loan applications consideration was delayed in the period from September to December in each of the last five years. [317651]
Mr. Lammy: Data are not readily available on the number of applications where "consideration was delayed" in the last five years. It would incur disproportionate cost to obtain this information.
Mr. Hayes: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills how many people of each age in each local authority area had a debt with the Student Loans Company on the latest date for which figures are available. [321699]
Mr. Lammy: The question cannot be answered as this would incur disproportionate cost.
Students: Personal Records
Mr. Evennett: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills how many pieces of information (a) universities and (b) further education colleges are required to gather on individual students by the time of their enrolment. [321678]
Mr. Lammy: For universities, the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) agrees and reviews the standard requirements of the Student Record, to be completed on enrolment. HESA is a private company, established in 1993 to meet requirements for uniform and reliable statistics across the Higher Education system in the United Kingdom. Although not all fields need to be completed for every enrolment, the current set of fields comprising the Student Record can be accessed here:
http://www.hesa.ac.uk/index.php/component/option.com_ studrec/tasks.how_file/Itemid.233/mnl.08051/href.E^_^index.html/
For Further Education colleges, the Information Authority agrees and reviews the content of the Individualised Learner Record (ILR), to be completed on enrolment and used to allow the college to draw down the appropriate level of funding to support each learner. The Information Authority was established as an independent body in 2006, to set and regulate data
and data collection standards for Further Education, and to reduce the data burden on Further Education colleges and training organisations in England.
Further Education provision is diverse, and the range of data collected varies accordingly. The ILR contains up to 45 data fields for each learner and up to 56 for each learning aim. The fields which will be filled in will vary, however, depending on the learner and the learning being undertaken. Under a reciprocal arrangement with the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and HESA, further fields are collected for the small proportion of learners studying higher education provision and/or funded by HEFCE. Further information on the ILR can be found here:
Students: Radicalism
Mr. Hayes: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills what information his Department holds on the number of students (a) suspended and (b) expelled from university as the result of extremist religious activity in each year since 2001. [321682]
Mr. Lammy: The Department does not request or hold this information.
Teachers: Qualifications
Mr. Evennett: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills what discussions officials of his Department have had with officials of the Department for Children, Schools and Families on required teaching qualifications for (a) schools and (b) further education colleges. [321674]
Kevin Brennan: BIS officials are working with the Department for Children School and Families (DCSF) to clarify the extent of equivalence and transferability of qualified teacher status between schools and further education teachers or lecturers.
International Development
Burundi: Females
Malcolm Bruce: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development whether he has plans to provide assistance for programmes for the political and social empowerment of women in Burundi, with particular reference to the participation of women as candidates in elections. [321648]
Mr. Thomas: The Department for International Development (DFID) has provided £1 million to a pooled fund, managed by the UN Development Programme, for the 2010 elections in Burundi. This includes funding for the mobilisation of women as participants in the electoral process, as electors, candidates and administrators. A voter registration exercise was successfully carried out in February 2010 resulting in 3.5 million people registering to vote, 52 per cent. of whom were women. The project also aims to support political parties to ensure the effective participation of women in the electoral process, in line with the requirement in Burundi's Constitution of at least 30 per cent. female representation in Parliament.
Civil Society Challenge Fund
Mr. Donaldson: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development whether the Civil Society Challenge Fund operates across the UK. [322296]
Mr. Michael Foster: The Civil Society Challenge Fund is open to not-for-profit organisations based anywhere in the UK.
Civil Society Challenge Fund: Northern Ireland
Mr. Donaldson: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development how many organisations from Northern Ireland have received funding from the Civil Society Challenge Fund since its inception; and how many of these were women's organisations. [322297]
Mr. Michael Foster: Since its inception in 2000, the Civil Society Challenge Fund has funded two projects with Trocaire, based in Belfast.
In the most recent funding round (for funding from April 2010) we have agreed provisional support for a project with, Derry based, Children in Crossfire. Signing of the grant agreement is subject to negotiation of financial and other arrangements and the usual DFID approval procedures.
Neither Trocaire nor Children in Crossfire are women's organisations.
Mr. Donaldson: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development how many information seminars on the Civil Society Challenge Fund his Department has held in Northern Ireland since the inception of the Fund. [322298]
Mr. Michael Foster: Since the establishment of the Civil Society Challenge Fund in 2000 there have been no information seminars on this fund in Northern Ireland.
Developing Countries: Climate Change
Sammy Wilson: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development how much his Department spent on assisting developing countries dealing with the effects of climate change in each of the last five years. [321646]
Mr. Thomas: The Department for International Development (DFID) helps developing countries deal with the effects of climate change through a number of multilateral and bilateral channels. For example DFID has:
Invested £150 million in the Environmental Transformation Fund (ETF) over the past two years.
Provided £50 million to the Chars Livelihood Programme in Bangladesh to support livelihoods resilient to climate change.
Committed to invest £100 million in climate research over five years.
We are not currently able to disaggregate all of our spend on climate change. DFID is working with other donors, through the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, to agree how climate change spending should be reported. We expect to begin reporting against agreed requirements later this year.
Ethiopia: Overseas Aid
Mrs. Gillan: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development how much aid his Department provided to Ethiopia (a) to each recipient and (b) through each distributing organisation in each of the last five years. [322316]
Mr. Thomas: Details of aid provided to Ethiopia are published annually in "Statistics on International Development", which is available at:
The amounts provided to each type of recipient are provided in the following table. The majority of aid received by the Government of Ethiopia is channelled through multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and United Nations.
| £ million | |||
| Of which: | |||
| Financial year | Total DFID bilateral aid to Ethiopia | Delivered to an NGO | Delivered to the Ethiopian Government |
The amount of this aid distributed through bilateral and multilateral channels is as follows.
| £ million | ||
| Of which: | ||
| Financial year | Total DFID bilateral aid to Ethiopia | Delivered through a multilateral |
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