| Previous Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |
Horsham TA Centre
Earl Attlee asked Her Majesty's Government:
- What progress has been made with the disposal of the Horsham Territorial Army Centre.[HL469]
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: Ministry of Defence officials are concluding the sale of the former TA Centre at Horsham to Horsham District Council. This has taken slightly longer than envisaged in my earlier reply of 31 October, (Official Report, col. WA 89), but a final meeting was held on 31 January and it is the intention of all concerned that the matter will be completed shortly.
Monitoring of Employees' e-mails
The Earl of Northesk asked Her Majesty's Government:
- What their response is to the recent survey by Klegal, the legal arm of KPMG, that 20 per cent of United Kingdom employers are breaking the law by secretly monitoring e-mails without informing their staff. [HL417]
The Minister for Science, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Sainsbury of Turville): Although the K-legal survey on employee Internet and e-mail usage has yet to be published in its final form, a press release announcing the main findings mentions that 20 per cent of respondents are monitoring Internet and e-mail usage without employees being aware that this may take place.
The Telecommunications (Lawful Business Practice) (Interception of Communications) Regulations 2000, which came into force on 24 October 2000, ensure that businesses do not infringe the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 if they intercept communications without the consent of the sender or recipient for the purpose of monitoring or recording them for legitimate business purposes, which are limited and specified by the regulations. Businesses which take advantage of the regulations must make all reasonable efforts to inform the users of their systems that their communications may or will be monitored. This is consistent with the requirement of the Data Protection Act 1998 that data subjects are made aware of who is processing personal data about them and for what purposes.
Businesses may face liability for civil lawsuits if they do not act in accordance with the regulations, and action by the Information Commissioner (formerly the Data Protection Commissioner) in the case of any breach of the Data Protection Act.
The Government wish to ensure that these requirements are drawn to the attention of businesses and others concerned as widely as possible. An important step in this regard will be taken with the publication later this year of the Information Commissioner's Code of Practice on the Use of Personal Data in Employer/Employee Relationships,
which will provide comprehensive guidance on the implications of both the Data Protection Act and the Lawful Business Practice Regulations for practice in the workplace.Employees: Entitlement to Transfer to Reduced Hours
Baroness Gould of Potternewton asked Her Majesty's Government:
- In which member states of the European Union there is a legal entitlement for employees to move from full-time hours to reduced hours; and[HL419]
Which of the member states of the European Union where there is a legal entitlement for employees to transfer to reduced hours make this conditional on an assessment of whether an employee's request causes harm to the business where they work.[HL420]
Lord Sainsbury of Turville: Germany and the Netherlands.
Learning Difficulties: Terms used in Legislation
Lord Pearson of Rannoch asked Her Majesty's Government:
- Whether they will explain the following terms used in special education and disability legislation--
(a) people with learning difficulties;
(b) people with severe learning difficulties;
(c) people with learning disabilities; and
(d) people with severe learning disabilities.[HL511]
The Minister of State, Department for Education and Employment (Baroness Blackstone): Under the Education Act 1996 children have a learning difficulty if they have a significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of children of their age or they have a disability which prevents or hinders them from making use of educational facilities generally provided in schools within the area of their local education authority. Children who are under compulsory school age will have a learning difficulty if they are, or if no special educational provision were made for them would be, likely to have such a difficulty or disability when they reach compulsory school age.
There are other definitions of learning difficulties in legislation dealing with education but they are very similar. For example, the definition in the Learning and Skills Act 2000 defines people as having learning difficulties if they have a significantly greater difficulty learning than the majority of people their age or have a disability which prevents or hinders them from making use of the educational facilities generally provided by institutions providing post-16 education or training.
There is no definition of "learning difficulties" in disability legislation. The 1978 report of the Warnock Committee suggested that "learning difficulties might be described as 'mild', 'moderate' or 'severe' ". "Severe learning difficulties" was the committee's preferred description of children who were then commonly referred to as being "mentally handicapped" and defined as "severely educationally sub-normal" but the term is not defined in education or disability legislation.
The Government's working definition of a person with a learning disability is a person who has: a significantly reduced ability to understand new or complex information, to learn new skills (impaired intelligence), and a reduced ability to cope independently (impaired social functioning), and which started before adulthood, with a lasting effect on development.
Learning disability is not defined for the purposes of education or disability legislation but it is used elsewhere. For example, it is defined for the purpose of travel concessions in the Greater London Authority Act 1999 and in the Transport Act 1985 (inserted by the Transport Act 2000) as "a state of arrested or incomplete development of mind which includes significant impairment of intelligence and social functioning".
Severe learning disability is not defined in education or disability legislation but is defined elsewhere. For example, it is defined in the Social Security (Incapacity for Work) (General) Regulations 1995 and the Social Security (Incapacity Benefit) (Transitional) Regulations 1995 as "a condition which results from the arrested or incomplete physical development to the brain, and which involves severe impairment of intelligence and social functioning".
Baroness Miller asked Her Majesty's Government:
Baroness Blackstone: When applying for work permits employers are normally required to test the European economic area (EEA) labour market by advertising the job in the most appropriate medium and to provide details of any responses and reasons why resident workers are not suitable. This is not required in specified circumstances where it is not appropriate to test the availability of resident labour. These circumstances are where the applications are in respect of employees of multinational companies transferring to offices of the company based in this country, senior board level posts, jobs attracting related inward investment and jobs where there are acknowledged shortages of skills within the resident
Lord Patten asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will set out, for each of the last 10 years for which figures are available, the percentage of total incidents of abuse which were perpetrated on a child by a parent cohabiting with, but not married to, the child's other parent; and, if these figures are not held centrally, why not; and[HL401]
Whether they will set out, for each of the last 10 years for which figures are available, the percentage of total incidents of child abuse perpetrated on a child by one of a cohabiting but unmarried couple only one of whom is the child's parent; and, if these figures are not held centrally, why not; and[HL402]
Whether they will set out, for each of the last 10 years for which figures are available, the percentage of total incidents of child abuse which are perpetrated on a child living with a parent who is not cohabiting with any other person; and, if these figures are not held centrally, why not.[HL403]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Lord Hunt of Kings Heath): The information requested has never been held or collected centrally.
As part of this Government's Quality Protects Programme, we are introducing a new system of statistical collection whererby information will be collected on the number of referrals which have been made to local authority social services departments on all alleged cases of abuse, the assessment of those referrals and the number of referrals which lead to inquiries under Section 47 of the Children Act 1989. This system will begin in April of this year and the information received will be published in autumn 2002.
What steps they are taking when granting labour permits to ensure that persons recruited from overseas are filling genuine vacancies not fillable from within the United Kingdom or elsewhere in the European Union and are not displacing existing workers.[HL307]
Whether they will set out, for each of the last 10 years for which figures are available, the percentage of total incidents of child abuse which were perpetrated on a child by a parent who was married to and cohabiting with the child's other parent; and, if these figures are not held centrally, why not; and[HL400]
Next Section
Back to Table of Contents
Lords Hansard Home Page