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Thalidomide Trust: Tax Treatment of Payments

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Lord McIntosh of Haringey): My right honourable friend the Paymaster-General (Dawn Primarolo) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.

The Treasury is today laying a statutory instrument which provides that payments by the Thalidomide Trust to the people affected by the drug Thalidomide will in future be exempt from income tax. This legislative change, on which the Government have consulted with the trust, will come into effect on 5 August 2004.
 
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Complaints, Redress and Tribunals

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs (Lord Filkin): I am placing today in the Library of the House copies of the White Paper Transforming Public Services: Complaints, Redress and Tribunals.

The Government are committed to improving access to administrative justice and justice in the workplace. Central and local government make millions of decisions each year about the rights and obligations of individuals and where things go wrong the public have the right to expect swift resolution. Similarly, employees are entitled to fair and decent standards in the workplace and some means of redress where these standards are breached. Tribunals deal with about 1 million cases a year. They are one means of redress, but not the only means.

This White Paper sets out the Government's vision for an improved and seamless system of dispute resolution. Sir Andrew Leggatt, in his report Tribunals for Users, identified how tribunals can offer a better service for users. We have already announced our intention to accept the central theme of that report and create within the Department for Constitutional Affairs a single tribunal service, bringing together most central government tribunals.

But this White Paper goes a step further. The basis for the new organisation will be the largest tribunal organisations administered by central government, collectively responsible for more than 90 per cent of tribunal cases. But the organisation we are creating will be more than just a federation of existing tribunals. This will be a new organisation and a new type of organisation. It will have a remit to innovate, looking at alternative methods of resolving disputes and stimulating improved decision making so that the need for disputes does not arise. We intend that it will formally come into being in April 2006 but we are recruiting a chief executive now.

This approach to proportionate dispute resolution is the first manifestation of the department's new strategy for helping users of the justice system to resolve issues without recourse to formal hearings.

To help us to deliver this new approach we also intend to create a more unified and cohesive corps of tribunal panel members better equipped to deliver the service that users expect, while continuing to provide and enhance both their independence and their expertise. To provide the tribunal judiciary with leadership through this time of change and beyond into the new service we intend to create in statute the post of Senior President of Tribunals. The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales has asked Lord Justice Robert Carnwath to act as Senior President designate in advance of legislation.

We also believe that this new approach to administrative justice requires a new, more strategic organisation to oversee it so we plan to create an Administrative Justice Council, based on the existing Council on Tribunals which currently supervises the work of tribunals in England, Scotland and Wales.
 
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Wilton Park: Annual Report and Accounts 2003–04

The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean): Wilton Park is an academically independent executive agency of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Its annual report and accounts for 2003–04 were published today and copies will be placed in the Library of the House.

Highlights of the past year include:

More conferences organised than ever before—49, including for the first time two held outside Europe.

A record level of financial support from other organisations.

Highest ever ratings by participants of the value of conferences.

Wilton Park's performance against agreed targets for 2003–04 is shown below. The targets cover cost recovery, quality of conference programmes and standards of service, including for the current year.

	03–04 Target	03–04 Performance	04–05 Target
Total income	£3,732,000	£3,635,000	£3,987,000
Excellent rating for programmes	57%	57.9%	57%
Excellent rating for administration	89%	86.5%	89%

University Research: Dual Support System

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Sainsbury of Turville): The Government are setting out their overall strategy for the dual support system in the Science and Innovation Investment Framework 2004–2014, published as part of Spending Review 2004.
 
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The key response to the consultation (available at http://www.ost.gov.uk/policy/universityresearch.pdf) was that higher education institutions requested a further year for the implementation of the extensions to the TRAC accounting methodology. The Government accepted this, as I and the Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education (Alan Johnson) announced in our letter to vice-chancellors of 24 November 2003. (http://www.ost.gov.uk/research/higher—educ—letter.pdf).

In the light of responses received and subsequent consultation with stakeholders, the Government have decided as follows:

Research councils will pay a single percentage (as discussed in the investment framework) of full economic costs (FEC) for almost all types of grants for research projects and programmes. (Councils may announce special arrangements for certain types of grant, for example small travel grants, in due course). Research councils will include time spent by permanent academic staff, as calculated using the extended TRAC accounting methodology;

Research students will continue to be excluded from the FEC regime for the time being. This will be revisited when TRAC has been successfully extended to teaching;

The additional resources allocated in spending reviews for research councils to pay a greater proportion of the costs of research (£120 million from Spending Review 2002 and a further £80 million from 2007–08 allocated in SR04) will be allocated between research councils from 2006–07 in such a way as to preserve the current balance of research volume. Detailed modelling is currently under way; an announcement will be made when this has been completed.

The guidance and checklist on the pricing of projects for non-research council funders has been slightly revised in the light of comments received; the updated version will be placed on OST's, HEFCE's and SHEFC's websites (www.ost.gov.uk, www.hefce.ac.uk, www.shefc.ac.uk).

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