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Written Answers

Tuesday, 29 November 2005.

Airlines

Lord Fearn asked Her Majesty's Government:

Lord Davies of Oldham: There is no simple answer to this Question. The market in air services in England and Wales is intensely competitive and all airlines operating within it, British and foreign, are under pressure to control their costs. While it is possible to draw distinctions of a general nature between types of airline—for example, between scheduled and charter, or between those offering a full range of services and the so-called "no-frills" carriers—these appellations are to an extent simply marketing devices and have in any case become increasingly blurred as the industry has developed in response to changes in the regulatory and competitive environment. Accordingly, the Government would not wish to categorise any individual airline as belonging to a specific "low-cost" category.

Airports

Lord Fearn asked Her Majesty's Government:

Lord Davies of Oldham: Statistics compiled and collated by the Civil Aviation Authority, with the co-operation of airport operators, indicate that there are 36 airports carrying passengers in England and Wales. This number is based on air transport movements for both scheduled and charter services.

Lord Fearn asked Her Majesty's Government:

Lord Davies of Oldham: This information is not held centrally and it can be obtained only at disproportionate costs. At the time the Air Transport White Paper was published in 2003, around 200,000 people were directly employed at UK airports but these data were not broken down between English and Welsh airports.

Avian Flu

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer asked Her Majesty's Government:

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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Bach): In the event of an outbreak of avian influenza in the United Kingdom, any necessary slaughter of birds to prevent spread of the disease would be compensated for under the provisions for payment in Schedule 3 to the Animal Health Act 1981 which states that:

The value of the slaughtered birds will, in most cases, be determined by reference to valuation tables that have been developed by ADAS for the department in consultation with the industry. We have developed a number of valuation tables which take account of different poultry types and different production systems. For those poultry species and types not covered by valuation tables the value will be determined by suitably experienced poultry specialists.

Baroness Byford asked Her Majesty's Government:

Lord Bach: A number of individuals have been identified and are listed to take up key posts in an outbreak of exotic animal disease such as avian influenza. This includes people to be appointed as regional operations directors, divisional operations managers and local office finance managers. These would support and strengthen the existing staff and would be further augmented by people deployed from other parts of Defra and other government departments under established arrangements.

Benefit Fraud

Lord Jones of Cheltenham asked Her Majesty's Government:

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Hunt of Kings Heath): Public Service Agreement (PSA) targets commit DWP to reducing fraud and error in working age income support and jobseeker's allowance by 33 per cent by March 2004 and by 50 per cent by March 2006. By September 2004, we had reduced fraud and error in these benefits by 41 per cent and had reduced fraud by two-thirds.

For housing benefit for working age people, we have a PSA target to reduce fraud and error by 25 per cent by March 2006. By September 2004, the estimated percentage of housing benefit expenditure overpaid had fallen by 6 per cent.
 
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The Pension Service has also been set a service delivery agreement (SDA) target to reduce overpayments through fraud and error in pension credit by 20 per cent by March 2006. We estimated that by September 2004, fraud and error had been reduced by around 2 per cent.

Bovine Tuberculosis

Baroness Byford asked Her Majesty's Government:

Lord Bach: On 30 September 2005, 2,049 1 GB cattle herds had tuberculin tests overdue. Almost 60 per cent of these overdue tests were located in the counties 2 of Devon (358), Dyfed (352), Cornwall (248), and Hereford and Worcestershire (238).

We initially proposed that the pilot would take place in four animal health divisional office areas (Carmarthen, Caernarfon, Reading and Reigate). This has now been extended to include Cardiff, Exeter, Gloucester, Stafford, Taunton, Truro and Worcester. We will train the same number of State Veterinary Service technical staff. However, the pilot is now focused on the areas where TB is more prevalent.

Progress with the pilot has been slower than originally planned. However, we still hope to complete the pilot by the end of the summer 2006. We expect there to be around 16 to 20 approved testers by the end of March 2006 and aim to publish an interim report around this time.

2 Statistics on bovine TB are aggregated according to the office structure of the SVS. As a result, data for the current authorities of Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion are aggregated as the former county of Dyfed; and data for the counties of Herefordshire and Worcestershire are combined.

Baroness Byford asked Her Majesty's Government:

Lord Bach: We are currently unable to export live cattle as a result of the export ban due to BSE. However, this is something which the Government have been working hard to get lifted.

We have written advice from the European Commission, which we have shared with the veterinary profession, concerning our proposal to use trained lay testers to carry out TB testing. The
 
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Commission has clarified the circumstances where lay TB testers may not be used and recognised the benefits to the UK of employing lay testers.

We will not use lay testers for pre-export testing where it is a requirement of the export health certificate that individual animals are subjected to a tuberculin test prior to being consigned for export. Our interpretation of the Commission's advice is that tests performed by lay testers would not invalidate a herd's officially tuberculosis-free status, provided that any pre-export test was performed by a veterinary surgeon.


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