§ 45. Mr. Ben Chapman (Wirral, South)What assessment she has made of the efficacy of the arrangements made for the millennium date change. [136370]
§ The President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mrs. Margaret Beckett)I refer my hon. Friend to the answer that I gave on 19 April, which appears in the Official Report at column 425W. The arrangements that were put in place to handle the millennium date change were successful, with the UK almost untouched by the bug. That did not happen by accident.
The work has delivered far-reaching benefits which were drawn out in a command paper entitled "Modernising Government in Action: Realising the Benefits of Y2K", which I published on the same date.
§ Mr. ChapmanI pay tribute to the work done by my right hon. Friend and her colleagues in making sure that the preparations for dealing with the millennium bug were a success. Will she confirm that to a degree, those preparations and that contingency planning have proved relevant to dealing with the fuel issue? Does she agree that the lessons learned from the millennium bug planning could be read across, and thereby helped large companies with the contingency planning needed to lessen disruption for their customers?
§ Mrs. BeckettOn behalf of all those who did so much work on the matter, I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He is entirely right: during the recent fuel supply difficulties a considerable number of companies were able to draw on the continuity plans assembled over the millennium period, not least those drawn up by the health service and various large fuel supply companies. Those involved in the work of Action 2000 have been contacted by a number of people thanking them for the work that they had done, and saying what a help it had proved to be.