Meteorological Office (Hansard, 2 April 1990)

§ Mr. Tom King

I am pleased to announce that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence Procurement today visited the Meteorological Office in Bracknell to mark its launch as the first executive agency in the Ministry of Defence.

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The Meteorological Office is a familiar part of our national life. As the United Kingdom's national weather service, it also plays a leading role in the international structure on which modern weather forecasting depends. It has established, over its 135-year history, an unrivalled reputation in its field. Its staff include some of the world's foremost experts in climatic prediction and research. Utilising these resources, one of the office's key aims will be to provide timely and authoritative advice on climatic change to Ministers nationally and internationally through the auspices of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climatic Change.

Over the next five years I will be setting the agency a range of targets to ensure that it delivers progressive improvements in the quality and efficiency of the weather-related services it provides to defence, civil aviation, commercial customers and the general public. The initial targets I have set for the Meteorological Office during the period 1990–95 are: to devise and implement a system of performance measurement in each of the major activity areas based on output quantity, quality and timeliness and on input costs, to enable publication by 31 March 1991 of targets which require improvements to efficiency that will make a significant contribution to the efficiency targets of the Ministry of Defence as a whole; to improve the efficiency of commercial services, measured as the ratio between revenue earned and the cost of provision of such services; to reduce by 15 per cent. the standard-error of 48-hour forecasts of mid-atmosphere pressure fields over the North Atlantic and North West Europe; to achieve measurable improvement in the quality of public warnings and services to MOD and the CAA, within available resources; to achieve measurable improvement in the productivity of operational support services through the use of new technology, automation and the integration of functions; to reduce net operating costs in real terms by 1 per cent. in 1990–91 and to continue to achieve this performance with the aim of doubling it by the end of the period; to achieve a 6 per cent. per annum cumulative increase in the uptake of meteorological services as measured by revenue generated from commercial services offered to the public, commerce and industry, exclusive of services to the CAA; and to achieve a 10 per cent. per annum cumulative increase in the contribution of commercial service revenue to offsetting core costs.