§ Mr. HunterTo ask the Secretary of State for Employment how many of the originally announced 20,000 community action places have been taken up.
§ Mr. Michael ForsythResponsibility for the subject of the question has been delegated to the Employment Service Agency under its chief executive. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.
Letter from M.E.G. Fogden to Mr. Andrew Hunter, dated 5 November 1993:
As the Employment Service is an Executive Agency the Secretary of State has asked me to write to you direct to respond to your Parliamentary Question to him about the number of Community Action places currently taken up. This is something which falls within the responsibilities delegated to me as Chief Executive of the Agency.579WIt may be helpful if I explain a little about the background to Community Action and our plans for the provision of the announced places.Community Action is a programme to help Icing-term unemployed people back into work, by providing work experience on projects of benefit to local communities. In the Spring Budget the then Chancellor committed £113.5m, sufficient to provide 20,000 places and help 60,000 people in a full year. Following extensive consultation and development of this new programme, to ensure quality and value for money, the first places became available at the end of July.Community Action opportunities will be delivered, in the main, by voluntary/charitable organisations and my people in the Employment Service Regional Offices are responsible for contracting with them. The contracting round is now well advanced with contracts already awarded for over half of the places. About 1,000 places have been taken up by long-term unemployed people so far and numbers are increasing steadily. The programme is planned to build to 20,000 filled places by the end of March.As decided by the Administration Committee of the House of Commons, Chief Executive replies to written Parliamentary Questions will now be published in the Official Report, I will also place a copy of this letter in the Library of the House.
§ Mr. Gordon PrenticeTo ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will encourage TECs to include on their boards elected representatives from their local district or borough council.
§ Miss WiddecombeEach training and enterprise council has up to five board members who are drawn from outside the private sector covering such interests as education, the public sector and voluntary organisations.
§ Mr. HunterTo ask the Secretary of State for Employment what is the budget for each TEC in England in 1993–94.
§ Miss WiddecombeThe following tables show the programme budget agreed for each training and enterprise council in England for 1993–94:
580W
TEC budgets 1993–94 £ Hampshire 35,630,129 Heart of England 11,885,173 Isle of Wight 4,334,721 Kent 39,354,811 Milton Keynes/North Bucks 10,124,085 Surrey 14,079,069 Sussex 26,947,238 Thames Valley Enterprise 27,447,439 SOUTH EAST TOTAL 169,802,665 AZTEC 14,447,052 CENTEC 28,464,545 CILNTEC 26,796,372 LETEC 44,436,432 North London 21,830,902 North West London 13,378,939 SOLOTEC 21,923,607 South Thames 43,742,853 West London 19,470,586 LONDON TOTAL 234,491,288 Bedfordshire 13,396,288 Cambridgeshire 7,864,985 Essex 34,790,593 Greater Peterborough 11,059,274 Hertfordshire 26,155,368 Norfolk-Waveney 25,868,017 Suffolk 16,926,462 EASTERN TOTAL 136,060,987 581W
£ Avon 32,212,180 Devon-Cornwall 59,261,247 Dorset 18,656,520 Gloucestershire 15,213,499 Somerset 13,995,143 Wiltshire 15,900,438 SOUTH WEST TOTAL 155,239,027 Birmingham 48,195,645 Central England 11,807,673 Coventry-Warwickshire 31,058,998 Dudley 12,919,763 HAWTEC 13,658,026 Sandwell 13,438,531 Shropshire 14,913,449 Staffordshire 36,957,718 Walsall 10,517,059 Wolverhampton 13,059,220 WEST MIDLANDS TOTAL 206,526,082 Greater Nottinghamshire 24,308,666 Leicester 27,047,479 Lincolnshire 26,886,790 North Derbyshire 11,962,736 North Nottinghamshire 17,580,410 Northants 14,450,582 South Derbyshire 19,203,242 EAST MIDLANDS TOTAL 141,439,905 Humberside 39,256,668 North Yorkshire 18,750,543 Wakefield 14,020,400 Sheffield 28,518,555 Rotherham 13,954,615 Barnsley/Doncaster 31,163,721 Leeds 25,028,682 Bradford 22,208,611 Calderdale/Kirklees 29,153,032 YORKSHIRE AND HUMBERSIDE TOTAL 222,054,727 Bolton/Bury 15,765,677 Manchester 42,513,454 METROTEC 12,136,378 Oldham 9,724,649 Rochdale 10,223,115 South and East Cheshire 15,160,338 Stockport 11,860,770 NORTH West (GM) TOTAL 117,384,381 CEWTEC 24,750,760 Cumbria 18,823,066 ELTEC 20,350,366 LAWTEC 31,446,744 Merseyside 64,817,830 NORMID 16,318,557 QUALITEC 11,894,165 NORTH WEST (W) TOTAL 188,401,488 Durham 33,523,129 Northumberland 16,719,609 Teeside 38,187,466 Tyneside 49,473,678 Wearside 22,607,990 NORTHERN TOTAL 160,511,872
§ Mr. HunterTo ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will list the providers of Training for Work which have contracts with five or more TECs in England and Wales.
§ Miss WiddecombeThe information sought is not held centrally. Training and enterprise councils themselves decide which training providers to contract with.
§ Mr. Gordon PrenticeTo ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will list the amount held in reserves by each of the training and enterprise councils in England;
(2) if he will list those training and enterprise councils in England where internal audit arrangements are not currently in place.
§ Miss WiddecombeI will write to the hon. Member as soon as possible.
§ Mr. Gordon PrenticeTo ask the Secretary of State for Employment if he will list those training and enterprise councils in England where auditors have found defects in accounting control systems.
§ Miss WiddecombeI will write to the hon. Member as soon as possible.