§ Mr. Nigel JonesTo ask the President of the Board of Trade what instructions have been issued to relevant regional offices of Government to indicate reductions in the population coverage of European objective 5b in their areas when compared to recommendations issued by the European Commission; what is his assessment of the reduction in grant, both for each area and for all affected areas, if the population coverage is reduced by 12 per cent.; and when he expects to make a statement on the reallocation of surplus grant resulting from the reduction in population coverage; and under what provisions of the structural fund regulations this can be achieved.
742W
§ Mr. Sainsbury[holding answer 18 January 1994]: In an announcement of 21 December the European Commission proposed an objective 5b population total for the United Kingdom of 2.816 million. It did not recommend precise areas for designation but invited the Government to define in detail areas within this population total.
In order to accommodate a small number of additional areas originally proposed by the Government for objective 2, and in order to express the population of all the areas concerned on a different statistical basis requested by the Commission, it was necessary to propose a marginal adjustment to many of the areas originally proposed for objective 5b.
Since at the time of these adjustments no areas had yet been designated other parts of the hon. Gentleman's question do not arise. The overall population coverage was not reduced and there were no implications for the United Kingdom's financial allocation under objective 5b.