§ Mr. David NicholsonTo ask the President of the Board of Trade if he will list those areas in the United Kingdom originally designated for European Community objective 5b assistance but subsequently removed from such designation, giving the size and population of each area.
§ Mr. SainsburyIn its announcement of 21 December 1993, the European Commission proposed an objective 5b population for the United Kingdom of 2.816 million. It did not designate precise areas but invited the Government to define in detail areas within the population total. The Commission subsequently increased this total to 2.841 million.
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.
Where an adjustment led to a net reduction in the proposed population for an area it was in the range from 2 to 11 per cent. The sum of these adjustments led to a total net reduction of 136,000.
There were no implications for the United Kingdom's financial allocation under objective 5b.