§ Mr. David StewartTo ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement about the key performance targets he has set for Fisheries Research Services for 1997–98. [12073]
§ Mr. ChisholmFor this, the first year as an agency, I have set the following targets.
Delivery of service
- To carry out a customer satisfaction survey.
- To achieve 70 per cent. of the milestones agreed for R and D projects.
- To maintain, pro rata, FRS's publication output.
Quality of service
- To submit, as required for accreditation of chemical measurements, the quality manual and documentation to the United Kingdom accreditation service.
- To review the work of the Freshwater Fisheries Laboratory through a visiting group and to report by December 1997.
Financial targets
- To carry out the agreed Scottish Office programme within the agreed costs.
- To recover full economic costs from external customers.
- To establish the proportional administrative costs of FRS and to compare them with those of other agencies.
- To establish the cost per day of the FRS research vessels and to compare them with those of similar research vessels.
- To establish the unit cost of fish disease inspections and to compare with other similar programmes.
These various measures or tasks should provide a solid basis for evaluating performance over the medium term, by establishing a time series for certain indicators and by the requirement for regular external scrutiny, whether by customers or scientific peers.