§ Mr. Charles ClarkeTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what assessment he has made of the advantage of using the settlement size definition in measuring the sparsity of rural populations for the standard spending assessment in England and Wales; and if he will make a statement. [52351]
§ Ms Armstrong[holding answer 27 July 1998]: In our discussions with the Local Government Association on possible changes in the SSA formulae for next year, no proposals have been put to us that there should be a change from the way in which sparsity of population is measured currently. If, in future rounds of these discussions, such a case is put forward, we should be willing to discuss it with local government representatives.