HC Deb 19 March 2001 vol 365 cc53-4W
Miss Geraldine Smith

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport if he will set out including statistical information relating as directly as possible to the constituency, the effect on the Morecambe and Lunesdale constituency of his Department's policies and actions since 2 May 1997. 149123]

Mr. Chris Smith

Morecambe and Lunesdale has received £3,023,777 from the national lottery since 2 May 1997.

In addition, a grant worth over £12,000 has been made from the new opportunities fund out of school hours child care programme. The recipient project, the Bentham community association, will provide for 16 after-school places, and 16 holiday club places for children aged 5 to 11-years-old. The places will be in two primary schools in High Bentham, Lancaster.

Sixteen millennium award winners have been identified from Morecambe and Lunesdale and between them they have received grants totalling £42,103.

English Heritage awarded a grant of £5,000 to Lancaster city council towards a development appraisal for the Victoria Pavilion (formerly the Winter Gardens), Morecambe. This is towards a total cost of £14,795 excluding VAT. The final report is awaited and is expected to provide a strategy for future use and development.

More Music in Morecambe has received three awards from the National Foundation for Youth Music. This was £8,500 for Singing Challenge, £184,000 to repair musical instruments donated to the organisation as part of Youth Music's instrument amnesty and £145,000 for the North Lancashire youth music action zone. The zone will provide a range of music opportunities to young people throughout the north-west.

The creative industries have impacted on the area and this is exemplified through the development of initiatives to support professional artists living and working in Morecambe and Lunesdale. There is now an active network of artists within Lunesdale who have benefited from support through Leader II funding in partnership with neighbouring authorities.

Lancashire Library Authority (which includes Morecambe and Lunesdale libraries) was part of a consortium which received an award of £215.992 from the DCMS/Wolfson public libraries challenge fund's 2000–01 programme to support reader development work in libraries. There were 18 partners in the consortium—North West Libraries Book Promotion Partnership—it is not possible to say what proportion of funding is being spent in the Morecambe and Lunesdale constituency.

There are of course other initiatives in the wider context of Lancashire which may have an effect on the Morecambe and Lunesdale constituency. These are: Under the Space for Sport the Arts (SSA) scheme, a £130 million capital programme made up of £75 million from the Capital Modernisation Fund and £55 million from Sport England, the Arts Council of England and the third round of the New Opportunities Fund, Lancashire and Blackburn with Darwen LEAs have been allocated £1.75 million and £1.25 million respectively towards providing improved facilities for sport and arts in primary schools which can also be used by the wider community. Liverpool, Manchester, Cumbria, Knowsley, Salford, Rochdale, Trafford, Wirral and St. Helens LEAs have also been allocated SSA funding which means a potential inward investment of up to £22 million in the north-west region for sport and arts facilities in primary schools under this programme. Morecambe and Lunesdale constituents will benefit from equipment to be purchased by the New Opportunities Fund cancer programme. Across the whole of the North West NHS Region, over £10 million will fund: nine linear accelerators; four MRI scanners; five trailers for breast screening equipment; six ultrasound machines for breast screening; and 27 pieces of x-ray breast screening equipment. By December 2000, over 2,000 teachers (approximately one in five) in the Lancashire LEA had signed up for training as part of the New Opportunities Fund ICT Training for Teachers scheme. The North West Arts Board has received an additional £493,877 from the Arts Council this year to support arts and cultural activity across the region. Creative industries projects involve a collaborative venture between Lancaster and neighbouring Objective II designated areas to establish support services and networking opportunities for creative industries SMEs.

Information on the national lottery is in accordance with the information supplied to the Department by lottery distributors for the national lottery awards database.