§ Mr. BercowTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what the mandate of the EU Advisory Committee on cancer prevention is; how many times it has met over the last 12 months; what the United Kingdom representation on it is; what the annual cost of its work is to public funds; if he will list the items currently under its consideration; if he will take steps to increase its accountability and transparency to Parliament; and if he will make a statement. [63635]
§ Ms BlearsThe Europe Against Cancer (EAC) programme was set up under Article 129 of the Maastricht Treaty. The programme has a management committee made up of representatives from each member state. The management committee has met once in the last year. The costs to public funds were minimal, meetings last one day, the Commission pay the travel costs of nominated representatives, UK departments are required to pay subsistence and UK travel costs.
The programme is currently funding eight projects: European network of cancer registries; European prospective investigation into cancer and nutrition; European network on smoking prevention; European network on young people and tobacco; European cervical cancer screening network; European breast cancer network; education, science and quality assurance in radiotherapy and a project to evaluate the European code against cancer.
The overarching European public health action programme of which the EAC programme is one part ends on 31 December 2002. The new European public health action programme has been agreed under conciliation procedures and is expected shortly.
Together with member states, the Commission is currently conducting a review to bring existing legislation on the conduct of comitology committees into line with Council Decision 1999/468/EC, to
simplify the requirements for the exercise of implementing powers conferred on the Commission".As an obligation to this decision, the Commission undertook to publish an annual report on the working of committees. The first report was deposited in the Libraries of both Houses on 26 February 2002 (Com (2001) 783 Final.
572WAs part of the review process, the UK Government have encouraged the Commission to produce and maintain an electronic database of every comitology committee, its agendas and recent actions, to be accessible through its website.