HC Deb 21 July 1994 vol 247 cc547-8W
Mr. Cohen

To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many subject access requests were received by his Department involving access to national insurance records in the last year; how many subject access requests were received by each Scottish police force in the last year; what estimate he has as to the percentage of those requests which were enforced subject access requests; and if he will make a statement concerning his policy towards enforced subject access.

The Department received over 1,800 applications of which 1,600 were applications to categories 3 to 7. A large number of these applications did not contain the documentation necessary to support the claims and the Department wrote to the producers concerned giving them an additional period of time to provide this documentation. Provided these producers respond timeously to the Department's request it is anticipated that producers will receive notification of the quota allocations during September 1994.

Mr. Maclennan

To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will consider a partial sheep quota allocation and partial payment to those sheep producers with outstanding applications to the national reserve.

Sir Hector Monro

[holding answer 19 July 1994]: I have considered the possibility of making partial allocations of sheep annual premium quota from the 1993 national reserve to allow partial payments of premium to be made. With more than half the applicants to the reserve still having to establish the validity of their claims it is impossible to estimate whether allocations will have to be scaled back and if so, what that scaling factor will be. Any partial allocations at this stage would therefore have to be very small, and since we currently expect to make the final allocations in two months' time I do not propose to make this additional step, which could in fact delay those final allocations.