HC Deb 19 July 1995 vol 263 cc1268-9W
Mr. David Shaw

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a statement on the work his Department has carried out in the last 12 months in making information about his Department available to the public via the Government World Wide Web server known as "ww.open.gov.uk" and his plans and policies to make additional and new information available electronically on the server in the next 12 months. [34687]

Mrs. Angela Knight

The Treasury launched its own Internet service on 15 November 1994.

Material is provided on the Treasury's own Internet server on the World Wide Web. In addition to the World Wide Web, the same information can be obtained by electronic mail or by file transfer, FTP.

The addresses are:

  • Email mailing lists: maillist@hm-treasury.gov.uk
  • Email file transfer: ftpmail@hm-treasury.gov.uk
  • File Transfer (FTP): ftp.hm-treasury.gov.uk
  • World Wide Web: http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk

The service gives details of the Budget, including my right hon. and learned Friend's Budget statement and all the Budget news releases.

Other documents that are available include Treasury news releases, speeches, minutes of my right hon. and learned Friend's monthly monetary meetings with the Governor of the Bank of England, reports of the panel of independent forecasters and details of the fundamental expenditure review of Treasury running costs.

There is a continuing programme to add more services including articles about specific topics of economic interest.

It is anticipated that individual e-mail addresses will be allocated later this year and the dedicated post of Internet editor will shortly be filled.

The Treasury's system can be accessed directly using any one of the addresses I have set out. In addition users can find the Treasury pages either on the "www.open.gov.uk" Government World Wide Web Server or through the server of the Central Office of Information. The Treasury's pages are, in both cases, linked by hypertext.

At the moment, users can also obtain help about the service using electronic mail. The address is "info@hm-treasury.gov.uk".