§ Ms Dari TaylorTo ask the Secretary of State for Defence, pursuant to his answer of 19 June 1997,Official Report, column 265, if he will make a statement about the key targets for the Meteorological Office for 1997–98. [36301]
§ Mr. SpellarThe targets I gave on 19 June have not changed but two of them require clarification as follows:
Performance Target (b)—Numerical Weather Prediction Index for the UK (UKNWP). This performance target is intended to be a three year target, which will be set annually for the following three years. However, an adequate baseline is not available on which to set targets for intermediate years. The first target is therefore to improve the UKNWP index by four index points by March 2000 from a baseline of 100.00 in March 1997.
92WPerformance Target (c)—Service Quality Index (SQI). It has now been agreed that the target for each year should be directly related to the agreed customer requirements for the component services represented in the index. This means that from a baseline of 100.00 in 1996–97 the target for 1997–98 is to increase the SQI by 3.2 index points (not 1 as stated previously).