§ Mr. MacleanTo ask the President of the Council if she will list the main recipients of Government expenditure on dealing with the millennium bug. [107508]
§ Mrs. BeckettThe main Government expenditure on dealing with the Millennium Bug was on departmental programmes to check, fix and test systems. Central Government Departments and agencies spent an estimated £380 million on tackling the Bug in their own systems. Detailed information about each department's programme expenditure is not held centrally.
Action 2000's budget to raise awareness and encourage action in the private sector and to ensure no material disruption across the national infrastructure forms the main expenditure on the Government's central programme. Action 2000 is a private company, set up by the Department of Trade and Industry in 1998, which receives grant from both the DTI and the Cabinet Office totalling approximately £58.4 million.
§ Mr. MacleanTo ask the President of the Council if she will list those principal individuals and organisations who gave her advice on the dangers of the millennium bug. [107494]
§ Mrs. BeckettI have received information and advice on the risks posed by the millennium bug from a considerable number of individuals and organisations in both the public and private sectors and from the governments of other countries, as well as representations from a variety of pressure groups. The advice has been both written and oral and based largely on the direct experience within these organisations of problems they have themselves experienced. I have also, of course, had advice from the Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office on further action which should be pursued.
My principal advisers on this issue have been Dr. Iain Anderson, Don Cruickshank, Gywnneth Flower and Action 2000, the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency and the Year 2000 Team in the Cabinet Office.