HC Deb 08 March 2000 vol 345 cc731-2W
Mr. Sarwar

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport if he will make a statement on the Millennium Festival in Scotland. [111092]

Mr. Chris Smith

The Millennium Festival in Scotland has been made possible by the Lottery distributing bodies including the Millennium Commission and the New Millennium Experience Company. They have come together to make available a fund of up to £11 million for community groups, large and small, to apply for funding. The variety of events happening in Scotland throughout the Year 2000 is considerable, from the first ever Millennium Commonwealth Youth Games in Edinburgh to a programme entitled "The Rights of Passage" in Dumfries and Galloway celebrating the notable dates in our life. The Unst Millennium Festival will be held during July 2000 and a number of projects are also happening in the Western Isles, Aberdeenshire and in Argyll and Bute—quite literally throughout the whole of Scotland.

Smaller awards are still available (up to £5,000) through the Awards for All scheme called "Awards for All … celebrating the Scottish Millennium Festival" up until the end of April 2000 and small community groups are still applying for this money. The New Millennium Experience Company has also established a website www.millenniumscotland.co.uk as part of the UK Festival website (www.festival2000.co.uk) and in the Scottish section alone there are already over 400 events which will happen in the Year 2000— a testimony to the work of the distributors and the New Millennium Experience mortgage interest rates charged by the United Kingdom's top 20 lenders, (b) the dates upon which the average of these rates changed by one quarter of one per cent. or more and (c) the date and amount of any changes he made to his Department's own standard interest rate. [113364]

Mr. Bayley

The information is in the table.

Information on changes in the interest rates charged by different lending institutions is published monthly in Financial Statistics (Table 7.1L) which is compiled by the Office for National Statistics and published by The Stationary Office. The standard interest rate that is applied to the assessment of mortgage interest to be paid with Income Support and income based Jobseekers Allowance, is based on the average of Building Society rates. The Office for National Statistics notifies the Department each month of any movement in these rates. If there is a change of one quarter of a percentage point, immediate action is taken to amend the legislation to reflect this change in the standard interest rate.

Company in ensuring that everyone Scotland has an opportunity to benefit from the celebration of the Millennium.