§ Mr. BercowTo ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department if she will make a statement on the saving to public funds to be achieved by her Department's Private Finance Initiative contract with the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency to digitise and make available on the internet the population censuses which are open to the public. [14894]
§ Ms Rosie WintertonThe programme to make digital copies of 100-year-old census returns available on the world wide web is part of the Government's policy to use IT to provide integrated, imaginative and convenient public services, with a target of making all Government services available electronically by 2005. Under a PFI contract, funding for the census digitisation is being provided by QinetiQ, formerly part of the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency. The project is intended to be self-financing through the sale of transcriptions and digital images of census pages.