§ Mr. Andrew TurnerTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills if she will list the ILA providers against whom complaints which remain unresolved were(a) received by Capita and (b) passed to her Department, showing the number of complaints. [49880]
§ John Healey[holding answer 15 April 2002]: Capita notified the Department of some 8,600 complaints relating to non-compliance with the ILA programme rules and ILA accounts being accessed without the ILA account holder's consent. Following a data cleansing exercise some 1,400 complaints have been removed relating to complaints cleared, correction of duplicate complaints 635W received by, for example, telephone and letter and correction of other anomalies. The remaining 7,200 unresolved complaints relate to 658 registered learning providers. It is not possible to list the 656 Individual Learning Account (ILA) providers as this information is treated as commercially sensitive.
The revised total complaints figure is some 17,100.
§ Mr. Andrew TurnerTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what responsibility her Department had to put the learndirect database into a form in which it could be used to accredit ILA providers; and when, and what, action has been taken to give effect to that responsibility. [49881]
§ John Healey[holding answer 15 April 2002]: The learndirect database holds details of over 500,000 learning opportunities. The intention is to work towards a comprehensive coverage of all UK learning opportunities. To have their course included on the database providers simply apply via the learndirect website. There is no charge for this service. Inclusion on the database does not imply endorsement, quality assurance or accreditation of providers or their provision and there are no plans to change this approach.
ILA providers were encouraged to list their courses on the learning opportunities website to ensure that Individual Learning Account holders could get information and advice about the learning that was available through learndirect. However, this did not constitute an ILA accreditation process. Full integration of the ILA and learndirect databases was not pursued because of the technical difficulties surrounding data incompatibility.
§ Mr. SheermanTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills how much money was claimed in total for individual learning account payments of more than £200 in the period from September 2000 to 20 October 2000; how many claims for ILAs in that period were for amounts(a) less than £200, (b) in the range £201 to £500, (c) in the range £501 to £1,000 and (d) above £1,000; how many providers submitted individual claims for more than £1,000; and if she will make a statement. [51960]
§ John HealeyBetween September 2000 and 20 October 2000, Individual Learning Account discounts totalling £18,389,766.66 were paid to learning providers who had claimed a discount of more than £200 for a single account holder. A further breakdown is provided that, in addition, includes the number of payments made to learning providers who had claimed a discount of less than £200 for a single account holder.
Range Number of learning episodes Less than £200 30,590 £200 to £500 1,390 £501 to £1,000 2,300 More than £1,000 6,558 During the same period 164 learning providers submitted at least one claim of more than £1,000 for a single account holder.
636WFollowing 20 October 2000 a number of appeals made in relation to the introduction of the cap on the per cent. discount were upheld. As a result, a further £3,459,209 was paid to learning providers.