§ Mr. HammondTo ask the Deputy Prime Minister how many responses from each region his Department received to the soundings exercise on the level of interest in each English region in holding a referendum about an elected regional assembly by(a) 3 March, (b) 16 May and (c) 12 June. [124177]
832W
§ Mr. RaynsfordThe information for those precise dates is not available, because the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister does not have a record of the date that each response was received. I refer the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) to the answer given to the hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson) on 18 March 2003,Official Report, column 743W, which said that the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister had received over 4,500 responses by that date. On 26 March 2003 approximately 5,000 responses had been received, and on 3 April 2003 5,400 responses had been received. These figures were the results of ad hoc counts at these dates.
The final total was 8,468 responses received by 13 June 2003.