§ Dr. CableTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if she will list her Department's schemes and services which have been initiated to assist British businesses; when they were opened; what expenditure has been committed; how many companies have received assistance from each scheme; and how much has been expended by way of assistance to business by each scheme to date. [113217]
§ Ms HewittThe information necessary to answer this question is not held centrally on a database and retrieving it would incur disproportionate cost.
§ Dr. CableTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how much her Department has expended on advertising and promoting each scheme and service for assisting British business since 1997. [113219]
§ Ms HewittThe information necessary to answer this question is not held centrally on a database and retrieving it would incur disproportionate cost.
§ Dr. CableTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what procedures are in place for measuring the effectiveness of her Department's schemes and services which have been initiated to assist British business. [113222]
§ Ms HewittThe DTI routinely commissions a programme of independent evaluations of the impact of its business support programmes, the results of which are normally published in full. Individual evaluations are subject to peer review through a specialised expert committee to ensure that the methodology used is rigorous and appropriate, and that conclusions are soundly based. Following the DTI's recent review of business support, new and improved monitoring arrangements are also being put in place, using a balanced scorecard approach, to provide ongoing information about the extent to which new business support products are achieving their objectives and offering value for money.
Further information about the Department's evaluation procedures is available on its web site at http://www.dti.gov.uk/about/evaluation, together with the results of past evaluations.