I can advise you that The Insolvency Service has concluded no such contracts for the period 1997-2002.

Expenditure on information contracts in the financial year 1997-98 has so far amounted to £51,980.00.

This figure is made up of the following three contracts:

B & B Press, to the value of £49,030, for the design and printing of information leaflets for Industrial Tribunal users;

Unicorn Press, to the value of £1,605, for customer information leaflets eg, Introduction to the Industrial Tribunals; and

Trafford Print, to the value of £1345, for the printing of Citizen Charter Statements for the Industrial Tribunals and the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) and EAT Appeal leaflets.

I hope this is helpful.

Margaret Beckett, President of the Board of Trade, has asked me to reply to your Parliamentary Question about contracts let by the Radiocommunications Agency for information, promotional, marketing and opinion surveys.

2. The Agency has let two contracts. The first with MORI Ltd for a series of customer satisfaction surveys (01/11/94-30/03/98) valued at £151,400, and the second with Meeting Deadlines Ltd for a series of regional seminars and road shows (01/01/97-31/12/99) valued at £164,660.

19 Mar 1998 : Column: 711

For 1997/98, the value of contracts of an information, promotional, marketing or opinion survey nature amounts to £323k to date. Major contributors to this total are:

Central Office of Information £107k

Golley Slater £97k

Zenith Media £21k

Martin Hopkins £13k

Research & Marketing £12k

The remaining £73k is accounted for by small contracts with 27 different organisations.

There is no firm forward commitment to such contracts by Companies House for the years 1998/99 et seq.

NWML currently has no plans to enter into any contract of this kind in the years in question.

The contracts concluded by the Patent Office for the years 1997/98 to 2001/01 are:

i. a media relations contract with Peter Prowse Associates. This contract comes to an end in March 1998 and has in this financial year cost £65,000;

ii. a contract with Advance Multimedia Ltd for support of our marketing operations. This contract comes to an end in May 1998 and has in this financial year cost £95,000;

iii. a contract with Nimtech Ltd for the organisation of workshops and seminars on intellectual property rights. This contract comes to an end in May 1998 and has in this financial year cost £70,000;

iv. a contract with Mid Wales Litho Ltd for the printing and supply of promotional literature. This contract, which runs until April 2000, has cost £150,000 in this financial year and is expected to cost £175,000 in the years 1998-99 and 1999-2000.

The media relations contract is currently being retendered. The contracts with Nimtech Ltd and Advance Multimedia Ltd are to be retendered as a single contract later in the year.

From the information retained on staff in the radio- communications Agency, the estimated number and percentage who attended university is as follows:

Of the above staff, one Grade 7 equivalent and one Senior Civil Servant attended Cambridge University and one Senior Civil Servant attended Oxford University.

I have been asked to reply to your question to the President of the Board of Trade regarding the number of civil servants who attended university.

Companies House personnel records show that 52 staff, at all levels, attended university, of which one attended Cambridge. This is approximately 5% of total staff numbers.

Records are not maintained by grades and to identify those in former grades HEO and above could only be undertaken at disproportionate cost.

Band B HEO Level: 2(6.3%) out of 32

Band C SEO+G7: 7(50%) out of 14

SCS: 1(100%) out of 1

Band B and C: Nil out of 36

SCS: 1(100%) out of 1.

I regret that the information held by The Service on its staff is not maintained in a form which would provide the details you have asked for except at disproportionate cost.

19 Mar 1998 : Column: 713

Staff who attended university:

B3: 12 (21%)

C1: 24 (56%)

C2: 124 (94%)

D1: 2 (67%)

Staff gaining degrees at Oxford or Cambridge University:

B3: 1 (2%)

C1: 2 (5%)

C2: 10 (8%).

The information is not easily available in the form requested and could only be retrieved at disproportionate cost.

From the information retained on staff in the Radio- communications Agency, it is not possible to identify how many received their schooling in the independent school sector.

No information on schooling is maintained on Companies House personnel database and to derive this information otherwise could be undertaken only at disproportionate cost.

ETS could obtain this information only at disproportionate cost.

I regret that the information held by the Service on its staff is not maintained in a form which would provide the details you have asked for except at disproportionate cost.

19 Mar 1998 : Column: 714

The information is not easily available in the form requested and could be retrieved only at disproportionate cost.

From the information retained on staff in the Radiocommunications Agency, there are no staff who fall into these categories.

In response, over the last five years only one person having attended Cambridge University has joined Companies House. The individual concerned was from the private sector.

19 Mar 1998 : Column: 715

I regret that the information held by The Service on its staff is not maintained in a form which would provide the details you have asked for except at disproportionate cost. I should explain, however, that all new entrants to The Service are recruited on merit in fair and open competition in accordance with the Civil Service Commissioners' Recruitment Code. The Service does not directly recruit staff for the fast stream.

Over the past five years we have recruited from Oxford or Cambridge the following numbers:

1996: 3(14%)

1997: 2(4%)

All were recruited through regular civil service procedures.

The information is not easily available in the form requested and could be retrieved only at disproportionate cost.

ETS was established as an executive agency within the Department of Trade and Industry on 1 April 1997. Since that date we recruited 63 staff to permanent posts in administrative grades in the Agency. All staff were recruited in line with Office of Public Service principles of openness, fairness and on the basis of merit. None was recruited to a post requiring a university degree. We are not aware of any new recruits who attended Oxford or Cambridge Universities. There would be a disproportionate cost in researching this information in full.

Previous to our establishment as an Agency, recruitment was under the authority of the Department and we do not have separate records for that period.