Skip to main content

Written Parliamentary Questions: 9th December 2005.

Criminal Justice and Public Order Act
Q: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will bring forward proposals to amend section 34 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 to permit the courts to draw adverse inferences from the failure to mention facts in post-charge interviews for terror-related offences. (John Hemming)

A:A detainee may not be interviewed about an offence after they have been charged with it or informed that they will be prosecuted for it unless the interview is necessary for the reasons set out in paragraph 16.5 of PACE Code C (Detention, treatment and questioning of persons by police officers).

We are considering whether such provision best suits the needs of achieving a successful outcome to an investigation and intend to publish a consultation paper on this issue in spring 2006. That paper will also consider the existing caution provided for in Code C, paragraph 16.5 and the potential for extending that to the caution given to a suspect during the pre-charge of the investigation. (Hazel Blears, Minister of State (Policing, Security and Community Safety), Home Office)

UK Air Passengers
Q: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what the annual reduction in air fares has been in the UK since 2000 for the (a) business, (b) leisure and (c) no-frills carrier sectors; and what assessment he has made of these figures in relation to the forecast assumptions contained in the Air Transport White Paper. (John Hemming)

A:The average fare paid on international no frills flights has dropped by 16 per cent. over the 2000–04 period. Other international leisure fares (excluding those included as part of a holiday package) have only fallen by 2 per cent. Average fares paid by international business passengers have fallen by 20 per cent. between 2000 and 2004, but this in part reflects the relative weakness of the long haul sector after 2000, and reduced use of premium cabins by business passengers on short haul flights. The headline reduction in fares in the national forecasts supporting the White Paper was on average a 1 per cent. fall per annum in real terms over the period 1998–2020. (Karen Buck, Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport)

UK Air Passengers
Q: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what estimate he has made of the change in United Kingdom passenger numbers in (a) 2010, (b) 2020 and (c) 2030 if air fares were to remain constant in real terms compared with 2005. (John Hemming)

A:The only estimate that has been made was an illustrative sensitivity test included in Air Traffic Forecasts for the United Kingdom produced by DfT in 2000. This considered the impact of fares remaining constant in real terms throughout the 1998–2020 period in place of the central assumption of a 1 per cent. annual decline. This sensitivity test showed that passenger traffic at UK airports in 2020 would fall from the central forecast of 401 million to 301 million. However, this was based on the very simple assumption that a 10 per cent. rise in fares would lead to a 10 per cent. fall in demand. In practice, rising real incomes at home and overseas are likely to have a substantial positive impact on the demand for air travel. (Karen Buck, Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport)

UK Air Passengers
Q: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport what the increase in UK passengers using no-frills carriers has been since 1998. (John Hemming)

A:Airlines commonly referred to as no-frills carriers include Ryanair, easyJet, bmibaby, Jet2, MyTravelLite, Thomsonfly and flyGlobespan.

In 1998 the total number of passengers using the no-frills carriers listed above (together with Debonair, which ceased operations in 1999) at UK airports was 7.7 million. This had risen to 53.4 million by the end of 2004. The number of UK based passengers travelling on these carriers rose from 4.4 million in 1998 to 37.9 million in 2004. (Karen Buck, Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Transport)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Its the long genes that stop working

People who read my blog will be aware that I have for some time argued that most (if not all) diseases of aging are caused by cells not being able to produce enough of the right proteins. What happens is that certain genes stop functioning because of a metabolic imbalance. I was, however, mystified as to why it was always particular genes that stopped working. Recently, however, there have been three papers produced: Aging is associated with a systemic length-associated transcriptome imbalance Age- or lifestyle-induced accumulation of genotoxicity is associated with a generalized shutdown of long gene transcription and Gene Size Matters: An Analysis of Gene Length in the Human Genome From these it is obvious to see that the genes that stop working are the longer ones. To me it is therefore obvious that if there is a shortage of nuclear Acetyl-CoA then it would mean that the probability of longer Genes being transcribed would be reduced to a greater extent than shorter ones.