The text on this page has been created from Hansard archive content, it may contain typographical errors.
Mr. David Stewart
To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement about the key performance targets he has set for Fisheries Research Services for 1997–98. [12073]
Mr. Chisholm
For this, the first year as an agency, I have set the following targets.
Delivery of service
- To carry out a customer satisfaction survey.
- To achieve 70 per cent. of the milestones agreed for R and D projects.
- To maintain, pro rata, FRS's publication output.
Quality of service
- To submit, as required for accreditation of chemical measurements, the quality manual and documentation to the United Kingdom accreditation service.
- To review the work of the Freshwater Fisheries Laboratory through a visiting group and to report by December 1997.
Financial targets
- To carry out the agreed Scottish Office programme within the agreed costs.
- To recover full economic costs from external customers.
- To establish the proportional administrative costs of FRS and to compare them with those of other agencies.
- To establish the cost per day of the FRS research vessels and to compare them with those of similar research vessels.
- To establish the unit cost of fish disease inspections and to compare with other similar programmes.
These various measures or tasks should provide a solid basis for evaluating performance over the medium term, by establishing a time series for certain indicators and by the requirement for regular external scrutiny, whether by customers or scientific peers.