asked Her Majesty's Government.What arrangements exist to enable manufacturers to make representations against unfair recommendations of the Advisory Committee on National Health Service Drugs and the Advisory Committee on Borderline Substances.

From today the committees will advise manufacturers in writing of proposed unfavourable recommendations they intend to make to health ministers. Manufacturers will be given 30 days from the date of the letter of the committee concerned (or longer at the discretion of the committee) in which to make written representations against the proposed recommendations. Requests for an oral hearing will be granted by the committees if they consider that a case is of such a nature that their advice cannot properly be formulated without one. Manufacturers will have the right to be represented at any oral hearings that may be arranged. The committees will take full account of any representations received in formulating their recommendations to ministers.

asked Her Majesty's Government.What are the terms of reference of the Advisory Committee on Borderline Substances; and what are the criteria used to decide whether borderline substances should be placed on the list of products excluded from prescription under the National Health Service.

The terms of reference of the Advisory Committee on Borderline Substances (ACBS) are:

"To keep under review the principles for determining whether preparations should properly be regarded as drugs, foods, toilet preparations, or disinfectants and to give advice on the classification of particular preparations in these categories submitted to the Committee".

In making decisions about borderline substances the Secretary of State for Social Services is advised by the ACBS. This committee provides him with expert independent medical advice on the classification of so-called borderline substances and whether they should not be prescribed by general medical practitioners at NHS expense or should be prescribed for patients with specified medical conditions.The committee considers all relevant information provided by the manufacturer of the substance concerned; and the sole criterion used by the committee in reaching an opinion that a particular borderline substance should not be prescribed is that it has no therapeutic use in the treatment of disease.The Secretary of State, in deciding whether a borderline substance should be placed on Schedule 3A to the NHS (General Medical and Pharmaceutical Services) Regulations 1974 and so not be prescribable by general practitioners at NHS expense, takes the committee's advice into account and uses the same criterion. Scotland and Northern Ireland have corresponding arrangements.

asked Her Majesty's Government:How the costs of the National Health Service for 1986–87 were distributed among the main divisions of the service.

Gross expenditure on the National Health Service in the United Kingdom in 1986–87 was as follows:—

	£ million UK
Hospital, community health and related services-current	13,004
Family Practitioner services-current	4,695
Central Health and Miscellaneous Services-current	676
NHS Capital	1,210
Total	19,585

asked Her Majesty's Government:What is the percentage increase in real terms between 1978–79 expenditure and the estimate for the current year for the DHSS expenditure on (a) National Health Service and (b) social security benefits.

Expenditure for which DHSS is responsible has grown in real terms (measured by use of the gdp deflator) between 1978–79 and 1987–88 as follows:

(a) National Health Service (England only) 33 per cent.

(b) Social Security Benefits (Great Britain) 43 per cent.

asked Her Majesty's Government:What proportion of claims for supplementary benefit are processed within the statutory limit of 14 days, and what action is being taken to shorten the waiting period for claimants.

The information requested is not available and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost. Local office staff understand the need to deal with claims promptly and the time taken to process claims is monitored constantly at local, regional and national levels. For the four weeks ending 12th January 1988 the average time taken to process claims to supplementary benefit was six days.

asked Her Majesty's Government:What action they will take to enforce the covenants to keep in repair the Grade I listed building of Heveningham Hall, which they attached when they sold it to a private individual in 1981.

The following three conditions were attached to the conveyance of the Heveningham Hall: to permit public access to the principal rooms and to the gardens on at least 30 days each year unless prevented by circumstances outside the owner's control; to complete within five years the restoration of the orangery; and to use the best endeavours to complete a tree planting scheme recommended by Dame Sylvia Crowe in 1975. In addition, the owner entered into a hiring agreement whereby certain items of furniture in the house which remained in the Secretary of State's ownership were to be hired to him for a nominal rent, subject to conditions relating to their care. The conveyance did not impose any general obligation to repair and maintain the building.Resoration of the orangery was completed in 1985, but the tree planting scheme remains to be done.

asked Her Majesty's Government:Whether the assurances given on 25th November 1987 by Lord Glenarthur (H.L. Debt cols. 596–7) concerning the diversion of plutonium to illicit military uses can be reconciled with the earlier admission of the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency in his report of June 1987 that safeguards are not being implemented and that the situation is getting worse and whether they will arrange for copies of that report to be placed in the Library.

The report for 1986 by the Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency was published in July 1987. The safeguards statement in that report said: "the Secretariat did not detect any anomaly which would indicate the diversion of a significant amount of safeguarded nuclear material or misuse of nuclear facilities, equipment or non-nuclear material" … and concluded, "that nuclear material under the Agency safeguards in 1986 remained in peaceful nuclear activities or was otherwise adequately accounted for". There is nothing in the report to suggest that this situation is deteriorating. I am arranging for a copy of the report to be placed in the Library.

asked Her Majesty's Government:Whether it is their view that all the instruments relating to the INF Agreement, the treaty, the basing country agreements, and the exchange of notes, constitute treaties with the same status in international law, particularly given that the basing treaty agreements are not to be presented to the United States Senate for ratification.

:We are party to the basing country agreement of 11th December 1987 with the United States of America, the Federal Republic of Germany, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands and the exchange of notes of 21st December 1987 with the Soviet Union, both of which constitute international treaties. The internal procedures of each party for securing approval to enable it to give its formal consent to either treaty are a matter for that party alone.

asked Her Majesty's Government:How many teacher training courses have been approved.

Courses of initial teacher training in England and Wales leading to qualified teacher status require the approval of the Secretary of State. All courses now being run have been approved, including some which have been temporarily approved. However, in 1984 the Government established the Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education and asked it to carry out a review of existing approved courses and newly proposed courses against new specific criteria. In the context of that review and in the light of the advice of the Council on the courses on which it has so far made recommendations the Secretary of State has so far approved, or confirmed his previous approval of, 69 courses at 28 institutions. The council is expected to complete its review before the end of 1989.

asked Her Majesty's Government:Whether they will summarise the advice they have received from the Task Group on Assessment and Testing, and from the subject working groups, about the teaching of children under the age of 19 who have special educational needs but do not have "statements".

The working groups on science and mathematics have been asked to submit their final reports to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science by 30th June 1988, with their proposals for attainment targets, programmes of study and assessment arrangements for the age range from five to 16 years. The groups will be considering whether these national curriculum requirements in their subject will need to be modified for children with special educational needs.The report of the Task Group on Assessment and Testing was published on 12th January. It recommends that children with special educational needs should participate in its proposed national assessment system wherever they are capable of doing so; that assessment instruments should be made sufficiently flexible to accommodate them; that headteachers might have discretion to exempt them from national tests as such on medical or emotional grounds, provided suitable safeguards and alternative assessments were made; and that children entered for tests but unable to cope might be helped or have the test curtailed, the extent of this being reported as part of the assessment. My right honourable friend has welcomed the broad framework proposed in the report and will be considering these and other detailed recommendations.

asked Her Majesty's Government:What parts of the United Kingdom are designated by the European Communities as (a) less developed regions and (b) least prosperous regions.

Until the current reform of the structural funds, the term "less developed region" has not been used by the European Community. Now, however, the Commission proposes that Northern Ireland be designated as such. The United Kingdom is also pressing the cases of the Scottish Highlands and Islands and rural mid-Wales for inclusion in this category. The term "least prosperous region" is not formally used by either the European Commission or the United Kingdom.