asked Her Majesty's Government:Whether they hold the Palestine Liberation Organisation responsible for terrorist actions, and if so (i) whether they will specify those actions and the years in which they took place, and (ii) whether they took those actions into account in taking their decision to have no official contact with the PLO.

The PLO is a broad-based umbrella organisation. Some of its component elemets have a deplorable terrorist record. Individual terrorist acts associated with PLO groups, particularly in the 1970s, are too numerous to list. We do maintain contacts with the PLO at official level, and the then Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Hurd) met Mr. Farouq Qaddumi in 1983; but the PLO's failure unequivocally to renounce violence is a major obstacle to our developing contacts at Cabinet level.

asked Her Majesty's Government:What objectives they have agreed with other NATO governments for future negotiations with the Soviet Union on the reduction of conventional weapons in Europe.

NATO governments' objectives for conventional arms control negotiations were set out in the statement on conventional arms control issued during the NATO summit on 2nd-3rd March, a copy of which is in the Library.

asked Her Majesty's Government:What changes are being negotiated to existing reciprocal social security agreements with Australia, the Republic of Ireland and Cyprus.

Negotiations are taking place with Australia, the Republic of Ireland and Cyprus to amend the existing social security conventions where necessary. In particular, the renegotiation will take account of recent changes in the social security legislation of the countries concerned, including the UK. The detailed changes must be confidential until agreement has been reached with the governments concerned.

asked Her Majesty's Government:Whether, pursuant to their replies on 9th February, they will publish further details of reciprocal social security agreements with Canada, including the date the agreement was made and the effect it will have on retired British pensioners resident in Canada.

Full details of the social security agreement between the United Kingdom and Canada are published in the following statutory instruments; 1959, No. 2216; 1962, No. 173; 1973, No. 763; and 1977, No. 1873. The agreement has no effect on retired British pensioners resident in Canada.

asked Her Majesty's Government:Whether there will be any adverse effect on the income of retained firefighters who are otherwise unemployed as a result of proposed changes in the law; and what is the present remuneration of retained firefighters, whether employed or unemployed.

Retained firefighters who work on average less than 24 hours a week will have the first £15 of their weekly earnings disregarded and the long service bounty treated as capital in income support and housing benefit. Those currently in receipt of supplementary benefit who might otherwise experience a shortfall in their benefit income at the point of change will have the level of state support maintained by transitional payments. The amount of housing benefit payable to retained firefighters not entitled to income support will depend on their circumstances and the level of their rent.Retained firefighters receive remuneration in three forms; an annual retaining fee, which on appointment is £975 and rises after three years to £1,062; a turn out fee of £7·20 and other fees for remaining on duty, attendance and drill nights; and a long-service bounty scheme payable in stages and rising from £492 after 10 years' service to £933 after 35 years' service. These rates relate to the rank of basic firefighter; no details are available of individual earnings.

asked Her Majesty's Government:Whether they are funding research into the possibility of improving take-off and landing performance of aircraft by variable camber wings and variable angles of wing incidence and whether any experiments have taken place.

The most significant improvement to the performance of civil transport aircraft in the take-off and landing phases is through development of conventional high lift devices such as slotted flaps and slats. At British Aerospace a series of mainly experimental research programmes into these devices was partly funded by the Department of Trade and Industry between 1982 and 1987. No advantage would be gained by the complication of variable angle of wing incidence relative to the fuselage. Work was done in the early 1980s on a variable camber mechanism designed to control transonic flow development, for application to a military fighter. However, this would not have given any benefit at low speed.

asked Her Majesty's Government:What will be the impact of the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Robert Weeks (2nd March 1987) on persons detained at the Secretary of State's pleasure in Northern Ireland, and more generally on those serving indeterminate sentences in all United Kingdom jurisdictions; and whether new provision will be made for periodic reviews by an independent tribunal capable of ordering release.

The implications of the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in the Weeks case are still under consideration. The court clearly distinguished Mr. Weeks' life sentence from those which were imposed on other people because of the gravity of their offences. It found that, "the clearly stated purpose for which Mr. Weeks' sentence was imposed, taken together with the particular facts pertaining to the offence for which he was convicted … placed the sentence in the special category". The judgment therefore does not apply generally to persons serving indeterminate sentences.

asked Her Majesty's Government:Which police forces held Home Office remand prisoners overnight in custody on 1st March 1988; and how many were held by each force.

On 1st March, 1,535 prisoners, most of whom would have been on remand, were held in police cells in England and Wales. The number held by each police force is listed below:

asked Her Majesty's Government:How many men and women remand prisoners respectively have been kept overnight in police custody on every day since 1st January 1988.

The number of male and female prisoners, most of whom would have been on remand, who were held in police custody in England and Wales on each night from 1st January 1988 onward was as follows:

asked Her Majesty's Government:Whether they came to an agreement with Hammersmith and Fulham Council in 1986, whereby the council was to complete and submit Form CLE 2/6 in respect of 2,654 unlicensed vehicles, and their owners were to be prosecuted.

There was no formal agreement between the council and the department. In response to a request in 1986 the department's London enforcement office provided the council with forms to enable their staff dealing with abandoned vehicles to report to the department any apparently unlicensed vehicles sighted in the course of their duties.Separate figures on the number of offence reports received from the council as a result and of consequent prosecutions or out-of-court settlements are not available. In all, the London enforcement office brought to book 64,000 VED evaders in 1986.

asked Her Majesty's Government:Whether they will publish the criteria on which the Civil Service London weighting figures are based.

The criteria are as follows: London weighting is paid at the same rates to Grades below Grade 3 but with lower payments to those aged under 18. There are three London weighting areas: the inner zone is within five miles; the intermediate zone is within 10 miles; and the outer zone is from 10 to within 18 miles from Charing Cross.

asked Her Majesty's Government:What proportion of civil servants are located outside London, and how many have been relocated since 1979.

About four-fifths of the Civil Service is located outside Greater London. Since 1979 some 5,560 Civil Service posts have been transferred from London under the Government's dispersal programme. In addition, departments have, on their own initiative, relocated well over 6,000 posts out of London and the South East.