Written question asked by Mark Hoban (Conservative) on Friday, 7 November 2008, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Tuesday, 11 November 2008. It was answered by Pat McFadden (Labour) on Tuesday, 25 November 2008 on behalf of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform.

Home Computing Initiative

Question: To ask the Minister of State, Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform which companies participated in the home computing initiative; when each company (a) joined and (b) left the initiative; what the remit of each company was; and on what commercial terms they became part of the initiative.

Answer: The Department did not require this level of detail. However,"(a) The Office of Fair Trading have a paper record of 2,375 companies that applied to be members of the HCI Group Licence. A copy of the list of companies will be placed in the Library of each House. HCI Alliance records show that 1,265 employers actually implemented HCI schemes (These records are confidential).""(b) No companies left the initiative. They simply could not transact ““new”” schemes with Income Tax and Class 1 NIC benefits after April 2006. Schemes running prior to April 2006 were not affected by the removal of s320 benefits. All schemes in the market providing income tax benefit, will cease in 2009."The remit of each company was to provide a worthwhile benefit to staff and their families, to promote IT skills and thus to retain staff.The commercial terms were a matter for companies providing HCI schemes and their clients.

Secondary information