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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Ouseley on 2016-09-05.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many youth centres have been closed since 2010 and what assessment they have made of the impact of those closures on young people.

Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen

It is the responsibility of local authorities to decide how to allocate funding for youth services, according to local need. Individual local authorities would be best placed to advise on any changes there have been to the number of youth centres in their local area.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Ouseley on 2016-09-05.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many youth service staff posts have been removed since 2010 and what assessment have they made of the affect of the reduced provision for young people.

Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen

It is the responsibility of local authorities to decide how to allocate funding for youth services and as part of this, youth service staff posts, according to local need. There is an existing statutory duty on local authorities through Education Act 2006 (Section 507B) to secure, as far as is practicable, sufficient services and activities to improve the wellbeing of young people. Individual local authorities would be best placed to advise on any changes there have been to the number of youth service staff posts in their local area.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Ouseley on 2016-09-05.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what purpose is served by the National Citizen Service; who benefits from its provision; and what diversity data is available relating to that service.

Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen

NCS was created to help build a more responsible, more cohesive, more engaged society. The government is committed to providing a place on NCS for every young person who wants one.

Social mix is at the core of National Citizen Service and all young people, regardless of background, are supported to take part in the programme.

In 2014, 17% of NCS participants were eligible for free school meals, compared with around 8% of young people of the same age in the general population.

The national picture of NCS shows that young people from disadvantaged and minority ethnic backgrounds are well represented. The latest evaluation showed that 30% of NCS participants were from Black, Mixed or Asian backgrounds compared with 19% of the general population.

The 2014 evaluation demonstrates that NCS graduates are more confident leaders and decision-makers. 7 in 10 NCS graduates felt more confident about getting a job, and more than 9 in 10 graduates felt NCS helped them develop useful skills for the future. Data from the summer 2014 programme showed that participants who were eligible for free school meals generally showed larger increases in personal resilience than others.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Ouseley on 2016-09-05.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many individuals have been tasered by the police in England since 2012 and what protected diversity characteristics applied to each individual.

Baroness Williams of Trafford

The Home Office publish police use of TASER ® X26 statistics annually on GOV.UK. These releases contain statistics on police use of TASER ® X26 from the 43 Home Office police forces in England and Wales up to 2015. Protected diversity characteristics do not form part of this collection. The table below shows total police use of TASER ® X26 across England and Wales since 2012.

	2012	2013	2014	2015	Total use of TASER ® X26 since 2012
Number of times TASER ® X26 was used	8,161	10,380	10,095	10,401	39,037

Source: Home Office

Following the former Chief Constable David Shaw Use of Force Data review, published in July 2016, a new data collection is being implemented by the police which will allow for some protected characteristic data from 2016. We expect the data collected to be published locally by police forces and a sub-set of the data to be included in the mandatory annual data return for forces in 2017/18 for publication as Official Statistics. The current TASER publications can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/use-of-taser-statistics

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Ouseley on 2016-09-05.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the cost of bed-blocking in NHS hospitals in each of the past three years and what plans they have to invest in social care services to reduce those costs.

Lord Prior of Brampton

To date, the Department has made no formal estimate of the costs of delayed discharge to the National Health Service. However, the Department and NHS Improvement are working together to implement Lord Carter’s recommendations on hospital productivity. As part of this, the two organisations are working with providers to develop a richer dataset around all aspects of the patient pathway, including estimates of the cost of delayed discharge.

At the same time, the Department continues to work closely with the NHS and local government to help local areas improve transfers out of hospital, share best practice, and reduce unnecessary delays. We are funding the NHS’s own plan for the future with £10 billion and we are giving local authorities access to up to £3.5 billion of new support for adult social care by 2019/20.

Since April 2015, the Government’s £5.3 billion Better Care Fund has provided much needed investment in better integrated care through locally developed plans and by putting resources where the local NHS and social services think they are needed. Alongside this we are working with local areas to improve the transfer of patients back into the communities.

In 2016-17, there is a new Better Care Fund requirement on local areas to develop a clear, focused action plan for managing delays, including locally agreed targets. The requirement is designed to reduce delays across the health and care system.