Category: Speeches

Roger Godsiff – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Roger Godsiff on 2016-02-26.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment his Department has made of the appropriateness of the length of time junior doctors will be off shift following a nine or 10 hour night shift in the illustrative rotas for junior doctors, published by NHS Employers on 18 February 2016.

Ben Gummer

The new safeguards around shift working are based upon the UK Working Time Regulations, which set out minimum rest requirements between shifts. The new contract goes significantly further than these requirements. It reduces the number of consecutive shifts of nine or 10 hours length to eight from the current 12, with a 48 hour rest break, with further restrictions on consecutive long shifts or night shifts. This was agreed as reasonable with the British Medical Association. The illustrative rotas reflect these safeguards.

01/01/2023
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts on 2016-03-23.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many National Insurance numbers were in use at the end of each of the last five years for which records are available.

Lord Freud

The information requested is not available and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.

01/01/2023
Philip Davies – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Philip Davies on 2016-05-04.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average cost to the public purse was of (a) a district judge and (b) bench of magistrates hearing (i) a guilty plea case, (ii) a summary trial and (iii) an either-way trial in the last year for which figures are available.

Mr Shailesh Vara

The requested information could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

01/01/2023
Sarah Wollaston – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-06-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether (a) staff and (b) external stakeholders were consulted on the proposal to close the Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Professions policy unit in his Department.

Ben Gummer

The Department leads the health and care system in England, working closely with a range of organisations on whose expertise it draws, including the nursing and midwifery expertise in NHS England and Public Health England. The Department’s approach to ensuring that nurses are consulted about future policies is to flexibly access professional advice from a wide range of sources, including arms-length bodies, regulators, stakeholders and professional bodies.

The Department’s policy teams will establish new networks and relationships with stakeholders and partners and collaborate with the Chief Nursing Officer (CNO) to ensure systems are in place to secure advice when developing evidence based policy. These changes do not affect the role of the CNO, who as CNO of the Department already advises, and will continue to advise all Ministers and the Department on the range of nursing and midwifery issues.

The Department is changing the way it works to deliver its essential work for the Government while achieving efficiency savings. All of the changes we are making through the resulting DH2020 programme are being done transparently and communicated to staff.

01/01/2023
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town on 2016-09-05.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many (1) domestic fires, and (2) fires in industrial and commercial buildings, were recorded in (a) 2013, (b) 2014, and (c) 2015; and what estimate they have made of the direct and indirect economic and environmental costs of those fires.

Baroness Williams of Trafford

Data from the Fire Incident Recording System are published by financial year.

(1) Fire and rescue services attended 31,899, 31,329 and 31,333 dwelling fires in England in financial years 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16 respectively.

Dwelling fires are fires in properties that are a place of residence i.e. places occupied by households such as houses and flats, excluding hotels/hostels, residential institutions such as student halls of residence and care homes for children and elderly people. Dwellings also includes non-permanent structures used solely as a dwelling, such as houseboats and caravans.

(2) Fire and rescue services attended 2,385, 2,280 and 2,129 fires in industrial premises in England in 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16 respectively. There were 6,132, 5,821 and 5,819 fires in commercial buildings in England in 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16 respectively.

The latest figures were published in August in the Fire Statistics Monitor, which can be found here https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fire-statistics-monitor-april-2015-to-march-2016 while detailed tables can be found here https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/fire-statistics-data-tables.

We have not estimated the economic and environmental costs of these fires.

01/01/2023
Lord Porter of Spalding – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Porter of Spalding on 2016-10-20.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the publication of Implementing the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health, whether they intend to publish a national Mental Health Strategy.

Lord Prior of Brampton

The Government welcomed the independent taskforce’s recommendations for mental health and fully endorses the report. We continue to work across Government departments to progress taking the taskforce recommendations forward.

01/01/2023
Jess Phillips – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jess Phillips on 2015-11-09.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make it her policy to maintain the current staff-child ratio for childcare providers and child minders until 2020.

Mr Sam Gyimah

There are no plans to change the staff:child ratios for providers registered on the Early Years Register. Lord Nash made clear, during passage of the Childcare Bill in the House of Lords, that we are committed to keeping the existing ratios.

01/01/2023
Daniel Zeichner – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Daniel Zeichner on 2015-12-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what information she holds on the proportion of A Level students who have chosen to take an AS Level in 2015-16 under the reformed AS Level and A Level system.

Nick Gibb

The information requested will not be held by the Department for Education until autumn 2016. The Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) will publish information on AS level exam entries and results in August 2016. The department will publish this information for the first time in the provisional “A level and other level 3 results” statistical first release in autumn 2016.

01/01/2023
Tulip Siddiq – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tulip Siddiq on 2016-01-13.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to his Answer of 18 December 2015 to Question 19717, which were the 28 communities in Syria supported by the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund.

Mr Tobias Ellwood

The Conflict Stability And Security Fund is supporting communities in opposition held areas located in the north west and south west of Syria. A specific list of these communities is not published for reasons of security (it could put civilians in those areas at risk). More information on the work being taken forward can be found at http://www.project-tamkeen.org/category/news-from-the-programme/

01/01/2023

Ben Howlett – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ben Howlett on 2016-02-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what estimate he has made of the proportion of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who applied to university in each of the last six years.

Joseph Johnson

The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) publishes data on application and entry rates for full-time undergraduate courses.

The tables show the proportion of 18 year olds from disadvantaged backgrounds who applied to university by the main January deadline (application rate) and the proportion of 18 year olds that accepted a place during a UCAS application cycle (entry rate).

Table 1: Application rates for English 18 year olds from POLAR3 quintile 1 areas (for entry in year)
2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016
15.2%	18.0%	18.6%	17.9%	18.9%	20.4%	21.0%	22.0%

Table 2: Entry rates for English 18 year olds from POLAR3 quintile 1 areas (for entry in year)
2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015
13.6%	14.2%	15.1%	15.1%	16.4%	17.8%	18.5%

Notes:

Data published by UCAS covers full-time undergraduate applications. Table 1 shows the application rates by the main January deadline.
Data for entry rates in Table 2 include acceptances across the whole application cycle.
Disadvantage is measured by POLAR quintile 1 an area based measure of low participation.
Source of data for application rates: UCAS ‘Application rates by the January Deadline’ report for the 2016 cycle (underlying data for Figure 14) – published in February 2016.
Source of data for entry rates: UCAS ‘2015 End of Cycle’ report (underlying data for Figure 65) – published in December 2015.

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01/01/2023