Category: Speeches

  • Ian Paisley – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    Ian Paisley – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ian Paisley on 2016-05-18.

    To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether the aim of the Government’s policy on the new soft drinks levy is to persuade manufacturers to stop selling the regular full sugar versions of their drinks products.

    Damian Hinds

    The aim of the soft drinks industry levy is to help tackle obesity by encouraging producers to reformulate their overall product mixes by reducing added sugar content, helping their customers to choose low-sugar and sugar-free brands, and by reducing the portion sizes for high sugar drinks.

  • Fiona Bruce – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    Fiona Bruce – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Fiona Bruce on 2016-06-24.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will take steps to ensure that staff in her Department receive religious literacy training.

    James Brokenshire

    Civil Service Learning, the main training provider for the Home Office, has a broad range of diversity and inclusion learning opportunities which are available to all staff.

    Horizon (the Home Office intranet) hosts an information portal with resources to develop staff’s religious literacy.

  • Alison Thewliss – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Alison Thewliss – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Alison Thewliss on 2016-09-13.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to develop peer support networks for breastfeeding.

    Mr Philip Dunne

    Public Health England (PHE) works with local services to create breastfeeding friendly communities, with midwives and health visitors to promote best practice, and, through our Start4Life social marketing programme, to provide parents with trusted National Health Service advice.

    PHE has developed an infant feeding commissioning resource in partnership with Unicef to support local authorities in the delivery of a comprehensive approach to the commissioning of services that protect, promote and support breastfeeding. PHE also shares innovative approaches for supporting breastfeeding.

  • Andrew Percy – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Andrew Percy – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Percy on 2015-11-16.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he plans to take to improve understanding of palliative and end-of-life care in nursing and care homes.

    Ben Gummer

    We are committed to ensuring everyone at the end of life receives high quality, compassionate care that is tailored to their individual needs and preferences. This applies to all settings in which palliative and end of life care is delivered, including nursing and care homes.

    To achieve this, we introduced a new approach to end of life care in 2014 based on five priorities for care of the dying person. It is for individuals and organisations delivering end of life care, including care homes, to ensure that the care they provide is based on the priorities. The Implementation Guidance for Service Providers and Commissioners and the Duties and Responsibilities of Health and Care Staff, which accompanied the priorities, set out clear expectations for organisations to ensure their staff receive the right training in palliative and end of life care.

    In addition, Skills for Care, which works to support staff working in adult social care to develop their skills and knowledge has developed end of life care qualifications, guidance and resources to equip workers to recognise and manage end of life situations effectively.

    In April 2015, Skills for Care launched the new Care Certificate, an identified set of standards that health and social care workers should adhere to in their daily lives. The Certificate includes end of life care and provides confidence that all health and care workers have the same introductory skills, knowledge and behaviours to provide compassionate, safe and high quality care and support.

    I intend to announce further policy on end of life care in due course.

  • Luciana Berger – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Luciana Berger – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2015-12-09.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 7 December 2015 to Question 18596, if he will make it his policy to collect data on the proportion of the prison population who have mental health problems and identify as LGBT.

    Ben Gummer

    Health and wellbeing needs assessments provide information on the mental illness incidence in individual prisons. There is no current requirement for NHS England to record sexual orientation details in patient records, so no data on the proportion of prisoners with both mental health problems and who identify as LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) is known.

    The Health and Social Care’s Information Centre’s Standardisation Committee for Care Information is currently considering a proposal for a mandatory requirement to record a patient’s sexual orientation in all NHS services.

  • Lord Hunt of Kings Heath – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    Lord Hunt of Kings Heath – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Hunt of Kings Heath on 2016-01-19.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the planned replacement of student bursaries by loans, what estimate they have made of the number of additional students who will be accepted into universities for nursing degree courses in 2017–18.

    Baroness Evans of Bowes Park

    We expect this reform to enable universities to provide up to 10,000 additional nursing, midwifery and allied health training places over this parliament.

  • David Hanson – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    David Hanson – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Hanson on 2016-02-11.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average hourly earnings of (a) female, (b) male, (c) full-time and (d) part-time employees of his Department were in each of the last five years.

    Mike Penning

    This information could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

  • Andy Slaughter – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    Andy Slaughter – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andy Slaughter on 2016-03-03.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps the Government has taken to ensure independent verification for the evidence on which it has proposed changes to personal injury law and procedure.

    Dominic Raab

    The government received and analysed data from numerous sources prior to the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement. It will consult on the detail of the new reforms in due course and the consultation will be accompanied by an impact assessment.

  • Barry Gardiner – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

    Barry Gardiner – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Barry Gardiner on 2016-04-11.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what discussions he has had with the Department for Transport on the proposal to develop a work plan to define the shipping industry’s fair share in reducing its greenhouse gas emissions ahead of the International Maritime Organisation meeting on 18 to 22 April 2016.

    James Duddridge

    Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials are in regular contact with Department for Transport counterparts who lead for the UK at international negotiations to reduce emissions from the global aviation and shipping sectors. All countries agreed in Paris in December 2015 to limit global temperature increases to well below 2°C, and to pursue efforts towards 1.5°C. International negotiations on how the global shipping sector can contribute to this are at an early, technical stage.

  • Michael Dugher – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

    Michael Dugher – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Michael Dugher on 2016-05-18.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking to reduce regional variations in local authority (a) core spending power and (b) core spending power per dwelling in England.

    Mr Marcus Jones

    The Local Government Finance Settlement distributes resources fairly by taking into account the main sources of income available to councils, including council tax and business rates. This means that funding is allocated in a way that ensures authorities delivering the same set of services receive broadly the same annual percentage change in these main sources of income.

    Councils facing the highest demand for services generally continue to receive more funding and have higher spending power than less deprived authorities. In 2016-17 the 10% most deprived authorities received 23% more funding than the 10% least deprived.

    We have also announced a Fair Funding Review to consider the funding needs of different types of areas. This will involve a thorough review of what the needs assessment formula should be in a world in which local government spending is funded by local resources, not central grant. The Review will be done in partnership with the Local Government Association and the wider local government sector, so that all councils have the opportunity to contribute their views.