UKPOL.CO.UK

Category: Speeches

  • Stuart C. McDonald – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    Stuart C. McDonald – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Stuart C. McDonald on 2016-04-08.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the Compass asylum accommodation contract with Clearsprings Ready Home Limited for the region of London and South East England, how many faults were reported or identified from Compass inspections for each contractual pay period in 2014-15 and 2015-16; and how many such faults were not resolved within the agreed contractual timescales.

    James Brokenshire

    Providers are contractually required to provide safe, habitable, fit for purpose and correctly equipped accommodation to comply with the Housing Act 2004 and the Decent Homes Standard. Providers are monitored closely to ensure accommodation meets these standards and the contracts include measures to ensure any issues are quickly addressed. These performance standards are defined in the contract and are managed using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) including those which measure whether an individual property is compliant with contractual obligations following an inspection and also the number of service users effected if a fault is not repaired within the contract timescales.

    The Home Office does not centrally record the number of individual faults reported or identified during accommodation inspections, or the number of individual faults not resolved within the agreed timescales. The requested information could therefore only be provided at disproportionate cost.

  • David Amess – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    David Amess – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Amess on 2016-05-09.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 21 April 2016 to Question 34094, if he will provide examples of what his Department might consider an adequate justification for clinical commissioning groups not investing in mental health services as planned.

    Alistair Burt

    The Mental Health Taskforce report was published on 15 February 2016. The taskforce marks a big step towards our ambition of parity of esteem for mental and physical health. The spending of clinical commissioning group (CCG) resources on mental health as indicated in proportionate increases to general CCG spending is a priority for the Department.

    Mental Health Parity of Esteem is a key plan metric for NHS England and any commissioners not planning to achieve this are being scrutinised locally at regional level and centrally at director level. NHS England’s central and regional teams are working with local commissioners to assure that spend on mental health services increases in line with the growth in each organisations programme allocation other than in exceptional circumstances.

    In assessing whether a case is exceptional, consideration is made of the level of medium term investment in mental health services by individual commissioners and instances where individual commissioners are working with other commissioners to increase spend for the wider health economy. But any such instances will require clear evidence that will be scrutinised as part of the assurance process.

  • David Mackintosh – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Cabinet Office

    David Mackintosh – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Cabinet Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Mackintosh on 2016-06-28.

    To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps his Department is taking to ensure (a) that all Government services are available through the gov.uk website and (b) that that website remains operational at all times.

    Matthew Hancock

    Since its launch in October 2012, GOV.UK has handled over 2.6 billion visits. The site needs to continue operating during major events such as the annual Self Assessment peak and a national emergency. The GOV.UK website has been designed to handle issues and failures in a way which would not impact the public. We have robust incident management processes in place and regularly run disaster recovery simulations to test our response to any outages.

    “

  • Tom Watson – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Cabinet Office

    Tom Watson – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Cabinet Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tom Watson on 2016-09-08.

    To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, pursuant to the Answer of 22 July 2016 to Question 43066, on Cabinet Office: Ministerial policy advisers, whether his Department has now calculated the information requested in that Question on severance pay.

    Ben Gummer

    This information will be published in due course, as part of the full and detailed list of special advisers, salary bands and total pay bill costs.

  • Alistair Carmichael – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    Alistair Carmichael – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Alistair Carmichael on 2015-11-03.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many Syrian refugees arrived in the UK through the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Relocation scheme in October 2015.

    Richard Harrington

    The refugees that we are bringing to the United Kingdom are very vulnerable people. Our prime concern is their safety and protection as they arrive in this country. We believe that one way to protect their privacy and ensure their recovery and integration is to limit the amount of information about them that we make publicly available. We want to ensure the understandable public interest in the scheme is not based on a running commentary on the numbers that have arrived.

    Notwithstanding this the Home Office is committed to publishing data in an orderly way as part of the regular quarterly Immigration Statistics, in line with the Code of Practice for Of-ficial Statistics. The next set of figures will be in the quarterly release on 26 November 2015 and will cover the period July-September 2015. These numbers will be updated each quarter.

  • Maria Caulfield – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    Maria Caulfield – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Maria Caulfield on 2015-12-10.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what comparative assessment her Department has made of the ethnic diversity among pupils of Catholic schools and non-Catholic schools.

    Edward Timpson

    All schools are subject to the Equality Act 2010 and must comply with the requirements of the Schools Admission Code. The legislation is already available within the Equality Act 2010 and the Admission Code, which ensures schools meet their statutory requirements ensuring that a diverse ethnic group of pupils attend both Catholic and non-Catholic schools.

    The department does not conduct comparative assessments of ethnicity diversity among pupils of Catholic schools and non-Catholic schools.

  • Lord Greaves – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

    Lord Greaves – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Greaves on 2016-01-14.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the role of district councils in two-tier areas in the maintenance of drainage systems, the prevention of local flooding, and action when flooding occurs.

    Lord Gardiner of Kimble

    District councils have several responsibilities and powers in relation to flooding and land drainage. These include powers to carry out flood risk management works on ordinary watercourses, powers to make bye-laws to manage flood risk in the authority’s area from ordinary watercourses and to secure the efficient working of a drainage system in the authority’s district or area. Those in coastal areas are also Coastal Protection Authorities.

    District councils are also responsible for a set of civil protection duties for emergencies. Plans are regularly reviewed and tested as part of local exercise arrangements.

    Defra commissioned an independent evaluation into the arrangements for managing local flood risk under the Flood and Water Management Act 2010. The evaluation has now concluded and will be published in due course. One of the areas the evaluation explored was partnership working between the Lead Local Flood Authority and other risk management authorities, including district councils.

  • Caroline Lucas – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    Caroline Lucas – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Caroline Lucas on 2016-02-09.

    To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to the press release of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills of 5 February 2016, entitled New National Minimum Wage offenders named and shamed, for what reasons HM Revenue and Customs did not seek to prosecute Total Security Services Limited for non-payment of minimum wage arrears.

    Mr David Gauke

    HM Revenue and Customs cannot comment on the affairs of individual employers. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills set out how the Government operates civil and criminal enforcement of National Minimum Wage, which can be accessed by the link below:

    https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/enforcing-national-minimum-wage-law

    “

  • Andrea Jenkyns – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    Andrea Jenkyns – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrea Jenkyns on 2016-03-07.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether juvenile victims of incestuous sexual abuse are eligible to claim criminal injury compensation; and what limitations apply to that eligibility.

    Mike Penning

    We deeply sympathise with anyone who has been a victim of crime. Some victims of incestuous sexual abuse may be eligible for compensation under the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme which awards taxpayer-funded payments to victims who are seriously injured as a result of violent crime.

    From 1964 to 1979 the scheme did not allow compensation to be awarded where the offender and victim lived in the same household as members of the same family. The so called ‘same roof rule’ was part of the original scheme and was introduced to stop offenders benefiting from compensation paid to victims who lived with them. It was amended in 1979 so the restriction only applied to adults who remained living together after the incident. This was to protect payments to the most seriously injured victims of crime, while reducing the burden on the taxpayer. The changes to the ‘same roof rule’ were not applied retrospectively. This decision was consistent with the general Government approach that rule changes apply to future claimants, rather than in respect of historical claims.

    The Government puts the highest emphasis on the needs of victims, which is why the Ministry of Justice has given them more rights and increased funding for specialist support to help victims of such heinous crimes.

  • Anne-Marie Trevelyan – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    Anne-Marie Trevelyan – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Anne-Marie Trevelyan on 2016-04-08.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 23 March 2016 to Question 31329, on deportation: EU nationals, how many of the EEA foreign national offenders awaiting deportation are (a) in immigration removal centres, (b) in custody or other form of detention, (c) on bail and (d) living in the community.

    James Brokenshire

    Removals have been increasing year on year since 2010. In 2015, we removed 5,602 FNOs and over 29,000 foreign national offenders have been removed since 2010.

    Our records indicate that as of December 2015, there were 4,217 EEA foreign national offenders awaiting deportation.

    Of which:

    2,748 are still serving a custodial sentence

    A total of 302 are time served detained in immigration removal centres (IRC) and prisons. (242 in IRCs and 60 in prison)

    1,167 are living in the community.

    Of the above, for those detained and living in the community (1,469), the time since the end of their custodial sentence is as follows:

    Less than one month 50

    One to three months 84

    Three to six months 58

    Six to nine months 60

    Nine to 12 months 49

    One to two years 132

    More than two years 80

    No UK conviction or sentence end date not recorded 956

    Total 1,469

    (1) The figures quoted have been derived from management information from the Home Office databases and are therefore provisional and subject to change. This information has not been quality assured under National Statistics protocols.

    (2) FNOs living in the community include those released by an Immigration Judge, those released by the Secretary of State and those with oversees convictions who may not have received a custodial sentence in the UK.

    (3) The data provided is up to December 2015. This is not routinely published data. General protocol is that the figures should not breach the National Statistics, so we are not able to disclose figures that are for a later period than those that we have published. Published figures are available up to 31 December 2015.