Category: Speeches

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

    David Lammy – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Lammy on 2016-04-08.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many people working in the NHS were refused NHS treatment on the basis of their immigration status in (a) 2013, (b) 2014, (c) 2015 and (d) 2016.

    Alistair Burt

    The Department does not hold this information.

    National Health Service hospital treatment is free to those people who are ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom, or those exempt from charge under the NHS (Charges to Overseas Visitors) Regulations 2015, as amended. Anyone else should present a European Health Insurance Card, S1 or S2 form or pay direct for their NHS care. Those who need care and treatment urgently will still receive it even if they are chargeable and cannot pay straight away.

  • Philip Davies – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

    Philip Davies – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Philip Davies on 2016-05-09.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what information his Department holds on which EU (a) Commissioners and (b) officials receive a higher salary than the Prime Minister.

    Mr David Lidington

    Information on the salaries of EU officials by grade and details of how Commissioners’ salaries are calculated can be found on http://ec.europa.eu/civil_service/docs/toc100_en.pdf. The EU Commission website also contains numbers of Commission officials at each grade.

  • Jim Cunningham – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    Jim Cunningham – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Cunningham on 2016-06-28.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, pursuant to the Answer of 27 June 2016 to Question 40727, if his Department will increase the number of its employees based in Coventry in the next five years; and if he will make a statement.

    Joseph Johnson

    In the answer of 27 June 2016 to Question 40727 the reference to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in the answer was specifically to BIS HQ and not any of its agencies.

    BIS has no plans to increase the number of HQ employees in Coventry, given the decision to move to a single HQ and policy centre based in London.

    The Skills Funding Agency has a significant presence in Coventry and our estate plans include a further education funding centre whose final location is yet to be decided but will initially be in Coventry.

  • 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, how many special advisers work for the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

    Ben Gummer

    A list of special advisers and pay bands will be published in due course.

  • Imran Hussain – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

    Imran Hussain – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Imran Hussain on 2015-11-10.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what assistance his Department has provided to the EU election observation mission overseeing elections in Burma in November 2015.

    Mr Hugo Swire

    The United Kingdom lobbied the EU to deploy an Election Observation Mission to Burma and we welcomed their deployment of a 136-person mission. The presence of international observers, including from the EU, was a key part of the United Kingdom’s strategy for deterring fraud in Burma’s elections on 8 November.

  • Louise Haigh – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

    Louise Haigh – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Louise Haigh on 2015-12-10.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate she has made of the cost of disallowance penalties relating to the Common Agricultural Policy as a result of the return to paper-assisted digital applications in 2015.

    George Eustice

    The new Common Agricultural Policy has been widely recognised as being more complex for farmers to understand and harder for Member States to administer. The new schemes have not yet been audited by the European Commission so it is too early to say what the level of any disallowance will be, but complexity tends to increase disallowance risk.

    For the Basic Payment Scheme 2015 the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) sent pre-populated claim forms to farmers and land owners to allow them to submit their applications before the deadline. The RPA provided an unprecedented level of support to farmers and land owners through the Rural Payments Helpline and 50 Drop In Centres that allowed some 88,000 applications to be received within the deadline. ‘Paper-assisted’ means that forms were completed on paper but then entered on to a digital system by RPA staff.

  • 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 2016-01-15.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what anti-racism training is given to youth court magistrates.

    Mr Shailesh Vara

    All judicial office holders are required to apply the law fairly and objectively regardless of the ethnicity of those who appear before them. A key principle of judicial training is that it should include the social context within which judges and magistrates operate, such as awareness of diversity issues. Additionally, the Judicial College, which oversees the delivery of judicial training on behalf of the Lord Chief Justice, maintains an Equal Treatment Bench Book to assist judicial office holders to deal fairly with those who appear before them. The Bench Book is publicly available at: https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/publications/equal-treatment-bench-book/

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  • Nick Thomas-Symonds – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Nick Thomas-Symonds – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Nick Thomas-Symonds on 2016-02-09.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, when he intends to make a decision on the closure of the Risk Sharing Scheme; and what provisions his Department plans to put in place for people who are currently accessing drugs via that Scheme.

    George Freeman

    The Department is currently discussing with key stakeholders the arrangements for formally bringing the Multiple Sclerosis Risk Sharing Scheme to an end. Patients currently receiving drugs as part of the Scheme will continue to do so for as long as this is clinically appropriate for them.

  • Christopher Chope – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    Christopher Chope – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Christopher Chope on 2016-03-07.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, with reference to page 15 of the Government’s publication, The Process of withdrawing from the European Union, CM 9216, for what reason the rights and obligations which the UK currently has with other non-EU WTO members would not subsist when the UK leaves the EU.

    Anna Soubry

    As set out in Cm 9216, in the event that we leave the EU, we would need to update the terms of our WTO membership where the commitments taken have previously applied to the EU as a whole. This would not be a straightforward process as, if we leave the EU, then we would need all other WTO Members to agree how the UK will take on the rights and obligations which we have formerly taken as part of the EU. This would mean submitting UK schedules and, until this process was completed, there could be questions surrounding our rights to access WTO members’ markets, and our ability to enforce those rights. These issues are also addressed in the Government publication, Alternatives to Membership: possible models for the United Kingdom outside the European Union.

  • Dawn Butler – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Dawn Butler – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dawn Butler on 2016-04-08.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate his Department has made of changes in the level of expenditure on agency, bank or locum staff since the introduction of national price caps for NHS agency staff.

    Alistair Burt

    Information on temporary staff fill rates is not collected centrally.

    NHS Improvement has calculated that since the introduction of the price caps, agency spending by National Health Service trusts and NHS foundation trusts has fallen from £303 million in October 2015 to £287 million in February 2016.

    Monitor has previously released information on the number of trusts reporting using shifts in excess of the price caps from 23 November to 28 December 2015. This can be accessed here:

    https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/497353/FOI_agency_staff_payments.pdf

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