Category: Speeches

  • Stephen Doughty – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    Stephen Doughty – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Stephen Doughty on 2016-02-02.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when she last discussed funding for armed police response with each of the four Welsh police commissioners.

    Mike Penning

    Home Office Ministers have meetings with a wide variety of partners, as well as organisations and individuals such as Police and Crime Commissioners, as part of the process of policy development and delivery. Details of these meetings are passed to the Cabinet Office on a quarterly basis and are subsequently published on the Gov.uk website: http://data.gov.uk/dataset/ministerial-data-home-office

  • Andrew Murrison – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

    Andrew Murrison – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Murrison on 2016-02-23.

    To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what metrics she uses in monitoring human rights abuse (a) by governments and (b) in countries in receipt of UK aid.

    Mr Desmond Swayne

    DFID works closely with the FCO to assess and monitor the civil and political rights context in the countries where it has programmes. DFID draws on the FCO’s annual Human Rights and Democracy Report, which takes international human rights obligations as its starting point, and assesses FCO country specific updates to that report. It takes into account the views of a range of sources including EU and other development partners, and civil society reports.

    DFID provides aid to governments when it is satisfied that they share Britain’s commitments to reducing poverty and to respecting human rights. Before providing aid to a partner government, DFID assesses their commitment to four Partnership Principles. These include a commitment to poverty reduction; respecting human rights and other international obligations; improving public financial management, promoting good governance and transparency, and fighting corruption; and strengthening domestic accountability.

  • Peter Kyle – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    Peter Kyle – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Peter Kyle on 2016-03-22.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what proportion of higher education students continued to (a) further study and (b) employment when leaving (i) university and (ii) a further education college in each of the last five years.

    Joseph Johnson

    Research by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) into the destinations of leavers from Higher Education by provider type was published as part of the report ‘Destination of Leavers from Higher Education in Further Education Colleges’. The report includes breakdowns of the activities leavers were engaged in six months after leaving their course and refers to the academic years 2008/09 to 2010/11.

    http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/year/2013/201301/

    More recent data showing combined employment and study rates has been published by HEFCE as part of the series ‘Higher Education Indicators for Further Education Colleges’. The most recent analysis covers the 2011/12 and 2012/13 academic years.

    http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/year/2016/201601/

    “

  • Gordon Marsden – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    Gordon Marsden – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Gordon Marsden on 2016-04-26.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, pursuant to the Written Statement of 26 April 2016, HCWS701, what estimate he has made of the number of students affected by the proposed changes to eligibility to student support for people with long residency in the UK.

    Joseph Johnson

    We estimated at the time of proposing the changes that they could lead to an additional 2,400 claims for student support in the first year after the changes take effect. This estimate was derived from information on those people who had non-asylum discretionary leave to remain and had applied for student support. However, we do not have information on the length of time these individuals have been in the UK or their age. It is therefore not possible to determine exactly how many of these individuals would meet the criteria in the new rules.

  • David Simpson – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    David Simpson – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Simpson on 2016-06-03.

    To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will take steps to ensure that private pension providers facilitate access by policyholders to details of their investments.

    Harriett Baldwin

    At Budget 2016 the government announced that it will ensure the industry designs, funds and launches a pensions dashboard by 2019. This will help people to ensure that people can clearly view all their pension savings in one place.

    This work will be industry-led. The Treasury is starting the work on catalysing and challenging the industry to deliver and I will set out next steps in due course.

  • Kerry McCarthy – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

    Kerry McCarthy – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kerry McCarthy on 2016-09-02.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, for what reason the Government did not meet the deadline for implementing the Agreement on International Humane Trapping Standards; who the Government consulted on its decision to delay that implementation; and whether the Government requested permission from the EU to extend that deadline.

    Dr Thérèse Coffey

    The Agreement on International Humane Trapping Standards (AIHTS) applies to a limited number of species in the UK (stoat, badger, otter, beaver and pine marten).

    Of these, the stoat is the only species for which lethal traps are used in the UK. Defra has been working with trap testing facilities to test the humaneness of spring trap designs that can replace traps currently in use. Testing to date has not identified a suitable alternative design that meets AIHTS standards.

    Defra aims to implement the AIHTS as soon as is practically possible, but to use a permitted transition provision to allow delayed implementation of the agreement for stoats whilst a suitable compliant design is identified.

  • Joan Ryan – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    Joan Ryan – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Joan Ryan on 2016-10-17.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will publish data on assaults on police at a (a) constituency and (b) borough level.

    Brandon Lewis

    We have worked closely with police forces in recent years to improve the quality of data on assaults on the police. In July 2015 provisional data were published for the first time since 2009/10, presenting data on assaults without injury from crime recording systems alongside information from health and safety systems to provide a more complete picture of assaults.

    These data were then developed further in 2016, with forces asked to submit more complete data on assaults from their crime recording systems, including cases that involved injury as well as cases that did not. This allowed a more refined figure of 23,000 assaults on police officers in 2015/16 to be estimated.

    We are continuing to work with forces to better capture assaults that involve injury to the police in recorded crime data.

    Recorded crime data on “assaults without injury on a constable” are published at Community Safety Partnership (equivalent to boroughs in London) and Police Force Area level, and are available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-recorded-crime-open-data-tables

    There are no current plans to collect this data at parliamentary constituency level.

    “

  • Danny Kinahan – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    Danny Kinahan – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Danny Kinahan on 2015-11-20.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has discussed the planned move to a numeric grading system for GCSEs in England with her Northern Ireland counterpart.

    Nick Gibb

    The Secretary of State has not had any meetings with Northern Ireland’s Minister for Education to discuss the grading system for GCSEs in England. Her predecessor discussed reforms to GCSEs in England with John O’Dowd (Minister for Education, Northern Ireland) and Leighton Andrews (Minister for Education and Skills, Wales) in May 2013.

    Department for Education officials have regular meetings with officials from the devolved administrations in Northern Ireland and Wales, as well as the regulators Ofqual and Qualifications Wales, to discuss the qualification reforms taking place in England, Northern Ireland and Wales.

  • Ian Austin – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    Ian Austin – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ian Austin on 2016-01-07.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, how many illegal money lenders Illegal Money Lending Units prevented from operating in 2015.

    Nick Boles

    According to the National Trading Standards Annual report 2014/15, the England and Wales illegal money lending teams commenced 365 operations into 756 suspected money lenders in 2014/15.

    In the same period 42 individuals were charged or had proceedings instituted against them for illegal money lending in England and Wales. Trading Standards Scotland referred a further 9 individuals to the Procurator Fiscal for illegal money lending in 2014/15.

  • Virendra Sharma – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

    Virendra Sharma – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Virendra Sharma on 2016-02-02.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent steps his Department has taken to protect people living in the vicinity of (a) Heathrow and (b) RAF Northolt from (i) drones and (ii) unmanned aerial vehicles.

    Mr Robert Goodwill

    A cross government working group led by the Department for Transport is undertaking a detailed analysis of the range of risks posed by drones. This work is ongoing and kept under constant review. Further work is now proceeding to capture and evaluate potential mitigation measures and strategies. Initial guidance on tackling the risks has been provided to constabularies across the UK.

    Work is also underway to qualify the specific level of risk posed by small drones to commercial air transport. We are talking to both the Civil Aviation Authority and airports to find technical solutions to the problems around airports, these include mandated geo-fencing or frequency jammers. The CAA has also worked with major drone manufacturers on the geo-fencing capabilities of their products, which has included providing a list of locations such as airport control zones.