Category: Speeches

Grahame Morris – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Cabinet Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Grahame Morris on 2016-04-08.

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what the cost of supporting electoral registration by (a) local authorities and (b) other groups was in each of the last 10 years.

John Penrose

Since financial year 2012/13 the Cabinet Office has provided funding to local authorities and civil society organisations to support the implementation and delivery of Individual Electoral Registration. Prior to financial year 2010/11 electoral registration policy was under the remit of the Ministry of Justice. The Cabinet Office does not hold any relevant financial data prior to 2010.

Local Authorities are under a statutory obligation to provide Electoral Registration Officers with funding and resources to support electoral registration more generally. Local Authorities are funded from a block grant that is allocated by the Department for Communities and Local Government.

The table below notes the funding provided by the Cabinet Office to local authorities and other groups and organisations in Great Britain. This includes core funding to support local authorites in the transition to IER, and the upgrade of hardware, such as printers, to support the new A3 registration forms .The figures also include funding that was allocated to local authorities and other groups to support efforts to increase levels of registration between financial years 2010/11 and 2015/16.

	2010-2011	2011-2012	2012-13	2013-14	2014-15	2015-16	Total
Local Authorities	£0	£0	£0	£9,115,416	£39,537,279	£25,858,168	£74,510,862
Other Groups	£0	£0	£56,545	£216,247	£1,933,759	£0	£2,191,401

01/01/2023

Ruth Cadbury – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ruth Cadbury on 2016-05-03.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, for what reasons her Department acquired the land for the new Nishkam School site in West London before planning permission for that school was granted; and whether the valuation of that land was based on an assumption that planning permission would be granted.

Edward Timpson

The Syon Lane site was acquired by the Department for Communities and Local Government on behalf of the Education Funding Agency (EFA) as a permanent site for Nishkam School West London. When full, the school will provide 1,400 places for local children.

Where possible, sites for new free schools are secured with exchange subject to planning approval. The decision to proceed with the purchase was taken following confirmation from Hounslow Local Planning Authority that the proposal to develop a school on the site would be consistent with local planning policies, so an argument could be made for such a development.

The land valuation undertaken to inform the purchase took account of its designation as Metropolitan Open Land and an estimation of the value of the land should its planning status change to permit the construction of a school building.

01/01/2023
Kevan Jones – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kevan Jones on 2016-06-15.

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, when he expects the contract to be signed between his Department and Boeing to deliver the UK’s P-8 Poseidon aircraft.

Mr Philip Dunne

As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence recently announced during a visit to the United States, we intend to begin ordering P-8 Poseidon aircraft this summer.

01/01/2023
Richard Burden – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Richard Burden on 2016-09-12.

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, when he plans to publish his Department’s response to the consultation on the Local Government Pension Scheme: investment regulations; and what steps he is taking to ensure full parliamentary scrutiny of any resulting proposals.

Mr Marcus Jones

The government’s response to the consultation will be published in due course.

The regulations will be made according to the negative resolution procedure as required by the Public Service Pensions Act 2013. The instrument will be scrutinised by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee and may be subject to additional scrutiny in either House in accordance with the procedures applicable to all negative resolution statutory instruments.

01/01/2023
Andrew Gwynne – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Gwynne on 2016-10-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what data his Department has that demonstrate the effect of the Troubled Families programme on rates of domestic violence and abuse in (a) England and (b) the Greater Manchester authority area in each year since 2012.

Mr Marcus Jones

Domestic violence was not included in the target outcomes of the first Troubled Families Programme (2012-15). Given this, we did not have a robust national or local measure to assess prevalence of domestic violence families for the first programme.

Domestic abuse has now been included as one of the six key headline problems of the new Troubled Families Programme (2015 – 2020). As part of the evaluation of the new programme, we are collecting data from all local authorities on police recorded incidents of domestic violence. This includes the Greater Manchester authority areas. We are also measuring self-reported domestic abuse through a survey of over 1,000 families using the same measure as the Crime Survey for England and Wales. The evaluation will report, in due course, the changes in these measures once sufficient families have progressed beyond intervention to make a robust assessment.

01/01/2023
Nicholas Brown – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Nicholas Brown on 2015-11-06.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what representations or advice he has received on the expectation of current students and graduates to repay their student loans under the terms of the current scheme.

Joseph Johnson

A consultation on freezing the student loan repayment threshold closed on the 14th October. Responses are being analysed and we will publish the Government’s response in due course.

01/01/2023
Wayne David – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Wayne David on 2015-12-08.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to paragraph 2.149 of the Spending Review, where he expects job cuts in his Department; and how many such jobs he expects to be cut.

Dominic Raab

The Secretary of State for Justice has set out his vision for a one nation justice system, with swift and certain justice in a reformed courts system and transformed prisons that become places of rehabilitation, not just incarceration. Those on the frontline will be empowered to make the right decisions for those who use their services.

This means a smaller and smarter Whitehall department with less bureaucracy, including savings which do not impact on staff numbers, such as changes to our estate, our major contracts and better use of technology.

We also expect to reduce headquarters and administrative headcount and costs over the course of the parliament. This will include reduced reliance on contractors and contingent labour and fewer staff based in expensive London premises.

Final decisions on the scale of staff reductions have not yet been reached.

01/01/2023
Lord Collins of Highbury – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Collins of Highbury on 2016-01-18.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have made representations to the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo over the continued detention of the two Filimbi activists who were arrested in March 2015 and are now awaiting trial for allegedly forming a criminal gang and attempting to overthrow the regime of President Kabila.

Baroness Anelay of St Johns

Our Chargé d’Affaires’ in Kinshasa called on the Justice Minister, Alexis Thambwe Mwamba, with other EU Heads of Mission, in March and April 2015 to voice our concern at the arrest and detention without charge of the activists Fred Bauma and Yves Makwambala. Officials from our Embassy in Kinshasa have also joined other international observers in monitoring court hearings in the case, and those of a number of other activists detained in early 2015.

We continue to urge the Government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to act on the recommendations of its Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the arrests. The Commission found that there is no evidence that participants in the workshop were involved in activities of a terrorist nature, and recommended that a political solution be found in order to enable the release of activists Fred Bauma and Yves Makwambala. We also continue to stress to the DRC government that civil society organisations must be allowed to hold workshops on democratic processes without fear of arrest or reprisal.

01/01/2023
Matthew Offord – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Matthew Offord on 2016-02-04.

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what assessment he has made of recent progress of the international coalition to tackle Daesh.

Penny Mordaunt

The Global Coalition is making good progress against Daesh in Iraq. Over 30% of the territory that Daesh took in 2014 has been re-taken. The Iraqi security forces have substantially cleared Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, and are working to make the area safe for displaced people to return. Further north, Kurdish forces have driven Daesh from the Sinjar area. In Syria, the Coalition is continuing to strike Daesh economic targets, including oilfields where we judge that recent strikes on its illicit oil industry have reduced Daesh’s revenues by some 10%.

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

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Harrison on 2016-03-01.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how much money the NHS invested in ensuring access to and provision of structured education for diabetes patients in (1) 2013, (2) 2014 and (3) 2015, and what percentage those figures represent of total NHS spend on diabetes during each year.

Lord Prior of Brampton

NHS England and Monitor are working closely together to ensure that the payment system supports service developments in the vanguard sites (including those where integrated diabetes care is a focus) as well as monitoring local innovative approaches to supporting integrated care taken by some clinical commissioning groups (CCGs). This is to ensure that the payment system keeps abreast with the development of future service models and is not a barrier to the development of new models of care.

During 2016/17, NHS England will look at the current incentives and funding arrangements for diabetes to see how greater alignment could be achieved between the financial incentives for primary and secondary care.

Information on how much money the National Health Service invested in structured education for diabetes patients is not collected centrally.

Under the Health and Social Care Act (2012), NHS England has a statutory duty to conduct an annual assessment of every CCG. Since April 2013, CCGs have been assessed twice, for the period 2013/14 and for 2014/15.

For 2016/17, NHS England will introduce a new CCG Improvement and Assessment Framework (CCG IAF). This new framework will align with NHS England’s mandate and planning process, with the aim of driving improvements in a number of key areas including the management and care of people with diabetes.

NHS England has been working with Diabetes UK on including diabetes indicators in the CCG IAF. The proposed diabetes indicators are:

– the percentage of diabetes patients that have achieved all three of the National Institute for Heath and Care Excellence recommended treatment targets; and

– newly diagnosed diabetes patients referred to, or attending, a structured education course.

Under the proposals, diabetes will also be one of the six clinical priority areas in the CCG IAF that will be overseen by an independent group.

The CCG IAF proposals are subject to the outcome of an engagement process which closed for comments on February 26 2016. More information can be found at:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/ccg-improvmnt/

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01/01/2023