Category: Speeches

  • Steve Rotheram – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    Steve Rotheram – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve Rotheram on 2014-03-12.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, on how many occasions an individual on licence for an attempted murder conviction has been granted permission to enter an exclusion zone which has been formed as part of their licence arrangement in each of the last 10 years.

    Jeremy Wright

    Unfortunately, it is not possible to answer these questions without carrying out a manual search through all relevant individual offender files, at disproportionate cost.

    Conditions such as an exclusion zone may be applied to an offender’s licence where it is necessary to manage the risk that the individual offender poses following release into the community – and where it is proportionate to that risk. Where qualifying victims have exercised their statutory right to make representations about the offender’s licence conditions, the exclusion zone set will take into account those representations. In each case, the supervising officer proposes conditions as appropriate and requests these from the appropriate authority, which applies it to the licence on behalf of the Secretary of State. In the case of determinate sentence prisoners, the authority is the prison governor; in the case of indeterminate sentence prisoners, or others whose release is on the direction of the Parole Board, the authority is the Parole Board.

    These conditions must be kept under review, and are intended to be flexible to the possible resettlement needs of an offender in the community and any new risks that arise.

    An exclusion zone will rarely be absolute, as it is recognised that there may be exceptional reasons why the offender needs to enter the exclusion zone. Thus, where an exclusion zone is included in the offender’s licence, it will usually be open to the supervising officer to grant the offender permission to enter the exclusion zone, for a temporary period and for a specific purpose.

    As this is a purely localised decision, there is no national record of the number of occasions such permission has been given. It is, therefore, not possible to answer the questions regarding how many times an offender has been granted permission to enter the exclusion zone applied to his licence.

    Data from the last 10 years is not available in the required electronic format to answer the question relating to numbers of offenders with exclusion zones included in their licence. To provide such information would again require a manual interrogation of offenders’ records and this would incur disproportionate cost.

  • Tim Loughton – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    Tim Loughton – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tim Loughton on 2014-06-04.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will take steps to liaise with the Secretary of State for Health over publication of reports into historic child abuse.

    Mr Edward Timpson

    Officials from the Department for Education are already working closely with other relevant departments to ensure that there is a consistent approach to investigations into allegations of historical child abuse, including on the publication of reports.

  • Stephen Timms – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

    Stephen Timms – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Stephen Timms on 2014-03-12.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what plans his Department has for the future use of Post Office card accounts.

    Steve Webb

    The Post Office card account (POca) contract expires in March 2015 with the possibility of a 2 year extension beyond that date.

    No decision has been made on the future of the POca but discussions are currently taking place between DWP, Post Office Ltd and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to consider the future needs of customers beyond 2015.

  • Maria Eagle – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

    Maria Eagle – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Maria Eagle on 2014-06-04.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, how much of the Severe Weather Recovery Scheme awarded to local authorities for costs incurred during the recent floods has been (a) allocated to and (b) received by local authorities to date.

    Brandon Lewis

    £73.5 million has been allocated to, and received by, local authorities for costs incurred during the recent floods under the first phase of the Severe Weather Recovery Scheme. The closing date for the second tranche of the funding was 6 June.

  • Charlie Elphicke – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    Charlie Elphicke – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Charlie Elphicke on 2014-03-11.

    To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what estimate his Department made before the 2012 Budget of the number of properties valued at more than (a) £2 million and (b) £5 million.

    David Gauke

    The number of residential properties in the UK valued at more than £2 million was estimated before Budget 2012 to be around 55,000.

    Before Budget 2012, an assessment of the average annual payment required from each property above £2 million in order to raise a net sum of £2 billion per annum was not made.

    On 1 July 2013, during Report stage of the Finance Bill, I referred to “a simple calculation arrived at by dividing £2 billion by 55,000 (an internal HMRC estimate of the number of properties valued at over £2 million) to give a ‘mean’ average of £36,000.”

    A so-called mansion tax would depress stamp duty land tax and inheritance tax yields. The exact impact would be dependent on the rates and bands chosen.

  • Andrew Rosindell – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

    Andrew Rosindell – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Rosindell on 2014-06-04.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what assessment his Department has made of living conditions and labour standards on commercial vessels long-lining in the waters of Ascension Island from 2010 to 2013.

    Mark Simmonds

    The Ascension Island Government is legally responsible for administering the marine fishery in the 200 nautical mile Exclusive Fishing Zone centred on the island.

    No assessment of living conditions and labour standards on commercial vessels carrying out licensed long-line fishing, or otherwise, in the waters of Ascension Island from 2010 to 2013 has been carried out. The primary responsibility for the setting and enforcement of such standards lies with the flag state of each vessel.

    The Ascension Island Government paused the issuing of licences for commercial long-line fishing from 1 January 2014 in order to undertake a full review of the management of its fisheries with a view to a new structure to be put in place by 2015. Revised conditions for licences will form part of that outcome.

  • Sadiq Khan – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Speaker’s Committee on the Electorial Commission

    Sadiq Khan – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Speaker’s Committee on the Electorial Commission

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sadiq Khan on 2014-03-11.

    To ask the hon. Member for South West Devon, representing the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, what the electoral registration figures were in each ward in the recent confirmation dry run conducted in the London Borough of Wandsworth.

    Gary Streeter

    The Electoral Commission informs me that the confirmation dry run involved matching all entries on the electoral registers against the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) Customer Information System database. Entries would be marked as green if they matched with DWP, amber if they were a partial match or red if there was no match.

    Results for all wards are available on the Commission’s website here: http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/excel_doc/0003/163146/Confirmation-dry-run-2013-Results-Wards.xls

    The ward results for Wandsworth were as follows:

    Ward

    Green matches

    Amber matches

    Red matches

    Balham

    57.8%

    9.2%

    33.1%

    Bedford

    53.0%

    13.1%

    33.9%

    Earlsfield

    59.3%

    6.6%

    34.1%

    East Putney

    57.9%

    6.2%

    35.9%

    Fairfield

    54.2%

    9.6%

    36.2%

    Furzedown

    68.2%

    6.7%

    25.1%

    Graveney

    60.9%

    7.2%

    31.9%

    Latchmere

    65.6%

    4.2%

    30.1%

    Nightingale

    57.7%

    10.0%

    32.3%

    Northcote

    54.1%

    13.3%

    32.7%

    Queenstown

    58.0%

    6.2%

    35.8%

    Roehampton & Putney Heath

    63.5%

    3.2%

    33.3%

    Shaftesbury

    54.1%

    12.3%

    33.7%

    Southfields

    64.4%

    5.7%

    29.8%

    St Mary’s Park

    58.5%

    5.7%

    35.8%

    Thamesfield

    58.8%

    9.2%

    31.9%

    Tooting

    59.0%

    8.8%

    32.2%

    Wandsworth Common

    64.3%

    7.6%

    28.1%

    West Hill

    67.7%

    3.1%

    29.3%

    West Putney

    69.4%

    3.1%

    27.5%

    “

  • Angus Robertson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

    Angus Robertson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Angus Robertson on 2014-06-04.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what assessment he has made of the progress on the trial installation and testing of the Tornado Collision Warning System at BAE Systems, Warton.

    Mr Philip Dunne

    Progress continues to be made with the trial installation and testing of a Collision Warning System (CWS) for Tornado GR4. Installation of CWS on two aircraft is complete and testing is ongoing. The Ministry of Defence is working closely with BAE Systems to ensure delivery of a capability as soon as practicable.

  • Mr Michael Meacher – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

    Mr Michael Meacher – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Mr Michael Meacher on 2014-03-11.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many benefit claimants have been sanctioned for (a) four weeks, (b) three months and (c) three years in each month since January 2010.

    Esther McVey

    The information requested is not readily available and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.

  • Angus Robertson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

    Angus Robertson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Angus Robertson on 2014-06-04.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what progress he has made in working with the Commonwealth Secretary-General to review LGBT rights in Uganda.

    Mr Hugo Swire

    The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Mr Hague) wrote to the Secretary General of the Commonwealth on 1 March to ask him to work with us to review the worrying trend on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in the Commonwealth. We welcomed the Commonwealth Secretary-General’s statement to the High Level Segment of the Human Rights Council on 6 March reiterating the Commonwealth’s commitment to equality and respect for the protection and promotion of rights without discrimination on any grounds. Whilst we support the work of the Secretariat in strengthening the capacity of national human rights institutions to engage their respective governments on sensitive areas such as LGBT rights, we continue to encourage the Commonwealth to do more to address LGBT rights across the Commonwealth, and in particular Uganda.