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 2014-04-09.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many child sex offenders were in prison in each year since 2003.

    Jeremy Wright

    From the data held centrally, it is not possible to separately identify those offenders convicted of sexual offences against children, because the prisoner offence details held centrally do not include information on the age of the victim. Such offenders are included with other sexual offences.

    In order to provide data relating to child sex offenders in prison, it would be necessary to manually examine the individual prison records of over 10,900 sex offenders in prison as at 31 December 2013 – this could only be done at disproportionate cost.

  • Julie Elliott – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

    Julie Elliott – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Elliott on 2014-04-29.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, in which parliamentary constituency each onshore wind planning application which he has received for determination during this Parliament is located.

    Kris Hopkins

    I can confirm that during this Parliament (since May 2010) 50 on shore wind farm planning appeals have been recovered by Ministers.

    The information is held by local planning authority, rather than Parliamentary constituency and a table has been placed in the Library of the House.

  • Justin Tomlinson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    Justin Tomlinson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Justin Tomlinson on 2014-04-29.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what steps he is taking to encourage more women to franchise their businesses.

    Matthew Hancock

    The Government offers a wide range of support to all types of businesses to start up and grow, including franchises, for example through the Growth Accelerator, the New Enterprise Allowance, mentoring and the Start Up Loan scheme.

    Women-led small and medium-sized businesses contribute around £82 billion to the economy. 42% of the 15,000 mentors trained through the Get Mentoring initiative are women and have contributed to the 27,000 strong mentoring network at www.mentorsme.co.uk. The latest figures show that over 37% of Start Up Loans have gone to female entrepreneurs.

    We will continue to work closely with the Women’s Business Council and others to help ensure that more women see starting and growing their own business as a real option.

    “

  • Gregg McClymont – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    Gregg McClymont – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Gregg McClymont on 2014-04-29.

    To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether he plans to privatise HM Revenue and Customs Debt Management and Banking operations; and if he will make a statement.

    Mr David Gauke

    HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has no plans to privatise its Debt Management and Banking (DMB) Operations.

    HMRC has been using debt collection services provided by private sector suppliers for several years. This has given HMRC additional capacity to complement its in house operations and increase the flexibility of its business operations, with Debt Collection Agencies (DCAs) working alongside in house debt collection activity.

    HMRC plans to continue to use private sector services – the overall aim being to strengthen further HMRC’s debt collection service, making optimal use of both internal and external collection specialists.

    In the future, HMRC will purchase those externally provided services through the Debt Market Integrator (DMI), a Cabinet Office led initiative to create a “one stop shop” for all government departments to access a range of private sector debt collection services.

  • 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 2014-04-29.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, on how many occasions (a) photographs have been taken of intercepted aircraft on Quick Reaction Alert flights and (b) such photographs have been released to the public in each of the last three years.

    Mr Mark Francois

    Photographs are routinely taken during Quick Reaction Alert (QRA) interceptions. There is strong public and media interest in the RAF Quick Reaction Alert deterrent capability. MOD policy is to release a limited amount of non-sensitive information on QRA launches, sometimes including photographs. This provides the public with strong examples of how the RAF is able to respond to this kind of incident. It also provides public awareness of the RAF’s ability to defend the UK through the effectiveness of its air defences and to maintain the full deterrence value of the QRA mission. Media enquiries regarding QRA launches also often include requests for photographs.

    Consequently, RAF Operations Staffs in coordination with MOD officials, including the MOD Directorate of Media and Communications, will occasionally consider these photographs for public release.

    Photographs of a recent QRA mission were released on 25 April 2014. The previous release of photographs of intercepted aircraft from a recent mission was in March 2010; additionally for other QRA information releases in the last three years, MOD have utilised stock images from the Defence Image Library.

  • Ian Lavery – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    Ian Lavery – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ian Lavery on 2014-04-29.

    To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the performance of the Tax Credit Error and Fraud Adding Capacity trial involving the private company Transactis in 2013.

    Nicky Morgan

    From April to July 2013, HMRC carried out a trial to test whether it would be feasible to increase the number of compliance checks on tax credits claims, through the use of private sector resource. HMRC will publish the evaluation of the trial and the customer research report in due course.

    It is not appropriate to place the business case in the public domain given the commercial sensitivities and the risk of prejudice to HMRC’s ability to tackle tax credits error and fraud.

    In terms of the external costs of the trial, I refer the Hon Member to the Thirty-Fourth Report of the Committee of Public Accounts [2013/14] into HMRC Tax Collection: Annual Report & Accounts 2012–13, which may be found at http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmpubacc/666/66602.htm. All internal HMRC operating costs are published annually in the HMRC Annual Report and Accounts.

    “

  • Charlotte Leslie – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Charlotte Leslie – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Charlotte Leslie on 2014-04-29.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the effect of the number of surgical care practitioners on the training of junior doctors in surgery.

    Dr Daniel Poulter

    The Government has mandated Health Education England (HEE) to provide national leadership on education, training and workforce development in the National Health Service.

    HEE supports the delivery of excellent healthcare and health improvement to the patients and public of England, by ensuring that our workforce has the right numbers, skills, values and behaviours, at the right time and in the right place. A key part of that role is a continuing responsibility for ensuring the provision of an appropriate number of surgical trainees. Assurance of the quality of surgical training is the responsibility of the General Medical Council.

  • Sadiq Khan – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    Sadiq Khan – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sadiq Khan on 2014-04-29.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what items prisoners are barred from purchasing with earned income.

    Jeremy Wright

    Prisoners are barred from purchasing those items which could compromise good order, security and safety, or which is otherwise unlawful. Prisoners are also not permitted to purchase items that are prohibited for reasons of Public Protection.

    Under the incentives and Earned privileges national policy framework, prisoners can purchase those items that the Governor has selected from the standardised facilities list, which identifies and limits the property that prisoners can retain in their cells.

  • Sadiq Khan – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    Sadiq Khan – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sadiq Khan on 2014-04-29.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the proven re-offending rate was of (a) those released from prison and (b) those released from prison who self-identified as Muslim in each year since 2010.

    Jeremy Wright

    The latest proven re-offending rates for those offenders released from prison can be found in tables 1 and 2 below. Table 1 provides overall proven re-offending rates for offenders released from prison and has been taken from the Proven Re-offending Statistics Quarterly Bulletin series. Table 2 provides proven re-offending rates for Muslim offenders released from prison.

    A proven re-offence is defined as any offence committed in a one year follow-up period resulting in a court conviction, caution, reprimand or warning in the one year follow-up. Following this one year follow-up, a further six month waiting period is allowed for the offence to be proven in court.

    These figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing. A prisoner’s religion is self declared and prisoners are under no obligation to declare.

    1. A certain proportion of offenders could not be matched to the Police National Computer (PNC) and are, therefore, not included. Therefore, this number does not represent all proven offenders

    1. A certain proportion of offenders could not be matched to the Police National Computer (PNC) and are, therefore, not included. Therefore, this number does not represent all proven offenders.

    2. Data on offenders’ religious beliefs are not available for 2010 due to data quality issues following the introduction of a new prison IT system.

  • Sadiq Khan – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    Sadiq Khan – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sadiq Khan on 2014-04-29.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, how many prisoners did not have (a) Key Stage 1, (b) Key Stage 2 and (c) Key Stage 3 qualifications in (i) English and (ii) mathematics when they entered prison in each of the last five years.

    Matthew Hancock

    We do not centrally hold information on prior attainment.

    Work is under way to introduce, this summer, mandatory education assessment by the Offenders’ Learning and Skills Service (OLASS) provider for all newly-received prisoners. This will ensure that all offenders, not just those that go on to learning, receive a learning assessment (focused around English and maths, but also covering learning difficulties and disabilities).

    Table 1 shows Offender Learner English and Maths Achievements for the 2012/13 academic year. The data are broken down by Level rather than Key Stage as this is the appropriate measure for further education qualifications.

    Table 1: Offender Learners – English and Maths Achievements by level, 2012/13

    Level

    English

    Maths

    Entry level

    5,100

    5,250

    Level 1

    3,550

    4,020

    Level 2

    1,280

    1,930

    Total

    9,300

    10,100

    Notes

    1) The data source is the Individualised Learner Record.

    2) Volumes are rounded to the nearest ten except for the Grand Totals which are rounded to the nearest hundred.

    3) Learners undertaking courses at more than one level will be counted once for each applicable level, but once only in the Total.

    4) Offender learners are defined as offenders aged 18 or over that participated in Skills Funding Agency funded learning while in the prison system. These offenders were funded via the Offenders’ Learning and Skills Service (OLASS) budget.

    Information on Offender Learner English and maths achievements by level for 2010/11 and 2011/12 is published as a Supplementary Table to a Statistical First Release. Data for earlier years are not available on a comparable basis.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/284253/January2013_OLASS_Participation_Achievement.xls

    https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/fe-data-library-further-education-and-skills

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