Category: Speeches

Stuart C. McDonald – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Stuart C. McDonald on 2016-04-14.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many take charge requests under each article of the Dublin regulations were (a) received, (b) accepted and (c) rejected by the Government in each month since April 2015.

James Brokenshire

Whilst all asylum claims, including those accepted under Dublin III, are registered on the main immigration database the specifics of each case are not currently available in the form requested as the data is not held in a way that allows it to be reported on automatically.

01/01/2023
Maria Eagle – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Maria Eagle on 2016-05-23.

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what the cost to his Department was of commissioning and publishing the report, entitled Research to explore public views about the BBC, published in May 2016.

Mr Edward Vaizey

The cost for this piece of independent research was £108,085 excluding VAT.

01/01/2023
Helen Jones – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Helen Jones on 2016-07-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, on what dates Ministers of his Department have met representatives of the food industry to discuss the Government’s proposed national obesity strategy; and what was discussed at each such meeting.

Nicola Blackwood

Details of all Ministerial meetings with external stakeholders are published quarterly in arrears on the GOV.UK website. The latest publication which covers meetings between January and March 2016 can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ministerial-gifts-hospitality-travel-and-external-meetings-2016

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01/01/2023
Caroline Lucas – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Caroline Lucas on 2016-10-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 15 September 2016 to Question 906370, if he will publish the London and South Coast Rail Corridor Study; whether he plans to fund proposals for a Brighton Mainline 2 in order to remedy the significant capacity and performance constraints identified; and if he will make a statement.

Paul Maynard

The Government will publish the London and South Coast Rail Corridor Study, and its response to the recommendations, in due course.

01/01/2023
William Cash – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

The below Parliamentary question was asked by William Cash on 2015-11-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, whether (a) she or (b) another Minister from her Department plans to attend the Nutrition for Growth Summit schedules to take place during the Rio Summer Olympics.

Grant Shapps

We have yet to receive a formal invitation to the Nutrition for Growth Summit from the Government of Brazil. Once an invitation is received a decision will be taken on ministerial attendance.

DFID are working closely with the Brazilian government to support them in their preparations for the summit.

01/01/2023
Cat Smith – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Cat Smith on 2016-01-04.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to monitor the number of trans prisoners; and what definition his Department uses of a trans person.

Caroline Dinenage

As the Minister for Prisons, Andrew Selous MP, committed to the House on 20 November 2015, NOMS is currently looking at ways to facilitate the collection and recording of information relating to transgender status as part of our wider review of care and management of transgender offenders. This is within the restrictions of the GRA which means if someone has a GRC they don’t have to disclose former gender. The Equality Act 2010 clearly sets out the definition.

01/01/2023
Alison McGovern – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Alison McGovern on 2016-01-25.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to develop polices on confirming the date a transgender person has begun living in role.

Jane Ellison

Specialised gender identity services are directly commissioned by NHS England.

NHS England has considered the outcomes of the listening exercise conducted by Professor Field and has put in place a significant programme of work to improve healthcare services for transgender and non-binary people. A dedicated task group has been established to provide leadership and coordination of NHS England’s work to improve transgender and non-binary people’s experience of the National Health Service, and NHS England holds a Transgender Network event twice a year. Regular updates on NHS England’s work to improve gender identity services are given on NHS England’s website by the Regional Director of Specialised Commissioning (London) who chairs the task group.

A Clinical Reference Group for Gender Identity Services has been established, comprising professional and lay experts. This group makes recommendations to NHS England on clinical matters. Issues around the standardisation of pathways across gender identity services and clinical protocols are being considered as part of the current work to develop a service specification that, it is proposed, will describe how NHS England will commission these services in the future. The process for developing a proposed service specification has included a period of public consultation.

01/01/2023
Ruth Cadbury – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Energy and Climate Change

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ruth Cadbury on 2016-02-22.

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what steps her Department is taking to tackle fuel poverty in the UK.

Andrea Leadsom

A reformed domestic supplier obligation (ECO) from April 2017, which will run for 5 years, will upgrade the energy efficiency of over 200,000 homes per year tackling the root cause of fuel poverty. Our extension of the Warm Home Discount to 2020/21 at current levels of £320m per annum will also help vulnerable households with their energy bills.

We intend to focus our efforts through ECO and the Warm Home Discount more effectively on the fuel poor, and will be consulting on our future approach in the spring.

01/01/2023
Steve McCabe – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve McCabe on 2016-03-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 29 February 2016 to Question 27310, on how many occasions other than cases in which an objection was submitted the Schools Adjudicator has judged a school’s admission arrangements not to be compliant with the Schools Adjudicator’s Code in the last two years.

Nick Gibb

The Schools Adjudicator has the power, under Section 88H of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, to consider objections to a school’s determined admission arrangements. She also has the power, under Section 88I of the Act, to consider whether admission arrangements that come to her attention by other means comply with the School Admissions Code.

Data on the number of cases considered by the Adjudicator and their outcome can be found on page 20 of the Chief Schools Adjudicator’s annual report for 2014/15. The report can be found here: www.gov.uk/government/publications/osa-annual-report.

The Adjudicator does not publish data broken down in the way requested.

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01/01/2023

Kate Hoey – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kate Hoey on 2016-04-14.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what proportion of Disclosure and Barring Service checks took (a) longer than eight weeks, (b) 12 weeks or more and (c) six months or more in each of the last three years; and if she will make a statement.

Karen Bradley

The Disclosure and Barring Service is a non-departmental public body which provides access to appropriate criminal record information for employers through its disclosure service for England and Wales. It also makes independent barring decisions about people who have harmed, or where there is considered to be a risk of harm to, a child or vulnerable person within the workplace. Given the sensitive nature of this work and the reliance on police forces to provide locally held intelligence, it would not be appropriate to introduce competition.

Whilst no assessment has been made of the affect of timeliness on the number of job opportunities which may have been lost, the impact which delays may have on applicants is recognised. The DBS is reliant on police forces completing their checks in a timely manner and is working closely with those forces whose performance does not meet turnaround time targets. In very exceptional cases, where it is apparent that a delay is likely to cause undue hardship to an applicant, the DBS will do all it can to expedite the process by raising an escalation with the relevant police force.

The average end to end time taken to complete a DBS check, including the time taken by police forces, is listed in following table.

Financial Year	Average calendar days for a disclosure to be processed
13/14	11.5
14/15	14.4
15/16	14.5

The proportion of checks which took longer than (a) eight weeks (b) 12 weeks and (c) six months is listed in the following table.

Financial Year	Disclosures which took longer than 8 weeks	Disclosures which took longer than 12 weeks	Disclosures which took longer than 6 Months
% of Disclosures	% of Disclosures	% of Disclosures
13/14	2.6%	0.8%	0.0%
14/15	4.9%	2.1%	0.1%
15/16	5.2%	3.5%	0.3%

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01/01/2023