The below Parliamentary question was asked by Louise Haigh on 2016-02-23.
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many complaints his Department has received on the sale of electoral roll data by credit reference firms.
John Penrose
Available records show that in the last calendar year the Cabinet Office received one letter of complaint about access to the electoral register by credit reference agencies, and nine letters of complaint about the sale of the edited electoral register.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Caroline Lucas on 2016-03-21.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the criteria are for referral of a child maintenance case to the Child Maintenance Group’s Financial Investigations Unit.
Priti Patel
The current referral criteria requires the non-resident parent to have agreed the income figure provided by HMRC and for this to have then been challenged by the parent with care.
However, it has been recognised that this criteria does not identify all potential triggers for referral and does not take into account those non-resident parents that do not respond to Child Maintenance Group (CMG) contact. Non-resident parents are told in their calculation letters to contact CMG if anything used in the calculation is wrong. CMG intend therefore, to use this instruction as a gateway to investigate cases where the HMRC information is challenged. The criteria for these challenges are currently being formulated, to ensure the Financial Investigations Unit act proportionately and will be delivered to all CMG caseworkers as soon as it is agreed.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Caroline Flint on 2016-04-19.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she plans to require all primary and secondary schools to become academies.
Nick Gibb
Two-thirds of secondary schools and one-third of primary schools are already academies. All schools yet to convert have six years to work with their local authority and Diocese to plan effectively for a sustainable future.
We expect many will choose to partner with other schools and form or join new, local partnerships. However, no school has to rush into an arrangement that is not right for them and they will be supported throughout this process.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Cunningham on 2016-05-25.
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, how many visits (a) by Ministers and (b) officials from his Department were made to Coventry in each of the last five years.
Joseph Johnson
This information can only be obtained at disproportionate cost.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Philip Davies on 2016-07-21.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether his Department has received any complaints about the organisation Action on Smoking and Health in the last five years.
Nicola Blackwood
A grant of £160,000 has been awarded to Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) for financial year 2016/17 and a copy of the signed award letter, including the detailed deliverables of the grant, is attached.
Grants made under Section 64 of the Health Services and Public Health Act 1968 can be made in a number of ways. The grant awarded to ASH has been assessed as most appropriate for the non-competed route.
The Department received a complaint about the deliverables of the 2015/16 grant awarded to ASH in June this year. The Department responded to the complainant, confirming it was satisfied that none of the deliverables were in breach of the provisions of Section 64.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by John Pugh on 2016-10-07.
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, approximately how many (a) British and (b) non-British nationals are employed cleaning the Westminster estate of her Department.
Matt Hancock
All Government Departments are bound by legal requirements concerning the right to work in the UK and, in addition, the Civil Service Nationality Rules.
Evidence of nationality is checked at the point of recruitment into the Civil Service as part of wider pre-employment checks, but there is no requirement on departments to retain this information beyond the point at which it has served its purpose.
More broadly, the Government will be consulting in due course on how we work with business to ensure that workers in this country have the skills that they need to get a job. But there are no proposals to publish lists of the number or proportion of foreign workers.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Stoddart of Swindon on 2015-10-27.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the construction of four commercial nuclear power reactors for the United Arab Emirates by a South Korean consortium with a total capacity of 5.6 GWe at cost of £14 billion, in the light of their plans for nuclear generation at Hinkley Point.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
The Government does not make direct comparisons between projects in different circumstances that have different contracts and are situated in different markets.
There has been a thorough review of the costs of the Hinkley Point C project to ensure that the contract represents value for money. Hinkley will provide reliable low carbon energy for around 60 years and offer 25,000 jobs during construction. My rt. hon Friend the Secretary of State expects to be in a position to take her final decision on the Contract for Difference and associated agreements for Hinkley Point C once the documentation relating to equity investment into the project is finalised.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-01-06.
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for how long people under the age of 18 who were transferred to a place of safety under section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983 were detained on average in (a) a police cell and (b) a police vehicle in England and Wales in each of the last 10 years.
Mike Penning
The information requested is not held centrally.
However, the use of police cells as a place of safety for all persons detained under section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983 has more than halved since 2011/12 (when figures were first collated) as shown in the following table. A joint inspection by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC); Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP); the Care Quality Commission (CQC); and Healthcare Inspectorate Wales (HIW) (published in 2013) found that the average time that each such person spent in police custody was 10 hours 32 minutes.
The Government intends to make provision in the Policing and Crime Bill, to be introduced in Parliament soon, to prohibit the use of police cells as places of safety for people under the age of 18, and to further limit their use in the case of adults. The maximum period for which a person may be detained pending a mental health assessment will also be reduced.
Table 1: number of times a police station was used as a place of safety for people detained under Section 136 Mental Health Act 1983 (England only)
|
Year |
Section 136 detentions in police stations |
Percentage reduction year on year (to nearest whole number) |
|
2011-12 |
8,667 |
N/A[1] |
|
2012-13 |
7,881 |
-9% |
|
2013-14 |
6,028 |
-24% |
|
2014-15 |
3,996 |
-34% |
Source: Health and Social Care Information Centre
[1] No data on use of police stations is available for 2010-11.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Stewart Jackson on 2016-01-26.
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what response she has made to the recent letter from the Chair of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Fire and Rescue Authority detailing improvements in that Authority’s pay and recruitment arrangements following Ministerial intervention; and if she will make a statement.
Mike Penning
Melanie Dawes, the Permanent Secretary and Accounting Officer for the Department for Communities and Local Government, replied to Sir Peter Brown the chairman of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Fire Authority, on 30 December. That letter reiterated the Government’s position that all parts of the public sector should continue to demonstrate restraint in the pay and reward offered to senior staff, and should ensure that the way that their workforces are managed is truly in the interests of taxpayers.
While fire and rescue authorities are independent employers and it is for their leadership to make local decisions about the pay, reward and appointment of their staff, the Government has taken a number of steps to increase the transparency and accountability of these local decisions, not least through the Localism Act 2011 and its associated guidance.
These measures have helped create the conditions in which decisions on senior remuneration are rightfully subject to significantly greater scrutiny, ensuring the public have the information they need to hold councillors to account at the ballot box.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Melanie Onn on 2016-02-23.
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of whether a five per cent VAT rate could continue to apply to solar PV and solar thermal within the terms of the EU’s VAT directive and the judgment of the European Court of Justice on that matter.
Mr David Gauke
The Government has recently consulted on this matter, the results of which will be announced shortly.