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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Louise Haigh on 2015-11-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he plans to take to ensure that people with rare neuromuscular conditions in Sheffield, Heeley constituency have access to the appropriate wheelchair for their condition.

Alistair Burt

Clinical commissioning groups are responsible for commissioning wheelchair services.

NHS England advises that it is supporting improvements in wheelchair services to ensure wheelchair users and their families can lead full, independent and active lives. This work involves establishing a new national wheelchair data collection to drive improvement, piloting a tariff for wheelchairs and supporting improvements in the commissioning of services.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Louise Haigh on 2015-11-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to the Answer of 9 January 2015 to Question 219449, what progress has been made in improving wheelchair services following the NHS England review.

Alistair Burt

Following the conclusion of its review NHS England has set up an improvement support programme working with 11 clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) to improve services for wheelchair users. The 11 CCGs are:

– North Yorkshire (NHS Harrogate and Rural District;

– NHS Hambleton, Richmondshire and Whitby;

– NHS Scarborough and Ryedale;

– NHS Vale of York CCG;

– North West London (NHS West London);

– NHS Hounslow;

– NHS Ealing;

– NHS Central London;

– NHS Hammersmith and Fulham;

– NHS Barnet; and

– NHS Brent.

NHS Improving Quality is supporting the programme which will run from September 2015 to March 2016 and include creating guidance, evidence and material to share with other organisations and communities.

NHS England has also introduced a new national wheelchair dataset with the aim of providing information centrally on the volume, expenditure, access to, and patient experience about wheelchair services to enable transparency and benchmarking. From July 2015, data are being collected quarterly from CCGs.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Louise Haigh on 2015-11-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 3 November 2015 to Question 13442, what proportion of case workers in her Department received Keeping Children Safe Tier 3 training in 2014.

James Brokenshire

1, 329 officials have received tier 3 training, which makes up 7.5% of the Borders and Immigration casework and operational roles within the Home Office.

Keeping Children Safe training is available to Home Office staff at three levels depending on an individual’s specific role. Tier 3 job-specific training is delivered to a smaller proportion of specialist staff across Borders and Immigration business areas that have regular direct contact with children.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Louise Haigh on 2015-11-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what estimate he has made of the cost of using external agencies for recruitment of Senior Civil posts in his Department in each of the last five years for which figures are available.

Mr Tobias Ellwood

The cost to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of using external agencies for the recruitment of Senior Civil Service posts in the last 5 financial years is set out in the table below:

We predominantly use external recruitment firms for specialist roles where the necessary experience and expertise does not exist elsewhere in the Civil Service

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Louise Haigh on 2015-11-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate he has made of the cost of using external agencies for recruitment to senior Civil Service posts in his Department in each of the last five years for which figures are available.

Jane Ellison

The Department uses external recruitment agencies to support appointments to the Senior Civil Service (SCS). The table below shows the costs of SCS appointments that have been made where a recruitment agency was involved, for each financial year since 2010/11.