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Tag: 2014

  • David Hanson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    David Hanson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Hanson on 2014-06-10.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many overseas resident passport applications by UK citizens have been dealt with by HM Passport Office in each year since 2010.

    James Brokenshire

    The table below provides the requested information.

    Year Number of applications dealt
    with
    2010 0
    2011 0
    2012 145
    2013 82, 590
    2014, up to 30th June 225, 687

    The administration of overseas resident passports was repatriated from the
    Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 2012. Transition arrangements began in
    December 2012 and were completed in March 2014

  • Mr Andy Slaughter – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    Mr Andy Slaughter – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Mr Andy Slaughter on 2014-03-17.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many and what proportion of state-funded schools that have opened since September 2011 have changed their headteacher since opening.

    David Laws

    The information requested is not held centrally.

  • Jim Shannon – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

    Jim Shannon – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Shannon on 2014-06-10.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assistance his Department gives to farmers and landowners in controlling the number of jays which predate smaller song birds.

    George Eustice

    All wild birds are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. However, licences allow for the control of birds in some circumstances. In England, general licences are issued by Natural England permitting users to kill or take jays for several purposes. These include conserving wild birds and preventing serious damage to crops. They may be relied on by landowners and other authorised persons as long as they are satisfied they have met the conditions of the licence.

  • Mr Tom Watson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    Mr Tom Watson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Mr Tom Watson on 2014-03-17.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 13 March 2014, Official Report, column 325W, on the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, how many NCA employees who work in Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command have arrest powers.

    Damian Green

    [holding answer 20 March 2014]

    I refer the Honourable Member to my reply of 13 March 2014, Official Report, column 326W.

    The Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Command is fully integrated within the National Crime Agency (NCA). As part of the NCA, the CEOP Command is able to draw on the whole of the NCA’s resources. The NCA works as a flexible organisation and as such there will be NCA officers whose work covers a range of serious and organised crime threats.

    In total the NCA has 1,900 officers who currently hold arrest powers who can be called upon to tackle child exploitation. This number is for NCA permanent officers and does not include secondees or those attached to the NCA.

  • Luciana Berger – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Cabinet Office

    Luciana Berger – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Cabinet Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2014-06-10.

    To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment he has made of the principal cause of preventable premature mortality, measured in preventable years of life lost, in people up to the age of 60 years.

    Mr Nick Hurd

    The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply.

  • Julie Elliott – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

    Julie Elliott – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Elliott on 2014-03-17.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether he has any plans to reduce the number of trains per hour on the East Coast Main Line from London to Newcastle following the opening of High Speed 2.

    Stephen Hammond

    It is too early to set the service pattern for the GB rail network in the 2020s and beyond. However, one of the key principles that will guide future service patterns is that all towns or cities which currently have a direct service to London will retain broadly comparable or better services once HS2 is complete. The future design, calling pattern and frequency of network services once HS2 opens will be developed openly, and in partnership.

  • Emily Thornberry – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Attorney General

    Emily Thornberry – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Attorney General

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Emily Thornberry on 2014-06-10.

    To ask the Attorney General, with reference to the Answer of 6 May 2014, Official Report, column 8W, on freezing orders, for each of the restraint orders granted since 2010-11, what the length of time was between receipt by the prosecution agency of the freezing request and the granting of the order.

    Oliver Heald

    Since 2010-11 the Serious Fraud Office has obtained two restraint orders for overseas jurisdictions. The length of time from date of receipt of the requests to the granting of the orders, are shown in the following table;

    Year

    Time

    2010

    3 days

    2011

    7 days

    The length of time between receipt of freezing requests by the Crown prosecution Service and the granting of the order is shown in the table below. There were two cases (one in 2010/11 and one in 2012/13) which took a significant amount of time to execute as detailed work needed to be done with the requesting country in order to prepare the applications for restraint orders.

    Year

    Number of overseas restraint orders

    Number of days from the receipt of the external request to the granting of the order

    2010/11

    7

    Request 1 – 22

    Request 2 – 96

    Request 3 – 9

    Request 4 – 17

    Request 5 – 17

    Request 6 – 95

    Request 7 – 645

    2011/12

    2

    Request 1 – 1

    Request 2 – 26

    2012/13

    6

    Request 1 – 27

    Request 2 – 39

    Request 3 – 438

    Request 4 – 34

    Request 5 – 28

    Request 6 – 11

    2013/14

    3

    Request 1 – 16

    Request 2 – 1

    Request 3 – 35

  • Adam Afriyie – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    Adam Afriyie – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Adam Afriyie on 2014-03-17.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress he has made on encouraging computer science and programming in UK schools.

    Elizabeth Truss

    As part of the reforms to the national curriculum, the Department for Education is strengthening the teaching of computing in schools by replacing information and communications technology with computing. The new programmes of study for computing, which will be taught in maintained schools from September 2014, have a much greater emphasis on computer science. For example, pupils at key stage 1 will be taught to create and debug simple programs and key stage 3 pupils will be taught to use two or more programming languages.

    We also working with exam boards and sector experts to review the computer science GCSE and A level so that they reflect and build upon the changes made to the curriculum. The inclusion of computer science in the English Baccalaureate will provide further encouragement for pupils to take up the subject at GCSE level. We are also providing funding for several projects to help teachers acquire the necessary subject knowledge and skills to teach the new computing curriculum.

    We are funding the British Computer Society to build a network of 400 ‘Master Teachers’, create online teach-yourself resources and deliver 800 in-school workshops to help primary school teachers improve their subject knowledge. A further £500,000 competitive match-funded scheme was announced on 4 February to support excellent computing teaching and lever additional investment and engagement from business.

  • Jim Fitzpatrick – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Jim Fitzpatrick – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Fitzpatrick on 2014-06-10.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many local authorities have not conducted any sampling to check food composition over the last 12 months.

    Jane Ellison

    The Food Standards Agency (FSA) collects food law enforcement monitoring returns from local authorities annually. Data for the period 1 April 2013 to 31 March 2014 is currently being collected. Following collation and analysis, the FSA plans to publish this data in November 2014.

    The FSA advises that the following local authorities did not report any food composition sampling in 2012-13 via the Local Authority Enforcement Monitoring System (LAEMS):

    Armagh

    Birmingham

    Blackburn

    Bolton

    Darlington

    Isle of Wight

    Leicester City

    Plymouth City

    Redcar and Cleveland

    Rochdale

    Rutland

    South Lanarkshire

    Swindon

    Tameside

    All of these authorities reported taking other labelling or microbiological samples in 2012-13.

    A table has been placed in the Library which shows how many food standards samples (composition and labelling) each local authority reported via LAEMS in 2012-13, together with a comparison against the number reported in 2011-12 and how many food standards samples each local authority reported through a FSA-funded project.

    All of the reported food standards samples were official samples and would have been submitted to the local authority’s appointed Public Analyst for analysis. Out of 22,055 food standards samples in 2012-13, 4,387 were funded by the FSA, all other food standards samples would have been paid for by the local authority. By comparison, in 2011-12, the FSA funded 5,072 out of 21,970 food standards samples.

    For some local authorities, the FSA funded sampling figure is larger than the number included in the LAEMS report. The difference will be due to the LAEMS reports only including samples for which the analytical result was received from the Public Analyst before 31 March 2013.

  • Mr Frank Field – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

    Mr Frank Field – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Mr Frank Field on 2014-03-17.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much was paid in service charges to housing associations for adaptations to accommodation for disabled tenants in the last year for which figures are available.

    Esther McVey

    The information requested is not available. Information about service charges paid by all tenants is not collected.

    Eligible service charges for Housing Benefit would not include the cost of making an adaptation.