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Tag: 2014

  • Chris Ruane – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission

    Chris Ruane – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chris Ruane on 2014-05-06.

    To ask the hon. Member for South West Devon, representing the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, with reference to the Answer of 5 July 2011, Official Report, column 1103W, on electoral register, which electoral registration officers rated themselves too highly in their self-assessment and had their ratings reduced in each year for which data is available.

    Mr Gary Streeter

    The Electoral Commission informs me that information about those Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) whose assessments it revised to ‘below the standard’ in each of 2008, 2009 and 2010 is available in the answer provided on 5 July 2011 [63427].

    Those EROs whose assessments the Commission has revised to ‘below the standard’ in 2011 and 2012 are shown in the tables below:

    2011

    2012

    Performance Standard 3

    Performance Standard 3

    Angus

    Arun

    Arun

    Braintree

    Braintree

    Broxbourne

    Broxbourne

    Castle Point

    Castle Point

    East Hampshire

    Chichester

    East Hertfordshire

    Clackmannanshire

    Eastbourne

    East Ayrshire

    Great Yarmouth

    East Devon

    Gwynedd

    East Dorset

    Lancaster

    East Hertfordshire

    Merthyr Tydfil

    East Lothian

    Mid Sussex

    Edinburgh, City of

    North Hertfordshire

    Falkirk

    North Warwickshire

    Fife

    Powys

    Gravesham

    Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead

    Great Yarmouth

    South Oxfordshire

    Hart

    Uttlesford

    Maldon

    Vale of White Horse

    Malvern Hills

    West Oxfordshire

    Medway

    Performance Standard 4

    Merthyr Tydfil

    Eden

    Midlothian

    Performance Standard 6

    Milton Keynes

    Eden

    Mole Valley

    North Ayrshire

    North Devon

    North Lanarkshire

    North Somerset

    North Warwickshire

    Perth and Kinross

    Powys

    Rhondda, Cynon, Taff

    Sedgemoor

    Shropshire

    Solihull

    South Ayrshire

    South Lanarkshire

    Stirling

    Suffolk Coastal

    Tandridge

    Taunton Deane

    Thanet

    The Vale of Glamorgan

    Torfaen

    Warwick

    West Devon

    West Lothian

    West Oxfordshire

    West Somerset

    Wycombe

    The Commission informs me that it is in the process of analysing the detailed registration data relating to the 2013 canvass, which informs its assessments of EROs’ performance. Once this work has been completed, it will publish final assessments of performance for 2013, including the details of any EROs whose assessments it has revised.

  • Philip Davies – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Attorney General

    Philip Davies – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Attorney General

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Philip Davies on 2014-05-06.

    To ask the Attorney General, how many (a) men and (b) women have been (i) investigated, (ii) given an administrative penalty, (iii) given a caution and (iv) convicted in court for benefit fraud since the prosecution of such cases was transferred to the Law Officers’ Department.

    Oliver Heald

    Allegations of benefit fraud are investigated by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Administrative penalties are financial penalties, which can be offered as an alternative to prosecution, where there has been no previous fraud penalty of any form. These are issued by the DWP and Local Authorities. Cautions are issued by the Police.

    The records held by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) identify the number of offences in which a prosecution commenced and, reached a first hearing in magistrates’ courts, rather than the number of defendants prosecuted and convicted or their gender.

    No central records of the prosecution outcomes of offences are held by the CPS. To obtain details of the number of people prosecuted for and convicted of offences of benefit fraud, which can be charged under various sections of the Social Security Administration Act 1992, Section 35 of the Tax Credits Act 2002 or the Fraud Act 2006, including their gender, would require a manual exercise of reviewing individual case files to be undertaken at a disproportionate cost.

    Furthermore, cases of benefit fraud are also prosecuted by Local Authorities so any data the CPS can glean from a manual exercise would not provide a complete record.

  • Philip Davies – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    Philip Davies – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Philip Davies on 2014-05-06.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people have been given more than one life sentence on separate sentencing occasions in the last 30 years; and for what offences each person received each such life sentence.

    Jeremy Wright

    A life sentence is mandatory for murder and discretionary life sentences are available for other very serious offences. This Government has introduced an automatic life sentence for a second very serious violent or sexual offence.

    Under a life sentence, the court determines the minimum period to be served in prison for the purposes of punishment and deterrence. Once that period has been served it is for the Parole Board to determine if and when the offender may be released from prison on life licence and subject to recall for the rest of their life.

    Table 1 shows the number of offenders who have been sentenced to life in the 12 months ending September 2013 who previously had one or more previous life sentence on a separate sentencing occasion within the last 30 years, in England and Wales. The table also shows details of their latest and previous offences for which they received a life sentence.

    Reoffending rates for life sentenced prisoners are very low. A small number of life sentence prisoners commit offences in prison which result in a second life sentence. Some life sentence prisoners can also receive a second life sentence on conviction for offences committed prior to being imprisoned (e.g. a previous murder or rape).

    The figures provided have been drawn from an extract of the Police National Computer (PNC) data held by the Department. The PNC holds details of all convictions and cautions given for recordable offences committed in England and Wales. In addition, as with any large scale recording system the PNC is subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.

    Detailed information on the length of time served by individual life sentence prisoners, and offence information is not readily available, so I will write to the Honourable Member.

  • Steve McCabe – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

    Steve McCabe – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve McCabe on 2014-05-06.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he has taken to ensure that unemployed people who volunteer for the Help to Work Scheme do not do the same work as offenders on community service orders.

    Esther McVey

    These are two entirely different schemes and we would expect the requirements of placements for offenders to be very different. The welfare to work companies we have contracted to provide Community Work Placements are experienced at delivering different programmes across different areas of Government.

  • Baroness Greengross – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Baroness Greengross – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Greengross on 2014-05-06.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many (1) non-cancer and (2) cancer-based lymphoedema and lipoedema patients were identified by the National Health Service in each of the last three years; how many such patients were treated by the National Health Service in each of the last three years; and what was the cost of those treatments.

    Earl Howe

    Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) data does not separately identify those cases of lymphoedema that are associated with cancer from those that are not, and is unable to identify cases of lipoedema as there is no coding available for this condition, based on the tenth revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD).

    Further to this, HES data is not linked to costing information and therefore this information cannot be provided.

    In the following table we have provided the number of finished admission episodes (FAEs) for patients with a primary diagnosis of lymphoedema from 2010-11 to 2012-13.

    Year

    FAE

    2010-11

    1,887

    2011-12

    2,026

    2012-13

    2,099

    Note:

    An FAE is the first period of admitted patient care under one consultant within one healthcare provider. FAEs are counted against the year or month in which the admission

  • The Lord Bishop of Coventry – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

    The Lord Bishop of Coventry – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by The Lord Bishop of Coventry on 2014-05-06.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the displacement of people from the Syrian town of Kessab.

    Baroness Northover

    According to UN sources, approximately 1,500 to 1,600 families have been displaced from the city of Kessab.

  • Lord Berkeley – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

    Lord Berkeley – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Berkeley on 2014-05-06.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government what will be the additional annual cost at 2014 prices of the further tranche of Intercity Express Programme electric trains for the Intercity East Coast Franchise under the contract signed on 16 April.

    Baroness Kramer

    In April 2014 financial and commercial close was reached for the full fleet of trains for the East Coast Main Line (ECML). The net present value (NPV) of the deal was £2.7bn in 2009 prices.

    It is not possible to disaggregate the different elements of the ECML fleet as the contract was completed for the full fleet. All figures for the Programme are presented in 2009 prices to allow comparison, it is therefore not possible to provide any figures in 2014 prices.

  • – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Cabinet Office

    – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Cabinet Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by on 2014-05-06.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government what estimate they have made of the value of the grey economy”

    Lord Wallace of Saltaire

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

  • Robert Buckland – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Robert Buckland – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Robert Buckland on 2014-06-04.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to simplify ombudsman services in health and social care.

    Dr Daniel Poulter

    The Government is considering reports of the Public Administration Select Committee into how complaints about public services are handled. As part of this inquiry, the Cabinet Office is undertaking work to further investigate how public services can make best use of complaints and also to take a wider look at the role and powers of the public sector Ombudsmen. The Government will respond to these reports in due course.

  • Greg Mulholland – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    Greg Mulholland – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Greg Mulholland on 2014-06-04.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, if he will consider changing student loan payments from three termly instalments to monthly instalments; and what steps his Department has taken to help students learn to budget.

    Mr David Willetts

    The Government is not currently intending to change student loan payments from three termly instalments to monthly instalments. Payments of living costs support for full-time students in higher education at the start of each term give students the flexibility to meet up-front costs such as accommodation costs.

    Advice on effective budgeting is available through the BIS Student Finance Tour where recent graduates share their personal experience with prospective students on how to manage their living costs spending while at university. Around 120,000 prospective students attended the Tour in 2013, and the aim is to increase this number to 140,000 in 2014. Budgeting advice is also available through university student support services including the Money Doctors Initiative. Additional resources are available through the National Union of Students and the National Association of Student Money Advisers.