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Tag: 2014

  • Mr David Hanson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    Mr David Hanson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Mr David Hanson on 2014-03-13.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate she has made of the cost of merging the e-borders programme into the border system programme.

    James Brokenshire

    The activities of the e-Borders programme have been absorbed into the Border
    Systems Programme. The estimated cost to close the e-Borders programme and
    define the Border Systems Programme was £340,000. These costs are attributable
    to civil servants already in post and there has been no additional expenditure
    or procurement in order to move the work from e-Borders to Border Systems.

    The procurement approach to replacing the primary border security elements of
    the Border Systems Programme will reflect broader Government ICT and Commercial
    strategy, and there will be no single, large supplier. The Home Office will
    lead development, with services procured from a range of providers, potentially
    including small and medium enterprises; no tenders have been received at this
    time.

    By March 2015 the Border Systems Programme aims to:

    • Complete resilience of all current business critical systems;
    • Develop replacement primary border security systems;
    • Provide the capability to support commitments on exit checks;
    • Establish a programme for the next generation of Radiological and Nuclear
    detection (Cyclamen);
    • Continue the implementation of second generation e-Gates across the estate;
    • Develop and implement new freight targeting capability for Sea Containers;
    • Establish contracts to purchase new detection equipment;
    • Continue to assure live operations of existing systems.

    The breakdown of FTE Civil Servants engaged by the e-Borders and subsequently
    the Border Systems Programme in each year since 2010, is:

    Dec-10 Dec-11 Dec-12 Dec-13
    SCS PB 2 1 1 1 0
    SCS PB 1 2 1 2 2
    G6 7.8 7.8 7.8 9.8
    G7 11.8 9.8 10.8 17.8
    SEO/HMI 33.5 34.7 48.8 49.7
    HEO/CIO 26 25.4 22.5 30.9
    EO/IO 22 19.3 25 20.8
    AO/PS 7 5 5 3

  • Lord Steel of Aikwood – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

    Lord Steel of Aikwood – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Steel of Aikwood on 2014-06-10.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government what was the cost to public funds of the evacuation of tourists from Mombasa in May.

    Baroness Warsi

    The British Government did not evacuate British nationals from Mombasa in May and there was no cost to public funds.

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

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

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chris Ruane on 2014-03-13.

    To ask the hon. Member for South West Devon, representing the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, if he will list each local authority database used by electoral registration offices in the dry run for individual electoral registration (IER) for the 10 local authorities with the (a) best and (b) worst registration rates during the IER dry run.

    Gary Streeter

    The Electoral Commission informs me that this information was provided to the Hon. Member in the answer to Question 191356.

  • Lord Palmer – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Lord Palmer – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Palmer on 2014-06-10.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government from which companies and organisations, other than those involved in the tobacco industry, they have received representations since October 2013 regarding their plans to consider introducing standardised tobacco packaging.

    Earl Howe

    The information cannot be provided without incurring disproportionate cost.

  • Jonathan Edwards – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Deputy Prime Minister

    Jonathan Edwards – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Deputy Prime Minister

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jonathan Edwards on 2014-03-12.

    To ask the Deputy Prime Minister, what assessment he has made of the suitability of the chief executives of Carmarthenshire County Council and Pembrokeshire County Council acting as returning officers in future elections.

    Greg Clark

    It is the responsibility of individual local authorities to appoint an officer of the council to be the returning officer for local government elections in their area. Electoral law provides that returning officers for local government elections shall also be local returning officers for European Parliamentary elections. It therefore does not fall to the Government to assess the suitability of individuals carrying out these roles.

  • Lord Beecham – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    Lord Beecham – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Beecham on 2014-06-09.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the budgeted annual expenditure of the National Probation Service.

    Lord Faulks

    The total probation budget for 2014-15 is £804 million. This includes the first two months of the financial year, during which services were provided by the probation trusts. As well as operational delivery, the probation budget includes provision of corporate services to support the new operating model.

    The budget figureis based on an initial assessment of operational and business needs and may vary within the financial period. The costs associated with high-risk offenders fall within a number of budget items and do not constitute a separate category.

  • Steve Rotheram – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    Steve Rotheram – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve Rotheram on 2014-03-12.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many individuals convicted of (a) murder or (b) attempted murder in each of the last 10 years have been released with exclusion zones forming a part of their licence arrangements.

    Jeremy Wright

    Unfortunately, it is not possible to answer these questions without carrying out a manual search through all relevant individual offender files, at disproportionate cost.

    Conditions such as an exclusion zone may be applied to an offender’s licence where it is necessary to manage the risk that the individual offender poses following release into the community – and where it is proportionate to that risk. Where qualifying victims have exercised their statutory right to make representations about the offender’s licence conditions, the exclusion zone set will take into account those representations. In each case, the supervising officer proposes conditions as appropriate and requests these from the appropriate authority, which applies it to the licence on behalf of the Secretary of State. In the case of determinate sentence prisoners, the authority is the prison governor; in the case of indeterminate sentence prisoners, or others whose release is on the direction of the Parole Board, the authority is the Parole Board.

    These conditions must be kept under review, and are intended to be flexible to the possible resettlement needs of an offender in the community and any new risks that arise.

    An exclusion zone will rarely be absolute, as it is recognised that there may be exceptional reasons why the offender needs to enter the exclusion zone. Thus, where an exclusion zone is included in the offender’s licence, it will usually be open to the supervising officer to grant the offender permission to enter the exclusion zone, for a temporary period and for a specific purpose.

    As this is a purely localised decision, there is no national record of the number of occasions such permission has been given. It is, therefore, not possible to answer the questions regarding how many times an offender has been granted permission to enter the exclusion zone applied to his licence.

    Data from the last 10 years is not available in the required electronic format to answer the question relating to numbers of offenders with exclusion zones included in their licence. To provide such information would again require a manual interrogation of offenders’ records and this would incur disproportionate cost.

  • Lord Hunt of Kings Heath – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Lord Hunt of Kings Heath – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Hunt of Kings Heath on 2014-06-09.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they are taking any action to prevent the closure of the Worcester Walk-In Health Centre; and if so, what.

    Earl Howe

    The reconfiguration of local health services is a matter for the National Health Service. All service changes should be led by clinicians and be in the best interests of patients, not driven from the top down.

    We are aware that the local consultation on the Worcestershire Urgent Care Strategy closed on 9 April 2014. The clinical commissioning groups in Worcestershire are now considering the responses. No decisions have yet been made.

  • Stephen Timms – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

    Stephen Timms – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Stephen Timms on 2014-03-12.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the effect (a) generally and (b) on ease of comparisons with previous years of collecting work-related ill-health data through the Labour Force Survey biennially instead of annually.

    Mike Penning

    Experience from collecting work-related ill health data through the Labour Force Survey from 2003/04 to 2011/12 indicated that figures rarely changed significantly year-on-year. The main value in the data is in comparisons over longer time periods and in combining survey years to look at detailed sub-populations.

    Work-related ill health data for 2013/14 has been collated and will be published in the autumn.

  • Baroness Nye – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

    Baroness Nye – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Nye on 2014-06-09.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the total amount of international aid to Burma and what percentage is provided by them.

    Baroness Northover

    DFID publishes aid statistics each year on the gov.uk website as ‘Statistics on International Development’ (SID). The most recent set of data for which we can compare UK Official Development Assistance (ODA) with the total of bilateral ODA provided by OECD Development Assistance Committee countries to Burma is from 2010, when the overall total was £161 million. The UK provided around 18% of this total.