The below Parliamentary question was asked by Bridget Phillipson on 2016-10-11.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will estimate the proportion of funding for extended school activities in primary schools in 2015-16 which came from parental contributions in (a) England, (b) the North East and (c) Sunderland.
Nick Gibb
The Department does not collect the information requested.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Greg Mulholland on 2016-01-05.
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will commission an urgent review of flood defences in (a) Leeds city region and (b) Yorkshire.
Rory Stewart
Whenever an exceptional event happens it is important to review what happened and how to prepare for the future, and the Environment Agency will always do this after a flood incident.
The flood response in Yorkshire will be overseen by Transport Minister Robert Goodwill who has been appointed as Flooding Envoy to the county and will track progress on recovery and identify lessons learnt
Work has also already started on the National Resilience Review, which is considering forecasting and modelling, resilience of key infrastructure and the way we make decisions on flood expenditure. The Review is being delivered by a cross-Government team and will be published in the summer.
£40 million funding has been committed to repair flood defences in response to the flooding. Going forward, as part of our new flood defence programme, we have been working with Leeds City Council and we are investing £33 million in a project to better protect Leeds City Centre. Construction of the new defences is already underway.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jo Stevens on 2016-02-01.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners in England and Wales were admitted to accident and emergency departments as a consequence of the use of psychoactive substances in (a) 2012, (b) 2013, (c) 2014 and (d) 2015.
Andrew Selous
This information is not held centrally.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Shabana Mahmood on 2016-02-23.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many pathologists qualified to conduct post-mortems there were in (a) 2010 and (b) 2015.
Caroline Dinenage
The Department does not hold this information.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Douglas Carswell on 2016-03-17.
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether he plans to implement the University College London RSCoin proposal.
Harriett Baldwin
Digital currencies, and the distributed ledger technology that underpins them, have the potential to bring innovative services and products to UK customers and firms – particularly in areas like international transfers.
The Chancellor announced in March 2015 that the Government will bring digital currency exchange firms into regulation in the UK to help the legitimate industry flourish, and to create a hostile environment for illicit actors. We will publish proposals on this regulatory regime in due course.
As outlined in Deputy Governor, Ben Broadbent’s recent speech, the Bank of England is also exploring this emerging sector and the implications it could have for monetary and financial stability as part of its broader research agenda.
Separately, academics at University College London’s (UCL) digital currency research centre have also been looking at how the distributed ledger technology that underpins digital currencies could be harnessed by central banks. The Government is encouraged to see this research from one of the UK’s world-leading universities. However, this a theoretical paper by an independent institution, separate from the Bank of England’s work and from Government policy.
It is the Government’s ambition to foster the growth of legitimate digital currency firms as part of the wider FinTech ecosystem here in the UK. As part of this, the Government will consider the wider implications of a growing digital currencies sector for the financial services sector and the economy as a whole. Some parts of Government are also looking at how the benefits of distributed ledger technology can be harnessed to deliver greater innovation. However, the Government and the Bank of England do not currently have any plans to introduce a centrally issued digital currency.
The UK has been rated as having the world’s leading FinTech ecosystem in a recent global benchmarking exercise and attracted c. £524mn in investment in 2015.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Cunningham on 2016-04-25.
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what information his Department holds on the total amount of compensation payments agreed for residents along the route of the High Speed 2 line to date.
Mr Robert Goodwill
As of 30 March 2016 £280,573,795 has been paid to residents under the statutory blight regime and the HS2 discretionary schemes.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jeremy Lefroy on 2016-05-24.
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what recent steps his Department has taken to increase the level of access to credit for businesses in Stafford constituency in the last 12 months.
Anna Soubry
The Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 contained two specific policies to support Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) in accessing finance.
The first requires major banks to refer SMEs they reject for finance to designated ‘finance platforms’ that can help match SMEs with alternative finance providers. This will ensure that viable SMEs, including businesses in Stafford, that may not fit the major banks’ risk appetite can still get the finance they need to grow and expand. Three platforms have recently been designated by HM Treasury on the advice of the British Business Bank and are expected to come into operation later this year.
The second requires the major banks to share information on their SME customers, with the SME’s permission, with other lenders through designated Credit Reference Agencies. This will improve the ability of challenger banks and alternative finance providers to conduct accurate risk assessments and level the playing field between providers and make it easier for SMEs to get finance from providers other than their bank.
The Government is supporting the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) and Crowdfunding sectors, which provide alternative sources of finance for both businesses and individuals. The British Business Bank, for example, has invested £100m in SMEs via five P2P platforms.
In addition, the British Business Bank’s Enterprise Finance Guarantee (EFG) scheme has facilitated over £2.6 billion of bank lending and other finance to over 25,000 SMEs. Since the start of the scheme, 45 EFG loans have been drawn down in Stafford worth over £5 million. Government has also provided loans through the Start Up Loans Company to help new businesses in Stafford. 42 start up businesses in Stafford have secured a loan from the Start Up Loans Company, with a total value of over £218, 000.
More widely, credit conditions for business continue to improve with net lending to SMEs in 2015 positive across the complete year, the first time this has happened since the financial crisis.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Amess on 2016-07-20.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to Written Statement HCW588 on Infected Blood Payment Scheme, whether entitlement to the new annual payments for people infected with hepatitis C via infected blood and blood products will continue for the lifetime of the individual even if they are successfully treated for their hepatitis C.
Nicola Blackwood
The reformed scheme will provide a payment to all those with hepatitis C, even if they have been treated, for the current spending review period. A review of the scheme will take place towards the end of this spending review period.
All those who are currently bereaved partners/spouses and all those who will be bereaved partner/spouses in future will receive a £10,000 lump sum payment and will have continued access to discretionary support. Discretionary support will continue to be available to the bereaved, as well as to infected individuals.
All infected individuals who are registered with Skipton as having hepatitis C stage 1 (nearly 2,500 people) will be eligible for the new stage 1 annual payment.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Shannon on 2016-10-11.
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate her Department has made of the number of pigs which have died of disease or were put down on account of disease in each of the last five years.
George Eustice
Defra collects data on cases of notifiable or reportable diseases, as per a legal requirement. The department does not estimate the number of all cattle or all pigs which have died of disease or were put down on account of disease as the department does not collect cattle or pigs death data.
There have been no pig deaths due to notifiable disease in Great Britain in the last 5 years. There were two cattle deaths in 2015 from Anthrax. The most recent data on Bovine Tuberculosis is available at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/incidence-of-tuberculosis-tb-in-cattle-in-great-britain
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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Clive Efford on 2016-01-05.
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, if he will make representations to the Colombian authorities about reducing the practice of locating military bases in rural villages.
Mr Hugo Swire
The government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) reached a number of agreements in September 2015, which I welcomed at the time. These agreements included one on rural development.
I also welcomed the commitment made by both sides to sign a final peace deal by the end of March 2016. We continue to offer advice to the government of Colombia on implementation of the Peace Process and the potential role of the military in the post conflict phase.