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Tag: 2016

  • Steve McCabe – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Steve McCabe – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve McCabe on 2016-09-15.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of NHS England in achieving high quality community care for all.

    David Mowat

    Patients rightly expect the highest quality of care from all health and care services they access.

    The Care Quality Commission registers and inspects community care providers and community trusts to ensure that they follow a set of fundamental standards of safety and quality below which care should never fall.

    The trends in patient satisfaction for community services are tracked and reported monthly through the Friends and Family Test (FFT). The FFT is an important tool that gives patients the opportunity to provide feedback on their experience and helps the National Health Service to drive improvement in the services it provides.

    The latest FFT Results from July 2016 showed that 95% of respondents would recommend the services they have used in community services settings.

  • Stephen McPartland – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

    Stephen McPartland – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Stephen McPartland on 2016-01-21.

    To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, pursuant to the Answer of 24 November 2015 to Question 17479, what recent steps her Department has taken to work with the government of Sierra Leone to deliver high-quality programmes that will increase access to clean water.

    Mr Nick Hurd

    The President of Sierra Leone has identified water as one of his top six priorities for the post-Ebola recovery period. In the first phase, the “early recovery” period, DFID is providing assistance to establish or improve water and sanitation facilities in over 250 health facilities and over 300 schools.

    In July 2015 the Secretary of State announced a new £240m commitment to Sierra Leone for to help the country recover from the Ebola crisis, including the better delivery of public services. DFID has been supporting the Presidential Delivery Team to prioritise needs for the next phase, which include Water, Health and Education. The UK’s support on water and sanitation will be determined when those prioritised plans have been agreed. It may involve further upgrading of health facilities and schools. Significant support is also envisaged for improving infrastructure, including the existing water distribution system in Freetown; improved waste management, through support to the Government’s National Waste Management Policy and Strategy; and further investment in a programme of Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) – building on our successful £58m WASH programme from 2010 to 2015 which resulted in over 1 million people gaining access to water and to sanitation in Sierra Leone.

  • Keith Vaz – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

    Keith Vaz – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Keith Vaz on 2016-02-19.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what steps the Government is taking to reduce the intensity of conflict in urban areas in Yemen.

    Mr Tobias Ellwood

    A political solution is the best way to bring long-term stability to Yemen and end the conflict. We welcomed and fully supported the UN facilitated talks held in Switzerland in December 2015 and the commitment to engage in a new round of talks in the near future. We are working closely with the UN to encourage parties to engage in good faith, without preconditions in future talks. We are encouraging all parties to reinstate a ceasefire at the next round of talks and are working closely with the UN to achieve this.

  • Keith Vaz – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    Keith Vaz – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Keith Vaz on 2016-03-07.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for what reasons only four of the 10 ePassport gates at Luton Airport were in operation between 7pm and 8pm on 26 February 2016.

    James Brokenshire

    The numbers of ePassport gates in use is an operational decision for Border Force and are flexed according to need. On the evening in question, there was a high proportion of arriving passengers using ID cards who were ineligible to use the gates. Officers were therefore redeployed to the manual immigration desks to assist with the majority of passengers requiring manual checks.

    Waiting times between 19.00 and 20.00 were within agreed service level agreements, with queue measurements for passengers at the ePassport gates being no more than 8 minutes and those at the manual control being no more than 21 minutes.

  • Tom Brake – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    Tom Brake – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tom Brake on 2016-04-12.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, how many export licence applications made since March 2015 related to the supply of equipment to Saudi Arabia have not been approved due to non-compliance with criterion 2 of the National Arms Export Licensing Criteria.

    Anna Soubry

    We rigorously assess each application on a case-by-case basis against the Consolidated EU and National Arms Export Licensing Criteria. A licence will not be granted if to do so would breach these Criteria.

    Since March 2015 no export licence applications have been refused due to non-compliance with Criterion 2, although seven have been refused under Criterion 7 (risk of diversion to undesirable end users or end use).

    Information on military and dual use export licences is published as Official Statistics in the quarterly and annual reports on Strategic Export Controls which are all available to view on GOV.UK. These reports contain detailed information on export licences issued, refused or revoked, by destination, including the overall value, type (e.g. Military, Other) and a summary of the items covered by these licences.

  • Lord Green of Deddington – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Lord Green of Deddington – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Green of Deddington on 2016-05-19.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many European Health Insurance Cards they have issued to citizens of each European Economic Area country in each of the last five years.

    Lord Prior of Brampton

    The Government does not hold the information requested.

    The United Kingdom European Health Insurance Cards (EHICs) enable people living in the UK to travel to the European Economic Area safe in the knowledge that they will be able to receive free or reduced cost healthcare should they need it.

    Entitlement to EHICs (in all European Economic Area countries) is based on ‘insurability’ under European Union law, not on a person’s nationality. In the UK, we operate a residency-based healthcare system which means that, ‘insurability’ is generally determined by a person’s residency status.

  • Lord Storey – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    Lord Storey – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Storey on 2016-07-13.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government what measures are in place to ensure that there is an adequate supply of history, geography, and language teachers to meet the forecast demand stemming from the introduction of the English Baccalaureate.

    Lord Nash

    We have more teachers in our schools than ever before and the number of teachers has kept pace with changing numbers of pupils. There are more than 456,000 teachers in schools throughout England – up more than 15,000 since 2010. Teaching continues to be a popular profession with more than 14,000 former teachers coming back to the classroom in the last year.

    We recognise that as schools increase their entry rates to English Baccalaureate (EBacc) subjects there will be more demand for specialist teachers, particularly language teachers. That is why we are spending over £1.3 billion up to 2020 to attract new teachers into the profession including continuing to offer teacher training bursaries in history, geography and languages to make sure that we continue to attract the brightest graduates. We have recently announced the expansion of the teacher subject specialism training to include modern foreign languages.

    This investment in training the next generation of teachers clearly demonstrates the political will we have to make sure that all schools are able to recruit the teachers they need.

  • Tom Brake – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

    Tom Brake – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tom Brake on 2016-09-15.

    To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that its humanitarian response in Mosul does not involve screening procedures for children which separate them from their families.

    Rory Stewart

    The screening of fighting-age men fleeing from Daesh-controlled areas is conducted by the Government of Iraq as a security measure.

    The UK and other major donors to the UN response in Iraq continue to vigorously lobby the Government of Iraq and other authorities to respect International Humanitarian Law during screening operations. We lobby for screening to take place in a transparent manner, under a fully accountable chain of command, and to be monitored independently by the UN and other neutral and impartial humanitarian actors.

    On 21 September, the UK announced an extra £40 million of humanitarian funding to Iraq, taking our total commitment to £169.5 million since June 2014. This new support will be targeted specifically to enable a scale up of humanitarian assistance ahead of Mosul operations. An element of this support will aim to help protect civilians displaced as a result of the operations – including children.

  • Andy Slaughter – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    Andy Slaughter – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andy Slaughter on 2016-01-21.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the five items most commonly recorded by the Incident Report System are; and how many of each such item were recorded in the last year for which figures are available.

    Andrew Selous

    The information requested could be provided only at disproportionate cost.

  • Craig Whittaker – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

    Craig Whittaker – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Craig Whittaker on 2016-02-19.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what reports his Department has received on the frequency of rocket attacks from the West Bank into Israel in the last 12 months.

    Mr Tobias Ellwood

    We have not received reports of incidents of rocket fire from the West Bank into Israel . However, military groups in Gaza (including Hamas’ military wing), conduct test-firing of rockets into the Mediterranean on a regular basis. There have also been reports of rocket or mortar fire from Gaza towards Israel.