Tag: 2016

  • Baroness Randerson – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

    Baroness Randerson – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Randerson on 2016-05-23.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government what discussions have taken place between the Department of Health and the Department for International Development regarding the draft Global Health Sector Strategy on Viral Hepatitis 2016–2021.

    Baroness Verma

    The UK Government welcomes the development of this strategy for preventing, diagnosing and treating viral hepatitis. DFID works very closely with the Department of Health and we have a joint delegation to the World Health Assembly.

    DFID supports improving the access to clean and safe water and hygiene promotion to reduce the risk of transmission of hepatitis A and E. We are the largest donor to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which increases access to immunisation in low income countries. This includes protection against hepatitis B. The UK supports UNITAID, which is working to improve access to better diagnostics for Hepatits C and we are supporting the Clinton Health Access Initiative to reduce prices and increase access to new treatments. In addition DFID supports comprehensive harm reduction programmes and strategies through its support to the Global Fund, which help reduce transmission of both HIV and Hepatitis C.

  • Calum Kerr – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport

    Calum Kerr – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Calum Kerr on 2016-07-19.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, if her Department will make it its policy to launch commercial 5G services in at least one city by 2020.

    Matt Hancock

    We are sponsoring the Future Communications Challenge Group (FCCG) of senior academics, industry experts and funders, chaired by the President of the Institute of Engineering and Technology, which is considering how we should drive forward our commitment to ensure that UK has a leading role in 5G development.

    In parallel the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) is conducting a study, launched in Budget 2016, into how UK can achieve early deployment of 5G networks.

    Both of these will report by the end of the year and the results will feed into a comprehensive 5G strategy for the UK, to be published in 2017.

  • Jon Trickett – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    Jon Trickett – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jon Trickett on 2016-10-07.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners are serving indefinite sentences in England.

    Mr Sam Gyimah

    Data on indeterminate sentence prisoners (both those serving life and Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentences) are routinely published as part of the Offender management statistics quarterly bulletin, and can be found on GOV.UK.

  • Stephen Hepburn – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Stephen Hepburn – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Stephen Hepburn on 2016-01-06.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many NHS beds there were in (a) Jarrow constituency, (b) South Tyneside, (c) the North East and (d) the UK in each year since 2005.

    Ben Gummer

    The average daily number of available open overnight and open day only beds under the care of a consultant in each year since 2005-06 and in each quarter since 2010-11 in (a) South Tyneside NHS Foundation Trust, (b) the North East and (c) England is in the attached table. Health is a devolved matter in the rest of the United Kingdom.

  • Lilian Greenwood – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

    Lilian Greenwood – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lilian Greenwood on 2016-01-25.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what annual fee his Department will pay to (a) Ernst and Young in the UK, (b) Arup and (c) Interfleet for their advice to him on fulfilling his duties under Section 30 of the Railways Act 1993; and for what period those companies are contracted to provide him such advice.

    Claire Perry

    Following a successful procurement competition using the new STAR (Specialist Technical Advice for Rail) Framework Agreement, the Department has appointed a partnership comprising Arup, SNC-Lavalin Transport Advisory (InterFleet), and EY to provide services to support the Secretary of State in connection with his duties under Section 30 of the Railways Act.

    The contract is for 2 years and commenced in November 2015. It has an optional extension of 12 months which is exercisable at the Department’s discretion. The fees payable to the partnership are capped at £616k (excluding VAT) for the two years of the contract. In addition to core contractual commitments, further fees are payable at agreed daily rates for other services which include, but are not limited to, the full mobilisation of a public sector train operator.

    Following the successful award of the East Coast franchise to Virgin East Coast last year, it was not a good use of taxpayers’ money to maintain DoR’s full corporate structure on a ‘just in case’ basis. We have scaled back Directly Operated Railways operations and brought it in-house with the Department for Transport.

  • Lord Bradshaw – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

    Lord Bradshaw – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Bradshaw on 2016-02-22.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government how much money the EU provided, in the most recent year for which figures are available, for research, capital expenditure and revenue support for (1) the bus and coach industry, (2) railway passenger and freight-services, (3) the air industry, including runways, aircraft or equipment, (4) the shipping and ports industry, and (5) road schemes and the development of vehicle technology.

    Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon

    The EU budget has a number of programmes aimed at supporting the development of transport which can be at a regional, national or trans-national level.

    Given the complexity of the different mechanisms for delivering such funding the UK government does not maintain a central record of the total amount of money that the EU provides for research, capital expenditure and revenue support for transport.

    The main source of funding for transport infrastructure comes from the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) which promotes the development of the different Trans- European Networks for Transport, Energy and Communications. Transport is the major element of the CEF budget with nearly €1.5 billion in commitments allocated to fund EU transport projects in 2016. The EU transport funding priorities are defined in the TEN-T regulation (EU 2013/1315) and focus on improving cross-border connections and developing sustainable and efficient transport infrastructure. Funding is awarded to projects through a competitive bidding process with projects having to meet specific criteria and demonstrate high EU added value. The attached tables have details of projects involving UK participation that have been awarded funding.

  • Holly Lynch – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

    Holly Lynch – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Holly Lynch on 2016-03-16.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to page 75 of the Budget, how much of the £130 million announced for repairs of roads and bridges he plans will be spent in Calderdale; and when he expects Calderdale council to be in receipt of such funds.

    Andrew Jones

    From the total funding of £180 million the Department for Transport has made available to assist local highway authorities affected by this winter storms, including £130 million as announced in the Budget 2016, we have agreed to allocate a total of £25 million to Calderdale Council to help repair damage to the local highway infrastructure for which they are responsible. This includes the £5.5 million announced in January 2016 to help replace Elland Bridge.

    This funding is in addition to the funding of £‎20.5 million we are providing to the council for local highways maintenance funding to 2020/21.

  • Alex Chalk – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

    Alex Chalk – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Alex Chalk on 2016-04-14.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what further steps she plans to take under the National Litter Strategy to reduce the number of bottles on beaches.

    Rory Stewart

    The National Litter Strategy will promote concerted, coordinated and effective actions to reduce litter and littering on land, which in turn should lead to a reduction in the amount of litter reaching local areas, including our beaches. To develop the National Litter Strategy we are working with a range of interested stakeholders, including representatives of the packaging industry.

    The Scottish Government is taking forward further work on the specific issue of a deposit return system for single-use drinks containers such as plastic bottles, and we will review any new evidence arising from this in the course of developing our own National Litter Strategy for England. However, in the meantime, we will continue to focus on improving existing waste collection and recycling systems for these items.

    In the UK, packaging producers who put more than 50 tonnes of packaging materials on the market a year, and have an annual turnover of more than £2 million, are required to recover and recycle a proportion of their packaging waste. As a result, most major bottle manufacturers and retailers who sell bottles pick up a financial obligation to recycle their packaging waste. More stringent recycling and recovery targets across the years led to a decrease in the proportion of bottles ending up in landfill and in litter. We will continue to focus on improving this system in future years.

    The UK Marine Strategy Part Three, published in December last year, sets out the actions we are taking to improve the marine environment. It covers measures that contribute to reducing sources of litter, including sources of beach litter, and to remove what has already reached our beaches. Actions related specifically to UK beaches include Defra-funded beach cleaning schemes on priority beaches.

  • Lord Mendelsohn – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

    Lord Mendelsohn – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Mendelsohn on 2016-05-23.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills has been asked by the Department for International Development to analyse why Africa’s share of global manufacturing has fallen from three percent in 1970 to less than two percent in 2014.

    Baroness Verma

    DFID, BIS and the FCO form a joint Trade Policy Unit which collectively works on issues of trade policy and trade facilitation and regularly scrutinises sectoral trade and growth trends across Africa.

    While Africa’s share of global manufacturing has fallen since 1970, this is mostly driven by the rise in manufacturing production in China and India. Manufacturing production is increasing across Africa, but with varying experiences across countries. African manufacturing grew at 3.5% annually in real terms over the last decade. However, manufacturing still represents on a small fraction of economic activity and it is our assessment that manufacturing in Africa is lagging.

    The World Bank calculates that 18 million jobs need to be created in Africa every year until 2035 to keep up with this growth. The Department for International Development is currently scaling up our efforts to boost manufacturing in Africa to help create jobs and economic opportunities. This adds to DFID’s strong portfolio on unlocking industrialisation and trade in Africa.

  • Catherine West – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    Catherine West – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Catherine West on 2016-07-19.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how she plans to ensure that the early years workforce strategy encourages the recruitment and retention of early years teachers.

    Nick Gibb

    We recognise the importance of the Early Years workforce in improving quality and delivering better outcomes for children. That is why we are committed to publishing an Early Years workforce strategy. The strategy will set out how we will help to remove barriers to attracting, retaining and developing staff. As part of the strategy, we will look at the barriers to increasing the number of graduates in the workforce.

    The Government currently delivers Early Years initial teacher training places, funds eligible graduates to undertake training and also provides student bursaries. Information about training routes is available from the Get into Teaching site: https://getintoteaching.education.gov.uk/

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