The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andy Slaughter on 2016-02-03.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many times (a) knife, (b), shiv, (c) shank, (d) chib and (e) another slang word for a blade were recorded on the Incident Report System in each prison since 2010.
Andrew Selous
The information requested could only be provided at disproportionate cost.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Phil Boswell on 2016-02-24.
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, if he will make an assessment of the implications for his policy on apprenticeships of the finding of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in its report, Engineered in Britain, published in December 2015, on the number of manufacturers who would be encouraged to take on more apprentices if the Government provided £3,000 to any person who completed their apprenticeship.
Nick Boles
Apprenticeships are paid jobs. In October 2015 we increased the apprenticeship National Minimum Wage by over 20% to £3.30 per hour for apprentices aged under 19 and those aged 19 and over in the first year of their apprenticeship. Most employers pay more than this. The average gross hourly pay received by apprentices in England is £6.31 an hour for Level 2 and 3 apprentices and £9.69 for higher apprentices.
Apprenticeships have excellent wage returns for individuals over their working life. These add up to between £48,000 and £74,000 for level 2 apprenticeships and between £77,000 and £117,000 for level 3 apprentices. Those completing an apprenticeship at level 4 or above could earn £150,000 more on average over their lifetime.
These are the right long-term financial incentives for individuals to support the growth of apprenticeships towards 3 million new starts by 2020.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tim Loughton on 2016-03-24.
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how much Network Rail has paid to Southern Rail in compensation for late running and skipped stopping in each of the last three years.
Claire Perry
This information is published on Network Rail’s website – http://www.networkrail.co.uk/transparency/datasets/ – covering the years 2012-13 to 2014-15. 2015-16 is not yet available.
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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Foulkes of Cumnock on 2016-04-28.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the corrected Written Answer by Lord Faulks on 13 April (HL5044), how many of those Writs were sent to Peers in (1) each region of England, (2) Scotland, (3) Wales, and (4) Northern Ireland.
Lord Faulks
A total of 808 Writs were sent to Life and Hereditary Peers across the regions of England and the counties of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as follows:
East of England 61; East Midlands 15; North East 19; North West 26; South East 108; South West 49; West Midlands 19; Yorkshire & Humber 27; Central London 164; Greater London 221; Scotland 61; Wales 18; Northern Ireland 20.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Virendra Sharma on 2016-06-07.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment his Department has made of the effect of the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016 on access to housing for post-release offenders.
Justin Tomlinson
The Government set out its assessment of the impacts of the welfare policies in the Welfare Reform and Work Act on 20th July 2015. It set out its assessment of the impacts of the social rents policies in the Act on 28th September 2015.
A link to the impact assessments is included:
http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2015-16/welfarereformandwork/documents.html
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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Justin Tomlinson on 2016-09-02.
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what total reduction in government spending has been attributed to policies drawn up by the Behavioural Insights Team since 2010.
Ben Gummer
The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) does not track the cumulative impact of all its work over time, only some of which focus on reducing spending or increasing revenue collection.
However, BIT has now run some 350 trials, each of which shows the impact of different policy interventions in different contexts. These show that the team has helped to save or bring forward hundreds of millions of pounds of revenue and has made efficiency improvements in many different areas of UK Government policy.
This includes:
-changing the messages in letters from HMRC to late tax payers was part of a group of trials that helped bring forward more than £200m of late tax debts;
-changing the messages in letters sent by Local Authorities to late payers of Council Tax is estimated to bring forward an extra £3m in one local authority alone;
-changing the way that Jobcentres support people back to work has been rolled out to some 25,000 Job Advisors and is expected to help hundreds of thousands of people back to work faster.
-informing GPs who overprescribe antibiotics that most practices prescribe fewer antibiotics than theirs reduces the number of unnecessary prescriptions by around 150,000 per year; and
-working with HMCTS to send personalised text messages to people who were delinquent in their court fines. This intervention, which significantly increased payment rates prior to a bailiff intervention, could raise £860,000 per week if rolled out nationally and prevent up to 150,000 bailiff interventions per year.
BIT also works with governments around the world and is seeing similar effects in its work in Australia, Singapore and with cities across the USA.
These findings, and many others, are published once a year in BIT’s Update Report. The next edition of this is due later this month [September 2016].
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chi Onwurah on 2016-10-18.
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment his Department has made of the implications of online and mobile applications which require automated access to a user’s banking details for (a) accessibility of banking, (b) digital inclusion, (c) users’ banking security and (d) consumer rights.
Simon Kirby
The government is committed to increasing competition in banking to improve outcomes for consumers. This includes establishing a competitive and innovative environment where banks deliver greater choice and value to their customers. A key element of this vision is ensuring the UK remains the world-leader for financial technology (FinTech).
The Competition and Markets Authority recognised the potential of FinTech and open banking in its retail banking market investigation by requiring the nine largest UK banks to develop and adopt an open banking standard for application programming interfaces (APIs) to allow access to customer account information as set out in the revised Payment Services Directive (PSDII) which comes into force in January 2018.
This will deliver a common standard for technology that allows the sharing of bank data, allowing authorised third parties to access information such as customer banking details and usage, prices and service quality.
Harnessing the potential of open banking means that customers will be able to more easily access high quality, low cost banking services, and improve digital engagement with financial services by helping customers better understand where they could get a better deal. PSDII will set out requirements for enhanced security and consumer protections for online and mobile applications accessing users’ banking details from January 2018. The government will be consulting on the transposition of this directive shortly.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Hylton on 2016-01-11.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what representations they have made to the government of Saudi Arabia about the repeated bombing of facilities of Médecins Sans Frontières.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
We are in regular dialogue with the Government of Saudi Arabia regarding the conflict in Yemen. We are very concerned and saddened by an attack on a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) centre in Yemen on 10 January and offer our condolences to the families of those affected. It is important to establish the cause of this incident. We welcome the public announcement by Saudi Arabia to establish a fact finding committee into the alleged airstrike on the MSF mobile clinic in Taiz on 2 December. It is important that Saudi Arabia conducts investigations into incidents which have raised concerns. We continue to call on all parties to the conflict to fulfil their obligations under international humanitarian law.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve McCabe on 2016-02-03.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what information his Department holds on the correlation between the reduction in the rate of unemployment in the West Midlands between 2010 and 2016 and any trend in the number of people employed on zero-hour contracts in that region.
Priti Patel
Figures published by ONS show that rising employment in the West Midlands since 2010 – reflected in falling unemployment – has been dominated by more people in full-time and permanent jobs.
Information on trends in zero-hours contracts over this period is not available on a consistent basis. This reflects the view of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) that responses to questions about zero-hours contracts in the Labour Force Survey are likely to have been affected by greater awareness of the term itself.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Louise Haigh on 2016-02-24.
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, if he will investigate whether the reported comments of 22 February 2016 by Peter Wilkinson, director of Rail Passenger Services at the Department for Transport, are in breach of the Civil Service code.
Matthew Hancock
This has been dealt with by the Department for Transport who have issued a statement in respect of this matter.