Tag: Amanda Solloway

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Amanda Solloway on 2016-10-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to locate missing refugee children in the UK.

Mr Robert Goodwill

The government takes the issue of missing children extremely seriously and has published a cross government strategy on missing children and vulnerable adults.

Migrant children over the age of 5, including asylum seeking children have their biometrics captured by the Home Office. If a child goes missing, the local police and UK Missing Persons Bureau will be notified and the child’s details will be circulated on the Police National Computer.

Home Office guidance requires staff to maintain contact with the local authority and the police until the child is found.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Amanda Solloway on 2016-02-29.

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what assessment he has made of the level of risk of developing mental health conditions among remote combat pilots; and what safeguards his Department has in place to protect such pilots from any such risk.

Mark Lancaster

The Government is committed to improving the mental health of our Armed Forces and has long recognised that Service life can cause stress. Support to personnel has improved in a number of ways, including providing pre and post-operational stress management training, a wide range of psychiatric and psychological treatments and initiatives such as Decompression, Trauma Risk Management (TRiM) and Post Operational Stress Management.

Trained TRiM providers are embedded in both – 13 Squadron and 39 Squadron, the Royal Air Forces’s (RAF) frontline Reaper units based at RAF Waddington and Creech AFB.

For Financial Year 2014-15, out of a total of approximately 180 personnel, there were fewer than five RAF personnel from 13 Squadron or 39 Squadron who were seen for an initial assessment at Ministry of Defence Specialist Mental Health Services. This is a lower rate than the military population as a whole.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Amanda Solloway on 2016-10-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the effectiveness of spit hoods; and what assessment she has made of the extent of use of such hoods by police forces.

Brandon Lewis

The use of ‘spit hoods’, as with any other use of restraint or force, is an operational matter for Chief Officers. The Home Office is clear that all uses of force or restraint must be necessary and proportionate.

In recognition of the importance of ensuring transparency in how police forces use various means of restraint, the former Home Secretary asked Chief Constable David Shaw to review what data should be collected and published. The review recommended that forces record a range of data in all instances when significant force is used, including restraint techniques and the use of spit hoods.

The data to be collected includes the age, gender, ethnicity and sex of the subject, the type of force used, reason for the use of force, and the outcome of the incident.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Amanda Solloway on 2016-06-29.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what progress the Government has made on supporting women with perinatal mental health issues.

Alistair Burt

The Government is fully committed to improving perinatal mental health services. Following an announcement by the Prime Minister in January, we are investing an additional £365 million by 2021 to improve services so that women are able to access the right care, at the right time and close to home.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Amanda Solloway on 2016-10-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps her Department has taken to ensure first-time offenders entering the prison system are (a) made aware of gang culture in prisons and (b) discouraged from becoming involved in that culture.

Mr Sam Gyimah

Safety in prisons is fundamental to the proper functioning of our justice system and a vital part of our reform plans. We do not tolerate violence or bullying in prisons and take appropriate action against victimisation of any kind.

Gang membership and youth violence cause serious harm to those involved and their communities. The Government is committed to reducing the likelihood of young people joining gangs, and to responding effectively when they do.

Many young and vulnerable people come into contact with the criminal justice system as a result of their involvement with gangs.

Prison gives young people the opportunity to leave gangs behind and lead safe and productive lives in their communities. Prison staff work with the police to tackle gang related activity in prison, and to provide new opportunities for young people.

All offenders entering prison participate in induction programmes designed to help them make the most from their time in that prison. Some prisons have appointed a gangs officer, and prison staff work closely with the police to respond where gang members are coming into prison.

The National Offender Management Service (NOMS) will shortly issue guidance to all prison staff to help them identify gang members, take action against gang related violence and help them use their time in prison to leave gangs behind. The Identity Matters programme is specifically designed to help prisoners disengage from gangs and stop offending.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Amanda Solloway on 2016-06-27.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, if he will bring forward proposals to enable people who have previously undertaken university education to be eligible for funded apprenticeships.

Nick Boles

Currently the apprenticeship funding rules allow a university graduate to take an apprenticeship standard at a higher level than their current qualification. Further detail on the proposed funding rules that will apply from 2017-18 will be published shortly.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Amanda Solloway on 2016-10-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking to reduce (a) homelessness and (b) rough sleeping.

Mr Marcus Jones

One person without a home is one too many, and nobody should ever have to sleep rough. That is why the Government is clear that prevention must be at the heart of everything we do to reduce homelessness. We are investing £500 million to prevent, relieve and reduce homelessness in this Parliament, including protecting £315 million homelessness prevention funding for local authorities to help them continue to provide quality advice and assistance to everyone who approaches them for help.

We have also increased central government investment to tackle homelessness to £139 million. This includes £10 million to help those new to the streets, or at imminent risk of sleeping rough, building on the success of projects such as No Second Night Out. Alongside this, we have £10 million of Social Impact Bond funding to support entrenched rough sleepers with the most complex needs, building on the success of the world’s first homelessness Social Impact Bond, run by the Greater London Authority.

In addition, we committed £100 million at Budget to deliver low cost ‘move on’ accommodation to provide at least 2,000 places for people leaving hostels and refuges to make a sustainable recovery from a homelessness crisis.

I am also considering Bob Blackman MP’s Homelessness Reduction Bill and the role that further legislation might play in preventing homelessness.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Amanda Solloway on 2016-06-27.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps the Government is taking to improve under-performing schools in the East Midlands.

Edward Timpson

Eighty two percent of all schools in the East Midlands region are rated as Good or Outstanding by Ofsted, but there remain pockets of underperformance, and we are taking a range of actions to tackle them. The Education and Adoption Act gives us powers to intervene more quickly in failing schools and to tackle for the first time schools that have been coasting. Where a maintained school is judged inadequate by Ofsted it will immediately receive an academy order, leading to a sponsor taking responsibility for improving standards. The Act also provides consistent powers to take action in inadequate academies and the Regional Schools Commissioner for the East Midlands and Humber will not hesitate to intervene when academies under-perform.

We are also creating Achieving Excellence Areas in areas such as the East Midlands to create rapid and sustainable improvement. Further details are set out in: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/educational-excellence-everywhere

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Amanda Solloway on 2016-10-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to remove the presence of asbestos on school sites in (a) England and Wales and (b) Derby North constituency.

Nick Gibb

The issue of asbestos in schools is a serious one. Policy on the effective management and removal of asbestos at Welsh school sites is devolved to the Welsh Government, but in England it is one of the department’s priorities in order to ensure that our schools are safe for children and teachers.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE), which is the lead regulator on managing asbestos, advise that as long as asbestos is in good condition and unlikely to be damaged or disturbed, it is not a significant risk to health.

The Department directly funds the removal of asbestos through schemes such as the Priority Schools Building Programme and provides capital funding for asbestos management and removal where appropriate for those schools that have identified that asbestos is in poor condition or poses a high risk of deterioration.

We also provide support to those who are legally responsible for managing asbestos in schools by providing targeted guidance to schools on the effective management of asbestos in their schools.

The duty holder has the legal responsibility of effectively managing asbestos in schools. In schools where asbestos poses a high risk of disturbance or is deteriorating, the duty holder should remove asbestos using capital funding that has been provided by the Department.

The Department is not committing to the removal of asbestos in all schools, as blanket and accelerated removal of asbestos in schools is potentially more dangerous and may involve greater risk to school children and staff.

It is, however, the aim of the government that, over time, as more school buildings are replaced and refurbished, all asbestos will be removed from schools.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Amanda Solloway on 2016-06-27.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to ensure that adequate funding is directed to local mental health bodies to reduce waiting times for child mental health care.

Alistair Burt

In total the Government has made available an additional £1.4 billion over the course of this Parliament to support significant transformation in children and young people’s mental health so that there is easy access to the right support from the right service when it is needed.

The key mechanism in delivering this transformation programme, as set out in the Future in Mind report, are the Local Transformation Plans (LTPs) that all clinical commissioning groups covering all local areas have produced. These plans should meet the needs of all the local population and cover the full spectrum of services needed to ensure that children and young people can access services when they need to.

NHS England’s Local Transformation Planning guidance issued in August 2015 and the robust assurance process around it, backed by a programme of regional and national support, are in place to ensure that the additional money will be spent for the purposes intended and that locally determined key performance indicators will be met. NHS England will continue to support local areas to refresh their LTPs to take and merge into the wider Sustainability and Transparency Planning process.