Tag: Andrew Stephenson

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Stephenson on 2015-10-12.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 14 September 2015 to Question 8612, on female offenders, if he will publish the updated membership and terms of reference of the Advisory Board on Female Offenders.

Caroline Dinenage

The Terms of Reference for the Advisory Board on Female Offenders and its updated membership are set out below.

Board members have considerable understanding of and expertise in addressing factors underlying women’s offending, including domestic abuse, and will take full account of these as the Board takes forward its programme of work.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Stephenson on 2015-10-12.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 14 September 2015 to Question 8612, on female offenders, what steps he is taking to ensure that addressing domestic abuse as a factor associated with offending by women remains a core part of the work of the Advisory Board on Female Offenders.

Caroline Dinenage

The Terms of Reference for the Advisory Board on Female Offenders and its updated membership are set out below.

Board members have considerable understanding of and expertise in addressing factors underlying women’s offending, including domestic abuse, and will take full account of these as the Board takes forward its programme of work.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Stephenson on 2015-09-17.

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to help developing countries to meet UN Sustainable Development Goal 3 on good health and wellbeing and to promote universal health coverage.

Justine Greening

DFID will continue to invest in health and support countries to meet SDG goal 3 and its universal health coverage target, guided by the Government’s International Development manifesto commitments. These include to: save 1.4m children’s lives by 2020, by immunising 76m children against killer diseases; lead a major new global programme to accelerate the development of vaccines and drugs to eliminate the world’s deadliest infectious diseases, while investing to save lives from malaria and working to end preventable child and maternal deaths; and work to achieve equitable access to family planning. Our commitments to improve nutrition for at least 50m people, to help at least 60m people get access to clean water and sanitation, to end FGM and to support education, will also contribute.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Stephenson on 2015-09-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what support UKTI is giving to British firms wishing to invest in Sri Lanka.

Anna Soubry

UK Trade and Investment’s (UKTI) team in the High Commission in Colombo (who cover Sri Lanka and the Maldives) provide advice to and support actual and potential UK investors. This can include advice on market opportunities, local partners and legal and regulatory requirements. They also offer the full range of UKTI services and support to British companies selling or looking for opportunities to sell goods and services in Sri Lanka. The High Commissioner regularly supports British companies, including by hosting and speaking at events and lobbying for them. The High Commission team works closely with the independent Council for Business with Britain, a trade grouping that many British investors in Sri Lanka are members of, to encourage and support continuing growth in business relations between the UK and Sri Lanka.

The UK is consistently a top ten investor in Sri Lanka, ranking 7th in 2013, the latest year for which official figures are available. These investments range widely, from financial services to education, from traditional industries to cutting edge IT development.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Stephenson on 2015-09-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, how many official trade delegations have been to (a) India, (b) Pakistan, (c) Bangladesh and (d) Sri Lanka in each of the last three years.

Anna Soubry

The following is a list of official trade missions that have been organised by UK Trade & Investment over the past three years to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

2013/14

• Number of Outward Trade Missions to India = 10
• Number of Outward Trade Missions Pakistan = 1
• Number of Outward Trade Missions to Bangladesh = 0
• Number of Outward Trade Missions to Sri Lanka = 3

2014/15

• Number of Outward Trade Missions to India = 9
• Number of Outward Trade Missions Pakistan = 1
• Number of Outward Trade Missions to Bangladesh = 1
• Number of Outward Trade Missions to Sri Lanka = 1

2015/16

• Number of Outward Trade Missions to India = 0 (2 planned)
• Number of Outward Trade Missions Pakistan = 0
• Number of Outward Trade Missions to Bangladesh = 0 (1 planned)
• Number of Outward Trade Missions to Sri Lanka = 0 (1 planned)

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Stephenson on 2015-09-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what support his Department is giving to strengthen democracy and parliamentary oversight in Sri Lanka.

Mr Hugo Swire

Through our bilateral support to Sri Lanka, we are seeking to strengthen democracy, improve good governance and the rule of law. We funded a programme of voter education and support to domestic election observers during the January and August elections at a cost of £120,000. Staff from the British High Commission in Colombo were involved in the EU Election Observer Mission both in the run up to and on the day of the 17 August parliamentary elections.

We are working closely with others, including the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, on building the capacity of the new Parliament and on strengthening political parties. We welcome the involvement of UK Parliamentarians, including the recent visit of my hon. Friend, in supporting this work.

Our spending on democracy related projects this year will be around £200,000. We are also supporting a project to provide training to local media in investigative journalism techniques, which should help strengthen freedom of expression in Sri Lanka.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Stephenson on 2015-09-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many cases of sepsis there were in (a) East Lancashire, (b) the North West and (c) England in each of the last three years.

Ben Gummer

Data for finished discharge episodes (FDEs) with a primary or secondary diagnosis of sepsis for East Lancashire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) of Residence, North West Government Office Region of Residence, and England for years 2011-12 to 2013-14 are provided below.

These figures refer only to hospital admissions and are not a count of patients as a patient may have had more than one episode of care within the same year.

Count of FDEs¹ with a primary or secondary diagnosis² of sepsis³ for East Lancashire CCG of Residence⁴, North West Government Office Region of Residence⁵ and England for 2011-12 to 2013 -14. Activity in English NHS Hospitals and English NHS commissioned activity in the independent sector

	2011-12	2012-13	2013-14
NHS East Lancashire CCG of residence	449	547	837
North West England government office region of residence	13,109	14,708	17,221
England	101,015	114,285	122,822

Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), Health and Social Care Information Centre

Notes:

Note that HES include activity ending in the year in question and run from April to March, eg 2012-13 includes activity ending between 1 April 2012 and 31 March 2013.

1. FDE – A discharge episode is the last episode during a hospital stay (a spell), where the patient is discharged from the hospital or transferred to another hospital. Discharges do not represent the number of patients, as a person may have more than one discharge from hospital within the period.

2. Number of episodes in which the patient had a primary or secondary diagnosis – The number of episodes where this diagnosis was recorded in any of the 20 (14 from 2002-03 to 2006-07 and 7 prior to 2002-03) primary and secondary diagnosis fields in a HES record. Each episode is only counted once, even if the diagnosis is recorded in more than one diagnosis field of the record.

3. ICD – 10 codes for Sepsis – A02.1 Salmonella sepsis, A20.7 Septicaemic plague. A21.7 Generalized tularaemia, A22.7 Anthrax sepsis. A26.7 Erysipelothrix sepsis, A28.0 Pasteurellosis, A28.2 Extraintestinal yersiniosis

A32.7 Listerial sepsis, A39.2 Acute meningococcaemia, A39.3 Chronic meningococcaemia, A39.4 Meningococcaemia, unspecified, A40.- Streptococcal sepsis, A41.- Other sepsis, A42.7 Actinomycotic sepsis, B37.7 Candidal sepsis, O85.X Puerperal sepsis, P36.- Bacterial sepsis of newborn

The following pair of codes is a dagger/asterisk code pair (D and A) which must be present together: A39.1 Waterhouse-Friderichsen syndrome

E35.1 Disorders of adrenal glands in diseases classified elsewhere

4. CCG of Residence – The CCG containing the patient’s normal home address. This does not necessarily reflect where the patient was treated as they may have travelled to another area for treatment.

5. Government Office Region of Residence – The Government Office Region of residence of the patient. It is derived from the patient’s postcode.

6. Assessing growth through time (Admitted patient care).

HES figures are available from 1989-90 onwards. Changes to the figures over time need to be interpreted in the context of improvements in data quality and coverage (particularly in earlier years), improvements in coverage of independent sector activity (particularly from 2006-07) and changes in NHS practice. For example, apparent reductions in activity may be due to a number of procedures which may now be undertaken in outpatient settings and so no longer include in admitted patient HES data. Conversely, apparent increases in activity may be due to improved recording of diagnosis or procedure information.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Stephenson on 2015-09-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what support her Department is giving to strengthen democracy and parliamentary oversight in Sri Lanka.

Mr Desmond Swayne

DFID does not have a bilateral aid programme with Sri Lanka. We do support work in Sri Lanka through a Programme Partnership Arrangement with The Asia Foundation. This strengthens and expands locally-accepted informal justice systems that deal with around 9000 cases per year in the North and East of the country.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Stephenson on 2014-06-26.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many cases of lungworm in dogs have been identified in each of the last five years.

George Eustice

The data requested is not collected or held by Defra.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Stephenson on 2015-01-14.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps his Department is taking to improve the recovery of court fines; and if he will make a statement.

Mike Penning

This Government takes recovery and enforcement of financial impositions very seriously and remains committed to finding new ways to ensure impositions are paid and to trace those who do not pay. This is why there has been a year on year increase in the total amount of financial penalties collected over the last three years. The amount of money collected reached an all time high of £290 million at the end of 2013/14 and collections continue to rise. In 2013/14 the total outstanding balance of financial impositions reduced by £26.7m (5%) in the year.

To build on improvements made in recent years in fine collection HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) is embarking on an ambitious programme of reform. When developing and implementing the Criminal Compliance and Enforcement Services Blueprint we identified a number of areas where fundamental change was necessary in order to increase fine collection and better serve the public by delivering value for tax payers’ money.

To meet these challenges HMCTS is looking to work with an external provider for future provision of the service. This will bring the necessary investment and technology HMCTS needs to achieve its aspirations for compliance and enforcement services in the future. It will enable the automation of many of the manual administrative processes and in turn decrease the cost of providing fine enforcement and increase the amount of fines that are paid. The innovation this will bring and the use of automated administrative processes will free up staff time to be more pro-active in pursuing offenders to ensure they comply with their court order.

The competition to identify an external provider commenced in July 2013; the contract is expected to be awarded in early 2015.

HMCTS has also started to pilot the use of data from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in fine collection in July 2014, albeit for a number of specifically targeted cases. Early indications are that data from HMRC has enabled HM Courts & Tribunals Service to increase the number of attachment of earnings orders it can make. At present, it is not possible to provide a meaningful estimate of the impact on collection rates; however HMCTS is exploring ways to assess the impact of receiving the data over coming months.