Tag: Bob Ainsworth

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Bob Ainsworth on 2014-06-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many people received funding through the Cancer Drugs Fund in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England in each of the last five years.

Norman Lamb

Prior to April 2013, information on the Cancer Drugs Fund was administered through clinical panels based in each strategic health authority (SHA) and data on the number of patients who received funding in each constituency and city was not collected. Information on the number of patients funded in West Midlands SHA and England in 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2012-13 is shown as follows:

	Number of patients funded in 2010-11	Number of patients funded in 2011-12	Number of patients funded in 2012-13	Total number of patients funded since Oct 20101
West Midlands SHA	292	1,658	1,534	3,484
England	2,780	11,798	15,456	30,034

¹ Some individual patients may be double-counted where a patient has received more than one drug treatment through the Cancer Drugs Fund

Source: Information provided to the Department by SHAs

NHS England has had oversight of the Fund since April 2013 and publishes information on patient numbers routinely on its website at:

www.england.nhs.uk/ourwork/pe/cdf/

In 2013-14, 5,695 patients in the Midlands and East region and 19,282 patients in England received funding through the Fund. In addition, 28 individual cancer drugs fund request applications were approved by the Cancer Drugs Fund panel in the Midlands and East region with 278 applications approved nationally.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Bob Ainsworth on 2014-06-18.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to increase the reporting of domestic and sexual violence offences by victims.

Norman Baker

Domestic and sexual violence are devastating crimes and are not acceptable
within our society. The Coalition Government’s continued approach to tackling
such violence and abuse is set out in our Violence against Women and Girls
Action Plan, updated in March 2014.

Supporting victims is at the heart of this approach, which includes giving
victims more confidence to report, and it is encouraging that police recorded
crime figures show more victims are having the confidence to come forward.

The Government has ring-fenced nearly £40 million of stable funding from 2010
up to 2015 for specialist local domestic and sexual violence support services,
rape crisis centres, the national domestic violence helplines and stalking
helpline.

Over the spending review period the Home Office funding of £28 million provides
for:
144 Independent Domestic Violence Advisers, 87 dedicated Independent
Sexual Violence Advisers, 54 Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference
Co-ordinators, and funding to Coordinated Action Against Domestic Abuse
to provide support and advice to MARACs, as well as running a programme
of quality assurance and £1.2 million for three years from 2012 to improve
services for young people suffering sexual violence in major urban areas.
£900,000 a year is used towards the running costs of national helplines for
victims of domestic violence and stalking.

In 2013, the Home Secretary commissioned Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of
Constabulary to undertake a comprehensive review on how the police deal with
domestic violence and abuse. HMIC’s report exposed significant failings. In
response to the Review, the Home Secretary has established a National
Oversight Group, which she is chairing, and on which I sit, to ensure HMIC’s
recommendations are acted upon. The Group met for the first time on 10 June.

The Home Secretary has also written to chief constables making it clear that
every police force must have an action plan in place by September 2014, to
improve their response to domestic violence and abuse.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Bob Ainsworth on 2014-06-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what proportion of (a) adult and (b) child passport renewal applications were processed within the three-week service standard in each of the last six months.

James Brokenshire

he table below shows the number of straightforward passport applications
received within the UK which were processed within 3 weeks.

Month	Proportion of straightforward applications processed within 3 weeks
Dec 13	99.99%
Jan 14	99.99%
Feb 14	99.98%
Mar 14	99.95%
Apr 14	99.59%
May 14	92.26%

Her Majesty’s Passport Office does not hold a further breakdown of this information by
application type. The cost of bringing that information together would be
disproportionate and so it is not possible to provide the information you have
requested.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Bob Ainsworth on 2014-06-18.

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, how much funding her Department allocated to the Conflict Pool for South Asia in each of the last three years.

Mr Alan Duncan

The Conflict Pool is funded from an HM Treasury settlement which is separate from and additional to departmental budgets. Details of Conflict Pool allocations are provided to Parliament annually in a Written Ministerial Statement. The statements for Financial Years 2011/12, 2012/13 and 2013/14 are available on the parliament.uk website.

A Statement giving details of Conflict Pool allocations for FY 2014/15 will be laid before the House shortly.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Bob Ainsworth on 2014-06-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what proportion of passport renewal applications have been upgraded from a standard application to the premium service in each of the last six months.

James Brokenshire

Historical data on the number of upgrades from a standard application to a
premium service is not collated centrally.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Bob Ainsworth on 2014-06-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what programmes and projects her Department funds which aim to promote trade and transit between India and Pakistan.

Mr Alan Duncan

Through the South Asia Regional Trade and Integration Programme, DFID is working with the World Bank and Asian Development Bank to promote trade in the region. This includes support to modernise procedures and infrastructure at the Wagah border post between India and Pakistan (to reduce transit times and business costs), and to develop an electricity connection between the two countries.

In Pakistan, DFID is also supporting, through the World Bank, the development of a regional trade strategy with India, advice to small and medium enterprises on cross-border trading, and innovative youth programmes aimed at reducing trade barriers between Pakistan and India.

Finally, the tri-departmental Conflict Pool is providing support to increase cooperation and dialogue between the Governments and the public and private sectors of both countries on trade liberalisation.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Bob Ainsworth on 2014-06-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what (a) unilateral, (b) bilateral and (c) multilateral projects her Department is sponsoring in Kashmir.

Mr Alan Duncan

UK aid to Kashmir is largely delivered through national programmes in Pakistan and India which the UK helps fund. This includes support to promote economic growth, improve maternal and new born health and increase access to education. The tri-departmental Conflict Pool also funds joint programmes in Kashmir, supporting conflict prevention and peace building.

It is not possible to disaggregate our multilateral support to Kashmir.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Bob Ainsworth on 2014-06-18.

To ask the Attorney General, what estimate he has made of the proportion of cases of domestic and sexual violence that were prosecuted in each of the last five years; and what steps he is taking to increase the prosecution rate for such crimes.

Oliver Heald

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has no data on the total number of incidents of domestic violence and sexual violence that have occurred in each of the last five years and is unable, therefore, to provide an answer to the first part of the question.

Increasing the number of rape convictions continues to be a priority for the CPS. On 6 June 2014, a Rape Action Plan was jointly published by the police and CPS which sets out a series of actions designed to improve the criminal justice response in rape cases. This followed a Rape National Scrutiny Panel led by the Director of Public Prosecutions and the National Policing lead for rape, which considered the investigation and prosecution of rape cases including their referral from the police to the CPS. The prosecution of domestic violence also remains a high priority for the CPS and prosecutors receive regular training, and are provided with relevant guidance. The Rape Action Plan can be found on the CPS website at;

http://www.cps.gov.uk/publications/equality/vaw/rape_action_plan.pdf

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