Tag: Dan Jarvis

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dan Jarvis on 2016-01-27.

To ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, how many meetings she has had with businesses since May 2015 on increasing the number of women on company boards; and who those meetings were with.

Caroline Dinenage

The Secretary of State for Education and Minister for Women and Equalities and I have met with many business representatives since taking on our roles as Ministers for Women and Equalities. We have also met employers and business representatives as part of our plans to introduce gender pay gap reporting and always ensure that we use these opportunities to raise the issue of achieving a better gender balance on boards. This includes attending and speaking at conferences and events, including at the 30% Club and the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), which represents 190,000 businesses in the UK.

Since May 2015, we have met numerous business leaders at conferences and events, including meetings with:

• Lord Davies of Abersoch CBE

• Baroness Ruby McGregor-Smith, CBE, CEO, Mitie Group PLC (in her capacity as Chair of the Women’s Business Council)

• Baroness Ruby McGregor-Smith, CBE, CEO, Mitie Group PLC

• Cilla Snowball, CBE, Group Chairman and Group CEO, Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO

• Denis Woulfe, Partner, Deloitte LLP

• Emer Timmons, President, BT Global Services UK

• Fiona Dawson, Global President, Mars Food, Drinks, and Multisales, Mars Food

• Sue Langley, OBE, Non-Executive Chairman, A J Gallagher UK, UK Asset Resolution Limited (Northern Rock Asset Management and Bradford & Bingley)

• Sue O’Brien, OBE, Partner, Ridgeways Partners

• Amanda Harrison, HR Director, Centrica PLC

I also spoke at the launch of Lord Davies’s final report, which was attended by a large cross section of over 100 businesses.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dan Jarvis on 2016-02-11.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to reduce the smoking rate in (a) local authorities in which it is above the English average and (b) other local authorities.

Jane Ellison

Local authorities, funded by the Government’s public health grant, have responsibility for providing a programme of tobacco control that meets the needs of their populations. Public Health England provides local authorities with a range of data and tools including the Local Tobacco Control Profiles for England and a local youth smoking mapping tool, to assist local priority setting and support delivery.

This Government has committed to publishing a new tobacco control plan to further reduce the prevalence of smoking in England. Addressing health inequality and local variation will be a priority of the new strategy. We are working with local authorities to develop this element of the plan to support and empower local action, where tobacco control can be tailored to the unique needs of local populations.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dan Jarvis on 2016-02-29.

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what proportion of senior civil servants in his Department are women.

Brandon Lewis

46.3% of senior civil servants in the Department are women. This is higher than the overall proportion of women in the senior civil service.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dan Jarvis on 2016-03-17.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, how much funding his Department received from the European Social Fund (a) between 2007 and 2014 and (b) from 2014 to the last month for which data is available.

Nick Boles

The Skills Funding Agency (and its predecessor, the Learning and Skills Council) is a co-financing organisation for the European Social Fund in England. It received £1,494,936,801.00 between January 2007 and December 2013 and £485,027,046.00 from January 2014 to December 2015, a total of £1,979,963,847.00. The money was used to support skills projects across England.

For the 2014-2020 Programme in England the Skills Funding Agency has put in place funding agreements with Local Enterprise Partnerships to the value of £725m from the European Social Fund.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dan Jarvis on 2016-03-17.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how much funding his Department received from the European Social Fund (a) between 2007 and 2014 and (b) from 2014 to the last month for which data is available.

Mr Robert Goodwill

None. My Department does not receive any funding from the European Social Fund.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dan Jarvis on 2016-03-21.

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps the EU is taking to tackle poverty in (a) the Middle East, (b) South Asia and (c) Africa; and what the Government’s contribution is to those steps.

Mr Nick Hurd

The European Union (EU), including its Member States, is the world’s largest aid donor. In 2014, the EU and its Member States spent nearly £50bn of Official Development Assistance (ODA), which represents around half of global ODA. The UK has a powerful voice on development through its EU Membership and has achieved real changes to the EU development programme in line with UK priorities.

More detail on the EU development programme can be found at https://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/sites/devco/files/2015-annual-report-web_en.pdf

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dan Jarvis on 2016-04-21.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how her Department intends to support and mentor weaker schools as part of the Northern Powerhouse schools strategy.

Nick Gibb

Our White Paper, Education Excellence Everywhere, sets out the range of support we will offer to schools across England.

Where schools are failing, Regional Schools Commissioners will identify a suitable academy sponsor to turn them around. In areas where there are too few sponsors, we will recruit new sponsors, including high-performing schools and more sponsors from business, charity and philanthropy. We will also encourage existing sponsors to expand, increasing incentives and minimising barriers, learning from the investment we have already made through the Northern Sponsor Fund.

For other struggling schools, we will ensure there is nationwide coverage of system leaders (teaching schools and National Leaders of Education), who will be expected to work with weaker schools to support them to improve. To help achieve this, we will improve how we designate system leaders by introducing a more sophisticated approach based on timely and accurate data rather than relying heavily on Ofsted judgements. We will also partner schools with the potential to become strong system leaders with existing teaching schools and National Leaders of Education.

Through the Department’s strategy for Achieving Excellence Areas, we will target our existing programmes to secure sufficient high quality teachers, leaders, system leaders, sponsors and members of governing boards on the areas of greatest need. At the Budget, the Government announced that we will invest an additional £20 million a year to build on this strategy to raise education standards across the Northern Powerhouse. The allocation of this funding will depend on the identified need and will be reassessed each year, based on the evidence.

For the additional funding announced in the budget, decisions on how the funding will be allocated for the 2016-17 financial year will be made by the autumn of this year and will be informed by the emerging findings of the review by Sir Nick Weller. We will be publishing the terms of reference for Sir Nick Weller’s review shortly.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dan Jarvis on 2016-05-23.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment his Department has made of the effect of the Cystic Fibrosis Trust’s proposal for collaboration between the NHS and Vertex to widen access to the treatment Orkambi on the treatment of the patients with that disease.

George Freeman

The Department has received the Cystic Fibrosis Trust’s proposals for an arrangement that would potentially allow access to Orkambi (lumacaftor in combination with ivacaftor) as part of a Managed Access Scheme in the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s (NICE) appraisal of Orkambi.

I have encouraged the Trust and the manufacturer, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, to engage with NICE to consider whether there remains scope for this, or any other, proposal to be taken into account in its appraisal and the Department is also engaging with the manufacturer directly on this matter.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dan Jarvis on 2016-10-10.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the implications of the outcome of the EU referendum for future employment levels in the agricultural sector.

George Eustice

The Government has manifesto commitments to develop a 25 year plan to grow more and sell more British food and to treble the number of apprentices in food and farming. These commitments are unaffected by the EU referendum result.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dan Jarvis on 2015-10-28.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what discussions his Department has had with the Ministry of Defence on the potential implications of the closure of steel plants in the UK for the UK defence industry and infrastructure.

Anna Soubry

This Department is regularly in contact with the Ministry of Defence (MoD) about the impact of industrial issues on the UK defence industry and supply chain, such as the challenges facing the steel industry. Any implications for defence procurement will also be considered by the steel procurement working group which was set up with cross-departmental representation (including MoD) following the Steel Summit.