The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dan Jarvis on 2016-02-29.
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what proportion of senior civil servants in his Department are women.
Mark Lancaster
As at 1 January 2016, 25.1% of senior civil servants in the Ministry of Defence were women.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dan Jarvis on 2016-03-17.
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, 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.
Matthew Hancock
The Department has no record of receiving any funds 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 Wales, 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.
Guto Bebb
The Wales Office has not received any funding from the European Social Fund (ESF). Implementation of ESF is the responsibility of the Welsh Government.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dan Jarvis on 2016-03-21.
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the contribution of the UK’s membership of the EU to the protection of the UK’s borders.
James Brokenshire
At the February European Council, the Government negotiated a new settlement, giving the United Kingdom a special status in a reformed European Union. The Government’s view is that the UK will be stronger, safer and better off in a reformed EU. The Government published a white paper, ‘The best of both worlds’, on 22 February, which sets out how membership of the EU enhances our ability to co-operate with other EU Member States to combat crime and terrorism and keep all parts of the United Kingdom safe.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dan Jarvis on 2016-04-21.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department plans to take to facilitate new academy sponsors in the North 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 2016-05-26.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment his Department has made of the financial effect on people caring for family members of the closure of the Independent Living Fund and the introduction of the Care Act 2014.
Alistair Burt
The Independent Living Fund (ILF) closed on 30 June 2015, with funding and responsibility transferring to local authorities in England and the Devolved Administrations in Scotland and Wales. The Department has not made an assessment of the financial impact on those caring for family members, and at this stage does not plan to do so.
However, the Department has issued statutory guidance to local authorities to support this transfer of responsibility and to prevent any former ILF user having their care interrupted during the transfer. I have recently reminded local authorities of the need to comply with this guidance. In addition, the Care Act 2014 introduced important new rights for carers, and placed a duty on local authorities to assess adults who appear to have care and support needs and to meet those needs which meet the national eligibility criteria.
The Government has committed to publishing a new cross-Government National Carers Strategy before the end of 2016. A wide-ranging call for evidence is now underway to underpin the development of the Strategy, which will gather evidence from stakeholders, and carers themselves, on their experience of caring including issues of personal finance and the support they receive from local authorities.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dan Jarvis on 2016-10-11.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to his announcement of 27 September 2016 on extra funding for mental health, what steps he is taking to ensure that funding reaches children who have experienced abuse, neglect or live in poverty.
Nicola Blackwood
On 29 September, NHS England announced that an extra £25 million from nationally-led programmes on children’s mental health would be made available to clinical commissioning groups to support children and young people’s mental health transformation and delivery, with a focus on reducing current waiting times.
Access to all National Health Service treatment is determined on the basis of clinical need, not on the basis of personal circumstances or any other non-clinical criteria.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dan Jarvis on 2015-11-04.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what is being done to raise awareness of diabetes and to encourage people to seek medical advice for this condition.
Jane Ellison
The NHS Health Check programme is one of the mandatory public health functions of local authorities in England. It aims to prevent some of the biggest causes of premature death and disability in people aged 40-74.A routine part of NHS Health Check involves assessing a person’s risk of Type 2 diabetes and, for those at risk, a diagnostic test to confirm whether they have the condition. This then informs a discussion on, and agreement of, the lifestyle and medical approaches best suited to managing the person’s risk of developing cardiovascular diseases such as Type 2 diabetes.
As the National Diabetes Prevention Programme (NDPP) begins phased national roll out in 2016/17, the programme will be providing information that helps raise awareness of the risk factors associated with developing Type 2 Diabetes and the lifestyle changes that they can make to reduce their risk – including, if eligible attending the NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme. This activity is already underway in our seven demonstrator sites that the programme is working with. Within Yorkshire and the Humber, Bradford is one of these demonstrator sites.
Building on the NDPP, the Department is developing its plans to improve outcomes for those with and at risk of diabetes. These will be announced in due course.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dan Jarvis on 2015-11-18.
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, for what reasons the triple lock on pensions does not apply to disability war pensions.
Mark Lancaster
Compensation payments under the War Pensions Scheme are uprated annually in line with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) figure. This is the same measure the Department for Work and Pensions uses for uprating social security disability benefits and is in keeping with other public service schemes. Our approach ensures consistency with the measure of inflation used by the Bank of England.
The triple lock applies only to the State Pension. Members of the Armed Forces will therefore benefit from the triple lock once they reach State Pension age.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Dan Jarvis on 2016-01-20.
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will take steps to ensure that asylum seekers are not housed in properties that make their status as asylum seekers easily identifiable.
James Brokenshire
Home Office officials are working closely with our housing providers to ensure that asylum seeker accommodation is not easily identifiable. I am not aware of a uniform door colour being the practice in any other region. My officials have also spoken to our housing providers to tell them that such a practice is not acceptable.
I was first made aware of this issue when The Times contacted the Home Office in mid-January. G4S has investigated correspondence and discussions on the issue of external door colour in the North East and has confirmed that it was raised in 2012 by a Middlesbrough local councillor and was considered by the G4S audit and assurance team, no complaints from asylum seekers relating to this matter were found and a response was issued.
As I said to the House on 20 January, I instructed officials to look into this issue as a matter of urgency and I expect that the audit will be concluded on the Home Office side very shortly.