The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Mackintosh on 2016-04-11.
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, if his Department will make plans to provide the Housing Ombudsman service with greater powers to deal with complaints from members of the public.
Brandon Lewis
There are no current plans to provide the Housing Ombudsman Service with greater powers.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Mackintosh on 2016-04-25.
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps his Department has taken to encourage transport operators to provide services that are accessible to disabled people.
Andrew Jones
The Department for Transport is committed to building transport networks which work for everyone, ensuring that disabled people have the same access to transport services as non-disabled members of society
Compliance with bus accessibility Regulations was 89% in England in 2015; while 60% of rail vehicles, up from 46% in 2013, were built or fully refurbished to modern access standards.
By the end of this year Access for All will have completed more than 150 step-free routes at rail stations against a target of 125. More than 1,200 stations have received smaller scale improvements. To build on this success £160m has been allocated to another 68 stations to be delivered by 2019.
We plan to require that taxi and private hire vehicle drivers provide assistance to wheelchair users and refrain from charging extra by commencing sections 165 and 167 of the Equality Act 2010 by the end of the year.
The Department works closely with its statutory advisors on the needs of disabled people, the Disabled Persons’ Transport Advisory Committee, such as on a project to develop best practice guidance on the delivery of disability awareness training for bus and coach drivers.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Mackintosh on 2016-05-09.
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what recent assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of the Advertising Standards Agency.
Mr Edward Vaizey
This Government supports the system of co-regulation and self-regulation, overseen by the independent Advertising Standards Authority and underpinned by consumer protection legislation. This regulatory system is independent of the Government and is ultimately responsible for setting the standards in advertising, ensuring that all adverts, wherever they appear, are legal, decent, honest and truthful.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Mackintosh on 2016-06-28.
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what powers the National Cyber Security Centre will have to ensure that key infrastructure providers act on the advice it gives.
Matthew Hancock
The National Cyber Security Centre will be a unified source of advice for business, including owners and providers of critical national infrastructure. The Centre will work with lead government departments and regulators who are responsible for ensuring that the risks against our critical national infrastructure are appropriately managed by those running it.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Mackintosh on 2016-01-11.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to encourage research into a cure for complex regional pain syndrome.
George Freeman
The Department’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) welcomes funding applications for research into any aspect of human health, including complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS). These applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards being made on the basis of the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money and scientific quality.
The researcher-led workstream of the Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation programme (funded by the Medical Research Council and managed by the NIHR) is currently funding a £0.7 million trial of low-dose intravenous immunoglobulin treatment for CRPS.
The NIHR Clinical Research Network is recruiting patients to studies of mycophenolate treatment for longstanding CRPS and electrical sensory discrimination therapy for relief of chronic pain in CRPS.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Mackintosh on 2016-03-16.
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps he is taking to improve the diversity of (a) public appointments and (b) staffing in his Department.
Matthew Hancock
All public appointments are made on merit following a fair and open competition in accordance with the Commissioner for Public Appointment’s Code of Practice. The Government is committed to increasing the diversity of public appointments. The Centre for Public Appointments in the Cabinet Office supports departments on all issues relating to the diversity of public appointments. Steps we are taking to increase diversity include streamlining the application process, placing an emphasis on ability over previous experience and increasing awareness of opportunities by using a central website, social media and engaging with a variety of diversity networks and groups.
The Cabinet Office recruits staff in line with the Civil Service Commissioners Principles which ensures that candidates are selected based on fair and open competition and on merit. To reduce bias in selection, the Cabinet Office will be implementing name-blind recruitment methods from 1st April. In addition, recruitment and selection training, which has a core focus on raising awareness of unconscious bias, is also offered to all Chairs of recruitment panels.
On 24 March, we published our 2016 Talent Action Plan for the Civil Service. It provides a progress update on initiatives to increase diversity in the Civil Service, including cross-Government talent programmes aimed at under-represented groups. It also sets out how we will increase social mobility in the Civil Service. The 2016 Talent Action Plan is available at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/talent-action-plan-2016-removing-the-barriers-to-success
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The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Mackintosh on 2016-04-11.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department plans to take to ensure that Ofsted is able to assess the effectiveness of schools under proposals for all schools to become academies.
Nick Gibb
Academies are already subject to inspection by Ofsted under the same framework that applies to maintained schools. The White Paper, Educational Excellence Everywhere, sets out the intention that the Department will also publish new performance tables to show how well multi-academy trusts are leading their schools. This will be in addition to school-level inspection results and performance data. The White Paper is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/educational-excellence-everywhere
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The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Mackintosh on 2016-04-25.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of the New Enterprise Allowance in achieving its aims.
Priti Patel
Latest statistics show that 80,830 new businesses have been set up with the support of the New Enterprise Allowance (NEA).
A survey of NEA recipients was published in January 2016 and found that of businesses that had started trading following receipt of NEA support, four in five were still trading giving a sustainability rate of 80%. Of these, over nine in ten had been trading for over 12 months.
This report was published on 28 January and can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/new-enterprise-allowance-survey.
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The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Mackintosh on 2016-05-09.
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department plans to take to ensure that Ofcom implements the recommendations from its Strategic Review of Digital Communications, published in February 2016, on automatic compensation for mobile and broadband customers for loss of internet connection.
Mr Edward Vaizey
The Government fully supports Ofcom’s plans to implement a system of automatic compensation for telecommunications customers who suffer a loss or reduction of their broadband services. This is in line with Ofcom’s remit to, amongst other things, protect the interests of end users. The Department anticipates that Ofcom will, in due course, define the specific parameters of the automatic compensation requirements that it will impose, and DCMS will liaise with it during this process.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Mackintosh on 2016-06-28.
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps his Department is taking to ensure (a) that all Government services are available through the gov.uk website and (b) that that website remains operational at all times.
Matthew Hancock
Since its launch in October 2012, GOV.UK has handled over 2.6 billion visits. The site needs to continue operating during major events such as the annual Self Assessment peak and a national emergency. The GOV.UK website has been designed to handle issues and failures in a way which would not impact the public. We have robust incident management processes in place and regularly run disaster recovery simulations to test our response to any outages.
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