Tag: Ivan Lewis

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ivan Lewis on 2016-02-25.

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what criteria his Department uses to determine the level of supplementary funding provided to local authorities as part of the local government finance settlement.

Mr Marcus Jones

The local government finance settlement distributed revenue support grant by looking at the main resources that are available to local councils. The Local Government Finance Report (England) 2016/2017 sets out the basis of this distribution and the results can be found at;

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/final-local-government-finance-settlement-england-2016-to-2017.

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ivan Lewis on 2016-03-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many police officers are on duty each night of the week in each division of Greater Manchester Police.

Mike Penning

The Home Office does not hold the requested data centrally. The deployment of a police force’s available workforce is an operational decision for chief officers, in conjunction with their police and crime commissioners.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ivan Lewis on 2016-02-25.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps the Government is taking to reduce the prevalence of reckless driving.

Andrew Jones

The Road Safety Statement published on 21 December 2015 outlines what the Department is currently doing to improve road safety. For example, we are currently consulting on increasing the penalty points and financial penalty for those who commit the offence of using a mobile phone whilst driving.

We have previously introduced fixed penalty notices in order to assist the police in dealing more effectively with careless driving. This would enable more people to be offered rehabilitative education to combat such behaviour.

Britain is a world leader in road safety, but we are always striving to improve. For example, from 2 March 2015 it has been an offence to drive with certain drugs in your body in excess of official limits. I have provided £1million to further increase enforcement during the THINK! campaign that commenced on 29 February and will run through March thus coinciding with the 1^st anniversary of the commencement of the new offence.

Sentencing and enforcement policy issues are matters for the Ministry of Justice and Home Office respectively.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ivan Lewis on 2016-03-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the effect of the demolition of the Calais camp known as the jungle on the number of migrants entering into the UK.

James Brokenshire

The UK and French Governments have been working closely for many months to address the situation in Northern France, and are committed to resolving it together.

The Joint Declaration, signed by the Home Secretary and the French Interior Ministry in August 2015, committed both countries to a package of work to improve physical security at the ports, to coordinate the law enforcement response, to tackle the criminal gangs involved in people smug-gling and to reduce the number of migrants in Calais.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ivan Lewis on 2016-02-25.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to tackle the level of mental illness among primary and secondary school children.

Mr Sam Gyimah

We have high aspirations for all children and want them to be able to fulfil their potential both academically and in terms of their mental wellbeing. This attainment is best supported if they have good mental health, character and resilience. Schools can play an important role in promoting good mental wellbeing and in responding to issues that arise.

To support them in doing this we have funded the PSHE Association to provide guidance and lesson plans which support age-appropriate teaching of mental health issues. We have also revised and updated our counselling guidance for schools to include a section on vulnerable children and what schools may need to do to make counselling accessible to them.

The department recently launched activity to identify how to help young people help their friends to talk about mental health issues, including a call for evidence for stakeholders and children and young people. We also announced funding of up to £1.5m for projects to take this forward once the call for evidence is complete, including a new digital innovation fund to develop reliable, engaging and trusted advice online to help them understand both their own, and their friends’ mental health.

Schools need support from specialist services locally to ensure that pupils with mental illness get the support they need. That is why the Government is investing an additional £1.4bn in children’s mental health this Parliament. Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) across the country have worked with partners, including schools and colleges, to produce local transformation plans for children and young people’s mental health services. These should set out what will be done locally to make the best use of the resources available – changing how CAMHS is delivered in response to the challenges set out in the Future in Mind report.

In addition we are contributing to a £3m joint pilot with NHS England which is testing how single points of contact in CAMHS and schools can secure effective mental health support to pupils. The pilots are involving over 250 schools in 27 CCG areas through joint training, which supports schools and CAMHS leads to identify specific activity to improve support in their area.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ivan Lewis on 2016-03-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to help reduce knife crime in Greater Manchester.

Mr John Hayes

Tackling knife crime is a priority for this Government. Knife crime offences recorded by the police remain 14% below the level of offences in 2010.

However we recognise there is always more to do and we are currently reviewing action to be taken on knife crime. We will be setting out the measures in the Modern Crime Prevention Strategy which will be published shortly.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ivan Lewis on 2016-02-25.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how much Bury Clinical Commissioning Group received in grants in the last three years.

Alistair Burt

Data on clinical commissioning group (CCG) grant income is not held centrally. This is a matter for Bury CCG.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ivan Lewis on 2016-03-08.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps the Government is taking to increase teacher recruitment in schools.

Nick Gibb

Ensuring there are high quality teachers in all schools is crucial to achieving our ambition of educational excellence everywhere. That is why the Government is investing over £1.3 billion to 2020 to attract new teachers into the profession. Our investment includes tax-free training bursaries worth up to £30,000 for top graduates in priority subjects in addition to grants to support new teachers who want to earn a salary whilst they train.

We are continuing to support the expansion of the prestigious Teach First scheme which is now Britain’s largest graduate employer, and places top graduates in schools in disadvantaged areas.

We are also offering training and support to former teachers to help them return to the classroom and have launched the National Teaching Service, which will place up to 1,500 outstanding teachers and middle leaders into the schools who need them most.

To ensure that schools can play a leading role in selecting and training the teachers that they need, we have significantly expanded school-based routes into teaching so that over 50 per cent of trainees are now training through school-led programmes.

Teaching continues to be a hugely popular career for top graduates and career changers, and we now have more, better-qualified teachers in our classrooms than ever before.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ivan Lewis on 2016-02-25.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the average waiting time for an operation in (a) Pennine Acute NHS Trust and (b) Bolton NHS Trust was in the last year for which figures are available.

Jane Ellison

Patients have a legal right, set out in the NHS Constitution, to start consultant-led treatment within a maximum of 18 weeks from referral for non-urgent conditions. The following table shows the average median waiting time in weeks for patients whose wait ended during the month with an inpatient or day case admission to Pennine Acute NHS Trust or Bolton NHS Trust. Only a proportion of inpatient or day case admissions would have resulted in an operation.

Table: average median waiting times^{1, 2} in weeks for patients whose wait ended during the month with an inpatient or day case admission³, 2015

Month	Bolton NHS Trust	Pennine Acute NHS Trust
January 2015	8.2	10.8
February 2015	8.7	11.1
March 2015	7.6	9.8
April 2015	7.6	10.6
May 2015	7.9	10.6
June 2015	7.0	11.4
July 2015	6.6	11.1
August 2015	6.3	10.9
September 2015	6.9	10.9
October 2015	7.1	11.1
November 2015	7.0	10.6
December 2015	5.7	10.5

Source: Consultant-led referral to treatment waiting times, NHS England

Notes:

1. Median waiting times are calculated from aggregate data, rather than patient level data, and therefore are only estimates of the position on average waits.
2. Until September 2015, adjustments were permitted for clock pauses, where a patient declined reasonable offers of admission and chose to wait longer. From October 2015, there is no longer any provision to report pauses or suspensions in waiting time clocks.
3. Not every admission to hospital is for an operation, but hospital episode statistics suggest that 94% of elective finished admission episodes involve some form of procedure or intervention.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ivan Lewis on 2016-03-08.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to tackle underperformance in schools in Greater Manchester.

Nick Gibb

The Government is committed to educational excellence everywhere. The Education and Adoption Bill includes powers designed to help raise standards in Greater Manchester, ensuring that all failing maintained schools become academies with strong sponsors and coasting schools will be challenged to improve. The Regional Schools Commissioner has already prioritised Greater Manchester for the Northern Fund and brought a new, high-performing sponsor into the area. Where standards are unacceptably low in academies, she has held sponsors and academy trusts to account and has used the Secretary of State’s powers to issue Pre-Termination Warning Notices (PTWNs) to trusts that have failed to drive forward the necessary improvements at pace.

The department publishes all PTWNs at:

www.gov.uk/government/collections/letters-to-academies-about-poor-performance#termination-notices

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