Tag: Julie Cooper

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Cooper on 2016-01-13.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many work coaches are employed by job centres in (a) Burnley, (b) Lancashire and (c) the North West.

Priti Patel

Responsibility Centre	Number of WC’s
JCNW Burnley JC Plus	19
Lancashire	235
JCNW North West England	1436

The information available for the number of Employment and Support Allowance claimants by phase of claim and geography is published and can be found at:

https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/default.asp

Guidance for users is available at:

https://www.nomisweb.co.uk/home/newuser.asp

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Cooper on 2016-01-18.

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps the Government has taken to prevent predatory high-frequency trading.

Harriett Baldwin

It would not be appropriate for the Government to comment on any ongoing investigations. This is an operational matter for the FCA which is an independent regulator. I have transferred this question across to them and they will respond fully in due course.

The Government is clear that any attempted manipulation of any financial market is completely unacceptable. The integrity of the City matters to the economy of Britain, and that is why the Government is taking action at home, in Europe, and globally, to ensure that this behaviour is punished and that similar scandals cannot occur again.

The Government has taken a number of steps to strengthen financial regulation in the UK. These include introducing the Senior Managers and Certification Regime to provide for effective regulation of individual conduct and accountability in the banking sector. The Bank of England and Financial Services Bill, now before the House of Commons, will extend this regime to cover all authorised financial services firms, including dealers in securities and other non-banks which may engage in high-frequency trading (HFT).

The Government has supported the European Union (EU) Markets in Financial Instruments Directive 2 (MiFID 2), which from 2017 will alter the regulatory landscape in relation to automated trading including HFT. As part of this, HFT firms will be required to disclose information concerning their trading activities to their regulator in order to increase the regulatory supervision of these markets.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Cooper on 2016-01-21.

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, when she expects the Government’s response to the impact assessment of reductions to feed-in tariffs to be published.

Andrea Leadsom

The Government published an impact assessment for the feed-in tariff review on 17 December 2015, alongside the Government response to the consultation on this review.

The impact assessment is available at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/486084/IA_-_FITs_consultation_response_with_Annexes_-_FINAL_SIGNED.pdf

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Cooper on 2016-02-08.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether his Department plans to cap the number of times a person in receipt of benefits can be sanctioned in a month.

Priti Patel

The Department has no plans to cap the number of times a sanction might apply to a claimant’s benefit in a month.

There are established safeguards to prevent the accrual of sanctions. This prevents the duration of a sanction escalating if the sanctionable failure occurs within two weeks of a previous similar failure.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Cooper on 2016-02-24.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many NHS 111 calls were made in (a) 2014 and (b) 2015 in (i) Lancashire and (ii) Burnley.

Jane Ellison

The data is not held centrally.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Cooper on 2016-03-03.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment his Department has made of the effect of increasing the state pension age on productivity.

Justin Tomlinson

The projected increase in the number of people working as a result of the rise in State Pension age provided for by the Pensions Act 2011 was estimated to generate a significant increase in gross employment earnings. Under this new timetable the peak increase compared to the previous timetable would be £5.0 billion in 2022/23 (in 2011/12 prices).

At an individual level, working longer and saving into a private pension will, on average, increase lifetime pension income. Taking into consideration the additional employment income, individuals’ lifetime income will be improved if they work longer. Analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown that the rise in women’s State Pension age from 60 to 62 has been accompanied by increases in employment rates for the women affected.

Research by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research in 2011 showed that an increase of one year in the average effective working life is estimated to result in additional annual national output worth up to one per cent of GDP. In the same research, it was estimated that real GDP would be six per cent lower than it otherwise would have been by 2030, if plans for raising the state pension age (according to the Pensions Act 2007) were not implemented.

The increase in labour supply as a result of the Pensions Act 2011 was also estimated to boost GDP above the projected baseline of the previous timetable. GDP could be between £7 billion and £9 billion higher in 2022/23 (in 2011/12 prices); in the period 2016 to 2026, the increase in labour supply due to the increase in State Pension age could boost national output by £70 billion (in 2011/12 prices).

More information on both impacts can be found in Annex A of the Pensions Act 2011 Impact Assessment at::

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pensions-act-2011-impact-assessment

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Cooper on 2016-03-23.

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, if his Department will offer tax relief on home insurance payments for occupants of council housing.

Mr David Gauke

The Government’s preferred policy is to take people out of tax through higher personal allowances, and to lower tax rates when it is affordable to do so.

The Government has already pledged to raise the personal allowance to £12,500 by the end of this parliament.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Cooper on 2016-04-08.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to paragraph 1.89 of Budget 2016, how much of the £500 million of additional core funding for schools will be allocated to schools in Lancashire.

Mr Sam Gyimah

The funding announced at the Budget has been provided to support the Department’s school reform agenda. This will allow us to spend around £500 million over the Spending Review period, in addition to the per pupil protection of the core school budget announced at the spending review, to speed up the introduction of a fair national funding formula.

Our current consultation on a National Funding Formula for schools outlines the principles of the funding system and the funding factors that we believe should define the national funding formula for schools. This consultation closes on 17 April, and having considered the responses to this consultation, later this year we will launch a second consultation. This second stage consultation will detail our proposals for weighting each factor, the transitional arrangements and illustrate the distribution of funding for schools and local authorities that that implies, including the allocation of this funding. Until then, I am unable to comment on how additional funding will be allocated to schools in Lancashire.

A link to the consultation can be found here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/schools-national-funding-formula.

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Cooper on 2016-04-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 10 March 2016 to Question 29629, if the Government will make it its policy to introduce targeted sanctions against individual members of the Maldivian government if the recommendations of the Commonwealth Action Group are not implemented in the next 12 months.

Mr Hugo Swire

Following its meeting on 20 April, the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) set a revised deadline of September for clear and measurable progress to be delivered in the six areas of concern, identified at their previous meeting in February. It will be for CMAG to assess what progress has been made by September and to decide what collective action may be required. If CMAG assesses sufficient steps have not been taken, the UK will carefully consider appropriate bilateral action to help support reform efforts in the Maldives.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Cooper on 2016-04-25.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to the report, General Practice Forward View, published in April 2016, how much of the £2.4 billion increased funding for GP surgeries will be spent in Lancashire and the North West.

Alistair Burt

How much of this funding which will be spent in Lancashire and the North West will depend on future decisions by NHS England and the local clinical commissioning groups.

Local primary care allocations are published on the NHS England website at:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/pc-medical-allocations.pdf

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