Tag: Julie Elliott

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Elliott on 2016-04-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent steps he has taken to support women who have been affected by state pension inequalities.

Justin Tomlinson

Our pension policies are providing greater choice and dignity for people in retirement, whilst also ensuring the system is sustainable for the future.

The new State Pension is being introduced for those who reach State Pension age from April 2016. Under our state pension reforms over three million women will gain an average of £11 per week more State Pension by 2030.Around 75 per cent of women (and 70 per cent of men) who reach State Pension age under the new system in the first fifteen years will have a higher value State Pension when compared to the value of the State Pension they would have received under the old system.

National Insurance credits for those who take time out of work for caring responsibilities will gain the same state pension entitlement as National Insurance contributions through earnings.

The average woman reaching State Pension age in the new State Pension is also estimated to receive 10% more State Pension over her lifetime than the average man. Women reaching State Pension in the next 40 years will on average receive more State Pension over their lifetime than women ever have before. Women affected by equalisation of State Pension age will be entitled to the same working age in-work, out-of-work and disability benefits as men.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Elliott on 2016-10-18.

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking to reduce levels of homelessness in the North East of England.

Mr Marcus Jones

One person without a home is one too many. That is why the Government is clear that prevention must be at the heart of everything we do to tackle homelessness. We have protected homelessness prevention funding for local authorities, which will amount to £315 million by 2020, to help them provide quality advice and assistance to everyone who approaches them for help.

We have also increased central investment to tackle homelessness over the next four years to £139 million and why we have just announced the new £40 million Homelessness Prevention Programme to provide an innovative approach to reducing homelessness, with prevention at its heart.

The Homelessness Prevention Programme includes;

• £20 million to establish a network of ambitious Homelessness Prevention Trailblazer areas that will give local authorities the resources to ramp up prevention and take new approaches to reduce homelessness;
• a £10 million rough sleeping grant fund for targeted prevention or early intervention for those at imminent risk of sleeping rough; and
• a new £10 million Social Impact Bond to support rough sleepers with the most complex needs which builds on the success of the world’s first homelessness Social Impact Bond (SIB), run by the Greater London Authority. This SIB turned round the lives of around 830 of London’s most entrenched rough sleepers over half of which have achieved accommodation, employment or reconnection outcomes.

As well as this, we announced in the Budget an additional £100 million to deliver low cost ‘move on’ accommodation to enable people leaving hostels and refuges to make a sustainable recovery from a homelessness crisis, providing at least 2,000 places for vulnerable people to enable independent living.

In the North East, Newcastle City Council has been announced as an early adopter of our Homelessness Prevention Trailblazer programme. The Council has been awarded £1 million to build on the good work they are doing in driving reform and innovation in homelessness prevention.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Elliott on 2014-07-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what representations he has received from Ofgem and other regulatory bodies on the decision to consult on a large-scale solar PV Renewables Obligation closure grace period deadline of 13 May 2014; and if he will make a statement.

Amber Rudd

DECC works closely with Ofgem and other regulatory bodies on all matters relating to, or affecting, the Renewables Obligation (RO).

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Elliott on 2014-05-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what assessment he has made of the potential effects of EU state aid rules on the UK feed in tariff policy framework; and if he will make a statement.

Gregory Barker

The European Commission adopted new guidelines for Energy and Environmental Aid (EEAG) on 9 April. Existing schemes, such as the Feed-in Tariff scheme (FITs), are not required to be brought into line with these new guidelines for as long as the relevant scheme remains covered by its existing EU state aid approval. It would only need to be brought into line if we were to introduce a change to the scheme that would, in itself, require state aid notification, as this would be outside the existing approval. If, after consultation on any alterations to FITs, we were to propose such a change, we would consider the trade-offs and risks for the scheme as a whole before reaching a final policy decision.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Elliott on 2014-05-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, how much solar PV was installed under the 250kW to 5MW feed-in tariff band in (a) 2012, (b) 2013 and (c) 2014 to date.

Gregory Barker

The table below shows the total number of 250kW to 5MW solar PV installations accredited under the Feed-in Tariff scheme.

From April	Number of installations	Total installed capacity (kW)
2010	0	0
2011	53	65,002
2012	8	6,428
2013	7	4,594
2014 [1]	0	0

Installations are grouped into years based on their ‘commissioning date’ i.e. the date the technology was physically installed and deemed to be up and running.

[1] Includes installations commissioned to the end of March 2014. April 2014 statistics will be published at 09:30am on Thursday 22nd May 2014 on the DECC website (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/monthly-small-scale-renewable-deployment).

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Elliott on 2014-05-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what estimate his Department has made of the number of people employed in the UK solar PV sector in (a) 2010, (b) 2011, (c) 2012, (d) 2013 and (e) 2014.

Gregory Barker

DECC does not hold this data.

In March the National Solar Centre estimated that the industry employs 13,723 people on a full time basis.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Elliott on 2014-05-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, how much solar PV was installed under the 50kW to 5MW feed-in tariff bands in (a) 2012, (b) 2013 and (c) 2014 to date.

Gregory Barker

The table below shows the total number of 50kW to 5MW solar PV installations accredited under the Feed-in Tariff scheme.

From April	Number of installations	Total installed capacity (kW)
2010	11	956
2011	231	84,478
2012	212	36,878
2013	180	30,071
2014 [1]	2	320

Installations are grouped into years based on their ‘commissioning date’ i.e. the date the technology was physically installed and deemed to be up and running.

[1] Includes installations commissioned to the end of March 2014. April 2014 statistics will be published at 09:30am on Thursday 22nd May 2014 on the DECC website (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/monthly-small-scale-renewable-deployment).

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Elliott on 2014-05-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what assessment his Department has made of the potential effect of the proposed reduction in solar farm support under the Renewables Obligation on planned community-owned or shared ownership schemes.

Gregory Barker

The Government published the second part of our UK Solar PV Strategy Part 2 [1] on 4 April 2014. We made clear in that document that we are considering the implications of current trends of deployment in solar PV on the financial incentives available in Great Britain under the Renewables Obligation and small-scale Feed-in-Tariffs. We will issue a public consultation shortly proposing changes to financial support for solar PV.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-solar-pv-strategy-part-1-roadmap-to-a-brighter-future

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