Tag: Justin Tomlinson

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Justin Tomlinson on 2016-09-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many companies have signed the Armed Forces Corporate Covenant.

Mark Lancaster

The Armed Forces Corporate Covenant was subsumed into the Armed Forces Covenant in January 2016. As at 2 September 2016 a total of 1,156 organisations have signed the Armed Forces Covenant. This total includes those organisations who signed the previous Corporate Covenant. Details of all Armed Forces Covenant signatories and their pledges are available on-line at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/armed-forces-covenant.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Justin Tomlinson on 2016-09-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what estimate he has made of the contribution of the manufacturing industry to the UK economy in each of the last six years.

Mr Nick Hurd

Despite difficult global economic conditions, manufacturing output has increased by 2.4 per cent in real terms and 14.9 per cent in current prices since 2010. Manufacturing productivity has also increased more than three times faster than the UK economy as a whole over the past 10 years. The sector spans over 130,000 businesses and directly employs 2.7 million of people, with an estimated 5.1m employed across the total manufacturing value chain. It accounts for half of all British exports, and around 70 per cent of all UK R&D spending. Manufacturing activity creates demand and value in other sectors, with official statistics suggesting that each £1 increase in demand for manufacturing industry products results in an over £1.70 in output across the economy as a whole.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Justin Tomlinson on 2016-09-14.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make it her policy to ensure funding parity for the fast track and graduate training schemes for social workers.

Edward Timpson

The Government remains committed to providing appropriate levels of funding to a range of entry routes to social work.

An independent evaluation of the Frontline programme was published in March 2016, and is accessible online at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/509240/DFE-RR507-Frontline-pilot-independent-evaluation.pdf

The first cohort of Think Ahead participants started the programme in summer 2016. Plans are being made to evaluate the effectiveness of the programme.

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Justin Tomlinson on 2016-07-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to reduce costs incurred by schools which were built under the Private Finance Initiative.

Edward Timpson

Local authorities are responsible for their own Private Finance Initiative contracts and are encouraged to seek savings in the context of those contracts.

The Department is working closely with Her Majesty’s Treasury to develop guidance to demonstrate how local authorities may make savings.

The Department continues to work closely with local authorities to assist in identifying and securing savings.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Justin Tomlinson on 2016-09-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she is taking to promote farm produce made in the UK.

George Eustice

The Great British Food Unit brings together experts from across government and celebrates British food, encourages innovation and increases investment and exports by opening new global markets. 2016 is the Year of British Food and is the start of a five-year campaign. An example of recent campaign activity includes Defra jointly hosting a business summit with the Institute of Directors on 5 September. The summit was attended by around 120 representatives from Small and Medium enterprises (SME), including farmers, who attended sessions on how to grow their businesses.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Justin Tomlinson on 2016-09-02.

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what total reduction in government spending has been attributed to policies drawn up by the Behavioural Insights Team since 2010.

Ben Gummer

The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) does not track the cumulative impact of all its work over time, only some of which focus on reducing spending or increasing revenue collection.

However, BIT has now run some 350 trials, each of which shows the impact of different policy interventions in different contexts. These show that the team has helped to save or bring forward hundreds of millions of pounds of revenue and has made efficiency improvements in many different areas of UK Government policy.

This includes:

-changing the messages in letters from HMRC to late tax payers was part of a group of trials that helped bring forward more than £200m of late tax debts;

-changing the messages in letters sent by Local Authorities to late payers of Council Tax is estimated to bring forward an extra £3m in one local authority alone;

-changing the way that Jobcentres support people back to work has been rolled out to some 25,000 Job Advisors and is expected to help hundreds of thousands of people back to work faster.

-informing GPs who overprescribe antibiotics that most practices prescribe fewer antibiotics than theirs reduces the number of unnecessary prescriptions by around 150,000 per year; and

-working with HMCTS to send personalised text messages to people who were delinquent in their court fines. This intervention, which significantly increased payment rates prior to a bailiff intervention, could raise £860,000 per week if rolled out nationally and prevent up to 150,000 bailiff interventions per year.

BIT also works with governments around the world and is seeing similar effects in its work in Australia, Singapore and with cities across the USA.

These findings, and many others, are published once a year in BIT’s Update Report. The next edition of this is due later this month [September 2016].

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Justin Tomlinson on 2016-10-10.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what plans he has to upgrade the (a) rail and (b) underground connectivity to (i) Heathrow and (ii) Gatwick Airport.

Mr John Hayes

Current investment plans include a number of improvements to rail and underground services to Heathrow and Gatwick Airports.

The Elizabeth line will significantly improve links between Heathrow and a number of central London destinations. From May 2018, four trains an hour will run between Paddington and Heathrow Airport replacing the existing 2 train per hour Heathrow Connect service. From December 2019, Elizabeth line trains will run from the airport directly to central London destinations including Bond Street, Liverpool Street and Canary Wharf.

London Underground is planning new trains and signalling for the Piccadilly line, which serves Heathrow. Work on signalling will begin as early as 2019 and the first new trains will be in service from the early 2020s. The new trains will provide 60% more capacity (the equivalent of up to 21,000 customers per hour).

Network Rail is developing a rail link from the Great Western Main Line to London Heathrow Terminal 5. This proposed Western Rail Link to Heathrow will allow passengers to travel directly to the airport from Reading and Slough. Network Rail is expected to seek planning powers for this scheme in 2017.

Gatwick airport is benefiting from the investment that is underway through the Thameslink programme which is delivering more frequent services and state of the art new trains on the line between Brighton, Gatwick Airport and London, the first of which entered service earlier this year. By 2018, these trains will start operating on two new direct services connecting Gatwick to Peterborough and Cambridge.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Justin Tomlinson on 2016-07-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to encourage the recruitment of more male teachers.

Nick Gibb

We value diversity in the workforce but want the best people in the classroom, regardless of their gender; evidence shows that the quality of teaching is the single most important factor in determining how well pupils achieve.

Recent figures show that between 2011 and 2015 the number of male teachers (FTE) has increased from 115,000 to over 119,000. In 2015, 26 per cent of teachers in publicly funded schools in England were male; this proportion has remained broadly stable over time.

The proportion of entrants to primary postgraduate initial teacher training (ITT) in 2015/16 that are male is 22 per cent, an increase of 1 percentage point since 2010/11. The proportion of entrants to secondary postgraduate ITT courses in 2015/16 that are male is 40 per cent, an increase of 2 percentage points since 2010/11. 34 per cent of entrants to the School Direct (salaried) scheme in 2015/16 are male.

It is the responsibility of schools and employers to comply with the requirements of the Equality Act 2010. Guidance for schools on the Act is available online.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Justin Tomlinson on 2016-09-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she is taking to ensure that produce labelling does not suggest that produce not from British farms is from such farms.

George Eustice

The Food Information to Consumers Regulation (No 1169/2011) requires labelling to adhere to the principle that the consumer should not be misled. Article 26(2) of the Regulation imposes an obligation on food business operators to include an indication of the country of origin or place of provenance of a food if the failure to give that information might mislead an average consumer taking into account the label as a whole.

The food business operator is responsible for ensuring that a brand name it uses does not mislead the consumer. It is for the relevant enforcement authorities to assess whether they consider that the use of a brand name is ambiguous or confusing for the consumer on an individual case basis.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Justin Tomlinson on 2016-09-02.

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps he is taking to improve data-sharing (a) across government departments and (b) between government departments and local authorities.

Ben Gummer

The Cabinet Office has consulted public authorities, academics, civil society organisations and privacy groups to explore how data-sharing can be used to improve public services to better support citizens in need, tackle fraud and debt and inform better policy making through world class research and statistics.

The government has included a number of provisions within the Digital Economy Bill to enable government to share data more effectively, whilst also including a set of principles to strengthen the safeguards around the use of data.

The government has also worked to establish a Centre of Excellence for Information Sharing, supporting public sector organisations and government departments in identifying and overcoming the organisational and cultural issues that limit effective sharing.