Tag: Karin Smyth

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Karin Smyth on 2015-12-14.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will place in the Library a copy of the communication between Ministers and officials in his Department about NHS England’s decision to change the amount of NHS performance data published the Winter Daily Situation Reports for 2015-16.

Jane Ellison

In line with previous requests of this nature, copies of communications on this issue are not proposed to be placed in the Library, as all communications from officials were for the purpose of providing advice to ministers for their consideration and deliberation. Releasing this information would be likely to inhibit the continued free and frank exchange of views for the purposes of deliberation.

Based on clinical advice from the NHS England National Medical Director Sir Bruce Keogh, the Secretary of State agreed with the recommendation to standardise reporting arrangements. The recommendation came from Sir Bruce Keogh’s review of waiting time standards published in June 2015. The overall approach was agreed in September by the respective chief executives of NHS England, TDA and Monitor with the Secretary of State for Health.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Karin Smyth on 2016-09-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to ensure incentives and support packages meet the needs of small businesses in order to increase their ability to take on apprentices.

Robert Halfon

We want to continue to support small employers to take on younger apprentices and so propose that employers with fewer than 50 people working for them will be able to train 16 to 18 year old apprentices at no cost.

We propose to extend this to small employers who take on a 19 to 24 year old apprentice who was formerly in care or has a Local Authority Education, Health and Care plan. The government will pay 100% of the apprenticeship training costs for these individuals. Further funding detail and provisional funding rates were published in August.

Since April, employers have not been required to pay employer National Insurance contributions for almost all apprentices aged under 25 up to the Upper Secondary Threshold (£827 per week in 2016-17).

This change makes the business case for apprenticeships even stronger, reducing the cost of employing a young apprentice by over £500 a year on a salary of £12,000, and over £1,000 a year on a salary of £16,000.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Karin Smyth on 2015-10-28.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many asylum seekers the Government plans to resettle in the Bristol City Council area.

James Brokenshire

Under the Immigration and Asylum act 1999, asylum seekers who need accommodation are housed in communities across the UK according to an agreed ratio, based on various regional factors. This is reviewed regularly. Within each region, UKVI has established working arrangements with local authorities in order to consider dispersal patterns and numbers. This includes consulting key corporate partners in the local area in order to assess regularly the impact of dispersal policy on a particular community.

The COMPASS contract requires providers to liaise and consult with local authorities to ensure that accommodation provided to asylum seekers does not adversely affect local authority developments or community plans. Providers must also take into account the cultural compatibility of the environment; capacity of local health, education and other support services; concentration of accommodation of service users within particular areas; and the assessment of social tension risks.

Following the expansion of the Government’s vulnerable person resettlement scheme, we have established a cross-Government committee to oversee the resettlement of vulnerable refugees and we are working closely with them and local authorities about future resettlement.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Karin Smyth on 2015-12-14.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, who he was accompanied by at a cost to the public purse on each of his official overseas trips since his appointment.

Jane Ellison

My Rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State is generally accompanied by an official from the Department and/or a member of staff from his private office when he is travelling on official business.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Karin Smyth on 2016-10-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 14 October 2016 to Questions 47096, 47097 and 47098, what data gathering methods are undertaken by the Child Maintenance Service to track (a) deduction from earnings or benefits orders, (b) deduction from bank account orders and (c) liability orders which the Child Maintenance Service has served on absent parents to recover payments due to parents with custody.

Caroline Nokes

When a paying parent defaults on a payment without reasonable justification, the Child Maintenance Service will take appropriate action to recover the missed payment and re-establish compliance. This action could include deduction from earnings, benefits or directly from bank accounts, or enforcement via the courts such as a liability order.

The system generates compliance data that tracks the payment for internal management information purposes. The Child Maintenance Service can see how many cases are set to pay by each method, and whether or not they are compliant. If a payment under one of these methods fails, a case worker will be prompted to take further action.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Karin Smyth on 2015-10-28.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many refugees have been moved to the Bristol City Council area in each of the last five years.

James Brokenshire

We are unable to provide the number of refugees living in each Local Authority, as once refugee status has been granted the individual is not required to keep the Home Office updated on their current location.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Karin Smyth on 2015-12-14.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what information his Department or NHS England holds on the number and proportion of GP premises that have been refurbished or replaced since May 2010.

Alistair Burt

The NHS (General Medical Services – Premises Costs) Directions 2013 set out the circumstances under which NHS England may provide funding for general practitioner (GP) premises. NHS England does not provide funding for all refurbishments and replacements, and in some cases such works may be carried out by third party owners. As such neither the Department nor NHS England hold information on the number or proportion of GP premises that have been refurbished or replaced since May 2010.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Karin Smyth on 2015-10-28.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many asylum seekers have been moved to the Bristol City Council area in each of the last five years.

James Brokenshire

The Home Office publish figures on the number of asylum applicants living in dispersed accommodation (under Section 95), by local authority, in the quarterly Immigration Statistics release. The latest release for April-June 2015 is available here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-statistics-april-to-june-2015 Figures on Section 95 support by local authority (including those in dispersed accommodation) are published in table as_16q, in volume 4 of the Asylum data tables:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/455576/asylum4-q2-2015-tabs.ods

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Karin Smyth on 2015-12-14.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many (a) outpatient appointments and (b) elective operations took place in England in each week of 2014-15.

Jane Ellison

The information is shown in the following table.

Number of outpatient appointments and finished admission episodes (FAEs) with an elective main procedure by week in 2014-15 in England.

Week Number	Date	Outpatient appointments	FAEs with an elective procedure
1	06 April 2014	2,074,064	152,037
2	13 April 2014	1,715,345	125,191
3	20 April 2014	1,722,450	125,185
4	27 April 2014	2,181,289	156,085
5	04 May 2014	1,782,607	129,711
6	11 May 2014	2,201,615	155,936
7	18 May 2014	2,154,486	153,252
8	25 May 2014	1,615,198	123,484
9	01 June 2014	2,175,157	153,496
10	08 June 2014	2,134,887	153,826
11	15 June 2014	2,128,058	151,508
12	22 June 2014	2,090,872	153,915
13	29 June 2014	2,091,790	152,098
14	06 July 2014	2,108,843	150,721
15	13 July 2014	2,079,438	150,166
16	20 July 2014	2,052,164	151,164
17	27 July 2014	1,963,411	145,641
18	03 August 2014	1,985,519	145,254
19	10 August 2014	2,017,505	145,912
20	17 August 2014	1,981,831	145,873
21	24 August 2014	1,599,651	122,184
22	31 August 2014	2,121,461	149,563
23	07 September 2014	2,118,810	150,024
24	14 September 2014	2,107,008	150,727
25	21 September 2014	2,142,081	153,790
26	28 September 2014	2,147,352	152,751
27	05 October 2014	2,174,051	153,818
28	12 October 2014	2,183,576	154,977
29	19 October 2014	2,126,467	154,331
30	26 October 2014	1,968,069	147,658
31	02 November 2014	2,215,685	157,287
32	09 November 2014	2,211,873	158,772
33	16 November 2014	2,190,637	160,205
34	23 November 2014	2,185,994	159,304
35	30 November 2014	2,210,964	159,359
36	07 December 2014	2,210,624	157,525
37	14 December 2014	2,223,306	156,081
38	21 December 2014	1,038,841	76,842
39	28 December 2014	1,175,849	87,790
40	04 January 2015	2,254,400	147,233
41	11 January 2015	2,245,845	155,277
42	18 January 2015	2,208,941	156,642
43	25 January 2015	2,154,520	156,841
44	01 February 2015	2,192,970	158,333
45	08 February 2015	2,198,622	160,376
46	15 February 2015	1,980,011	151,461
47	22 February 2015	2,199,551	161,546
48	01 March 2015	2,196,041	161,144
49	08 March 2015	2,172,174	160,707
50	15 March 2015	2,141,290	158,423
51	22 March 2015	2,106,928	160,091
52	29 March 2015	2,528,302	185,415
England Total	107,188,423	7,756,932

Source: Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), Health and Social Care Information Centre

Notes:

1. Includes activity in English NHS hospital trusts and English NHS commissioned activity in the independent sector.
2. Outpatient appointments are the number of booked appointments for outpatients, whether they were attended or not.
3. Finished admission episodes (FAEs) are the first period of admitted patient care under one consultant within one healthcare provider. FAEs are counted against the year or month in which the admission episode finishes. Admissions do not represent the number of patients, as a person may have more than one admission within the period.
4. A main procedure is the first recorded procedure or intervention in each episode, usually the most resource intensive procedure or intervention performed during the episode. It is appropriate to use main procedure when looking at admission details, but a more complete count of episodes with a particular procedure is obtained by looking at the main and the secondary procedures.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Karin Smyth on 2015-10-28.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what assessment he has made of the consistency with domestic Ethiopian and international law on the right to a fair trial of the sentences imposed on Andargachew Tsege by the Ethiopian authorities in 2009 and 2011.

James Duddridge

The Government remains deeply concerned by the continued detention of Mr Andargachew Tsege. Extensive Ministerial lobbying resulted in Mr Tsege’s transfer to a normal federal prison in July. The Prime Minister wrote to the Ethiopian Prime Minister on 17 August welcoming this move, emphasising that this should allow regular consular access, and visits by Mr Tsege’s family. The release of video footage of Mr Tsege in July 2014 and January 2015 was not raised in the letter. We continue to press the Ethiopian government for regular consular access, for improvements to Mr Tsege’s welfare and to provide a legal process through which Mr Tsege can challenge his detention, including its consistency with domestic and international law. My Rt Hon Friend, the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Philip Hammond MP), Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, has raised this case on 17 separate occasions with the Ethiopians.