The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kevin Brennan on 2016-01-21.
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will remove plant and machinery from business rate calculations.
Mr David Gauke
The Government is considering the treatment of plant and machinery as part of the business rates review in England. The review will be fiscally neutral and will report at Budget 2016. Business rates are devolved in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kevin Brennan on 2016-01-20.
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what estimate her Department has made of the amount of (a) public and (b) private sector investment needed to fulfil Government targets for low-carbon infrastructure and supply chain investment in each year to 2025.
Andrea Leadsom
The National Infrastructure Pipeline provides annual estimates of investment in the Energy Sector. The 2015 publication of the National Infrastructure Pipeline [1] estimates £141bn worth of investment up to 2020/21 with a further £103bn post 2020/21. The figures do not distinguish between private and public investment.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-infrastructure-pipeline-july-2015
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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kevin Brennan on 2016-01-27.
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, if he will allocate all funds raised by privatisation of the Green Investment Bank to green technologies in the UK.
Anna Soubry
The Government has put paying down our debt while investing in infrastructure at the heart of our long term economic plan. Proceeds from a sale of UK Green investment Bank plc (GIB) will help us deliver on both those objectives. Any proposal to allocate Government funding to other types of intervention to achieve green policy objectives would need to be considered individually on its merits.
GIB’s remit has always been to invest in green projects on fully commercial terms to help demonstrate green investment can be profitable and attract additional private sector investment into green sectors from mainstream finance providers. GIB will continue to perform that role in private ownership. Details of the other Government policy mechanisms in place aimed at promoting investment in more high risk projects and early stage technologies are provided at paragraphs 31 – 36 of our November 2015 policy statement on the future of GIB which can be found on the GIB pages of the GOV.UK website.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kevin Brennan on 2016-01-28.
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether the Government’s proposals to cap public sector exit payments will explicitly exclude those workers who are retiring due to ill-health.
Greg Hands
The Government consulted on implementing a public sector exit payment cap in July 2015. The Government response to this consultation was published on 16 September 2015. This response provides detail on which organisations and types of payments the Government intends to capture within the scope of the public sector exit payment cap. This accords with the Government’s manifesto commitment to end tax payer funded six figure payoffs for public sector workers.
The response document can be found at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/464367/Public_sector_exit_payments_response.pdf
The exit payment cap will apply to payments made as a result of an employee leaving their employment. It will not affect any pension a person has earned through their years of service or have any impact on accrued pension rights or pension lump sum entitlements on retirement. It will capture contributions, made by the employer, to fund early access to an unreduced or partially reduced pension. This is because such costs are ultimately funded by the tax payer.
The Government has been clear that early retirements relating to ill health are outside the scope of the cap and will not be affected. Additionally, any payments directed by a Court or Tribunal will not be included in the scope of the cap.
Exits on compassionate grounds are not such a clearly defined concept as exits related to ill health or redundancy. There will generally be a large degree of employer discretion on the terms of such exits, and on any payments. In these cases there will be discretion available to relax the cap in individual cases, subject to relevant Ministerial or local council approval, as will be set out in further detail in forthcoming Treasury guidance and directions.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kevin Brennan on 2016-02-25.
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, whether his proposals for the extension of Sunday trading hours has passed the family test.
Anna Soubry
The Government’s Family Test is not a pass or fail measure.
The Government has conscientiously considered the impact on families and the evidence on this presented during the consultation. The Government will publish the Impact Assessment, including the Family Test, shortly.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kevin Brennan on 2016-03-17.
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what the running costs were for the 56 capital based science projects which his Department has funded for each year since 2007, referred to in the NAO Report entitled BIS’s capital investment in science projects, HC 885, published on 10 March 2016; and what the projected running costs for those projects are for each year to 2020-21.
Joseph Johnson
Running costs for 2014-15 for the 56 projects are given in Appendix 3 of the NAO Science Capital report where facilities are operational. These figures come from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and its Partner Organisations and provide an indication of annual running costs of these projects.
Project level management and allocation of funding for the majority of ongoing science projects is done at Partner Organisation level, in accordance with the delivery responsibilities of the Partner Organisations BIS funds. BIS does not hold this level of information centrally and it would not be possible to collect this information for each of the years since 2007, and estimates for future years, without disproportionate cost. However, the Government has protected the science and research budget in real terms in the 2015 spending review to ensure science spending remains on a sustainable footing and continues to deliver world-class research.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kevin Brennan on 2016-03-21.
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to the Answer of 5 February 2016 to Question 24869, whether the (a) Royal Bank of Scotland, (b) Bradford and Bingley and c) Northern Rock banks have received any public funding since they were taken into public ownership.
Harriett Baldwin
In 2008 and 2009 HM Treasury made a number of interventions to support institutions including Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Bradford & Bingley and Northern Rock.
Full details of the funds used and outstanding balances can be found at the Office of Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) website and at UK Financial Investments’ (UKFI) website:-
http://budgetresponsibility.org.uk/
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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kevin Brennan on 2016-03-23.
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what assessment he has made of differences in mortality rates for (a) permanent and (b) temporary workers.
Nick Boles
My Department has not made an assessment of the differences in mortality rates for permanent and temporary workers.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kevin Brennan on 2016-04-15.
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what meetings he has initiated on steel in the last two years.
Anna Soubry
It is an established convention that Ministers of one Administration cannot see the documents of a previous Administration. I am therefore unable to provide the information requested by the hon Member for the entire period given in his Question.
I first met with Gareth Stace on 01 June 2015 and discussions with steel industry stakeholders continued thereafter to identify the policy priorities for dealing with the considerable challenges facing the sector. We convened a Steel Summit on 16 October 2015 which brought together all the major stakeholders, including key Government and industry participants as well as constituency MPs, recognising the significant part steel companies play in local communities. This led to the formation of three Ministerial Working Groups which took the lead on our efforts to deliver on the five key ‘Asks’ put to us by our partners in the steel industry.
To ensure a sustainable future we set up the Steel Council, co-chaired by my Rt Hon Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, to build on the achievements of the three previous Ministerial working groups, by looking at the longer term future of the sector and how we can strengthen the capability and competiveness of the UK steel industry both at home and globally. The Council met for the first time on 2 March.
Since this Government took office, BIS Ministers have undertaken a number of visits to steel-producing sites across the UK, including: SSI Redcar; Tata Steel facilities at Port Talbot, Scunthorpe and Rotherham; Celsa in Cardiff and the former-Tata Steel site at Motherwell recently re-opened by Liberty Steel.
To date we have made significant progress in addressing the challenges faced by the industry, including:
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kevin Brennan on 2016-04-21.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the role of the PrescQIPP Programme is within his Department.
Alistair Burt
The PrescQIPP NHS Programme currently has no direct role within the Department as it is an independent social enterprise.
Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) use its materials to improve the prescribing of medicines. These are mainly publicly available for CCGs and Health Boards, with some additional subscription-only content. Their governance and annual work programme is overseen by a strategic oversight group representing the users.