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Tag: Khalid Mahmood

  • Khalid Mahmood – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

    Khalid Mahmood – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Khalid Mahmood on 2016-02-03.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will make it her policy to monitor air pollution levels outside schools.

    Rory Stewart

    The UK national monitoring network follows strict criteria for the number and location of air quality monitoring sites as set out in Annex III of the ambient air quality Directive.

    These do not preclude siting monitoring outside or nearby to schools and some existing monitors are near to schools. To ensure the network meets the Directive requirements, monitoring is undertaken at a range of locations (e.g. urban background, roadside, industrial and rural locations).

    Practical factors such as health and safety, access, locality to services, planning, land ownership and cost of monitoring sites are also key in siting new monitoring stations.

    Many Local Authorities also conduct air quality monitoring and are free to determine their chosen approach in assessing air pollution based on local circumstances and priorities. Local Authorities are able to use monitoring methods not available to the national network due to the Directive’s requirements.

    This means that they are able to design monitoring more suited to the local circumstance. However, when a new national monitoring site is required, Local Authorities will be consulted and where possible, existing sites may be shared or a new site located to meet both national and local needs. This may often mean consideration is given to siting at a local school or at a Local Authority or public building.

  • Khalid Mahmood – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    Khalid Mahmood – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Khalid Mahmood on 2016-03-23.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to encourage nurseries to teach early language skills.

    Mr Sam Gyimah

    The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) statutory framework sets the standards for the provision of learning, development and care for children from birth to five year olds that all registered early years providers such as maintained nurseries must follow. Within the EYFS, there are several areas of learning and development that shape the educational programme in the early years settings, one of which is communication and language.

    The EYFS makes clear that children should be given opportunities to experience a rich language environment to help them develop the confidence and skills they need to express themselves and to speak and listen in a range of situations. The EYFS requires practitioners to ensure all children have the opportunities to learn and develop a good standard of English language to ensure they are ready to benefit from the opportunities available to them when they begin primary school.

    We have also worked closely with 4Children to develop the What to Expect, When? guide which illustrates to parents and early years providers the tools they can use to help their children’s language development from birth to five years old, and can be found at: http://www.foundationyears.org.uk/2015/03/what-to-expect-when-a-parents-guide/

    The Department for Education has also awarded £5.3 million to voluntary and community sector organisations of which a number are supporting staff to develop strong pedagogical approaches to language development and early literacy.

    “

  • Khalid Mahmood – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    Khalid Mahmood – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Khalid Mahmood on 2016-03-23.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to encourage nurseries to teach early language skills.

    Mr Sam Gyimah

    The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) statutory framework sets the standards for the provision of learning, development and care for children from birth to five year olds that all registered early years providers such as maintained nurseries must follow. Within the EYFS, there are several areas of learning and development that shape the educational programme in the early years settings, one of which is communication and language.

    The EYFS makes clear that children should be given opportunities to experience a rich language environment to help them develop the confidence and skills they need to express themselves and to speak and listen in a range of situations. The EYFS requires practitioners to ensure all children have the opportunities to learn and develop a good standard of English language to ensure they are ready to benefit from the opportunities available to them when they begin primary school.

    We have also worked closely with 4Children to develop the What to Expect, When? guide which illustrates to parents and early years providers the tools they can use to help their children’s language development from birth to five years old, and can be found at: http://www.foundationyears.org.uk/2015/03/what-to-expect-when-a-parents-guide/

    The Department for Education has also awarded £5.3 million to voluntary and community sector organisations of which a number are supporting staff to develop strong pedagogical approaches to language development and early literacy.

    “

  • Khalid Mahmood – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    Khalid Mahmood – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Khalid Mahmood on 2016-07-19.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will provide full financial support and administrative oversight for the relatives of the victims of the Birmingham pub bombings of 1974; and if she will ensure that past and future expenses of those victims relating to investigations into those bombings are reimbursed or paid from the public purse.

    Mr Robert Goodwill

    The Prime Minister has received correspondence from the families of the victims of the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings, requesting a special scheme be set up for funding of the families’ legal representation at the newly reopened Coroner’s inquest into the bombings. The Government is carefully considering these requests, and will respond directly to these parties in due course.

  • Khalid Mahmood – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

    Khalid Mahmood – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Khalid Mahmood on 2016-10-19.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, if his Department will estimate the amount lost by businesses in Birmingham and the West Midlands conurbation as a result of congestion on the M6 motorway in each of the last five years.

    Mr John Hayes

    Information on the amount lost by businesses in Birmingham and the West Midlands conurbation as a result of congestion on the M6 motorway is not held centrally.

  • Khalid Mahmood – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    Khalid Mahmood – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Khalid Mahmood on 2016-10-18.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will publish an updated timetable on the development of the Institute for Apprenticeships.

    Robert Halfon

    The Institute for Apprenticeships will come into being in April 2017. We expect to publish further information about how the Institute will operate in due course.

  • Khalid Mahmood – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

    Khalid Mahmood – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Khalid Mahmood on 2016-10-18.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how much has been spent from the public purse on bus services per capita in (a) Birmingham, (b) the West Midlands Integrated Transport Authority, formerly Centro and (c) each region of England from 2009-10 to the most recent financial year for which information is available.

    Andrew Jones

    The attached table shows the estimated revenue spend on bus services and estimated revenue spend per capita on bus services for the English regions, West Midlands Integrated Transport Authority and Birmingham for 2009/10 to 2014/15, the years for which data are available.

    The table also shows figures used to derive the total revenue spend from:

    • Bus Service Operator Grant paid by Department for Transport (DfT) directly to bus operators
    • Local authority expenditure on concessionary fares (from Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) estimates)
    • Local authority expenditure on support to bus operators (from DCLG estimates)

    The estimates do not include spend from DCLG estimates on ‘public and other transport planning, policy and strategy’ and ‘public transport management’ that could relate to bus services. It is not possible to determine the extent of spend on bus services in these categories from the DCLG figures. Also, any local authority or DfT capital spend on bus infrastructure has been excluded.

    Local authority revenue spend is not available for Birmingham. They receive a proportion of the funding from West Midlands ITA to run bus services in their area that is not disaggregated in the DCLG local authority spend estimates.

  • Khalid Mahmood – 2022 Speech on the Yemen Peace Process

    Khalid Mahmood – 2022 Speech on the Yemen Peace Process

    The speech made by Khalid Mahmood, the Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, in Westminster Hall on 3 November 2022.

    It is always a pleasure to serve under your stewardship, Mr Davies. I thank the hon. Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) for putting the debate together. It is of huge importance, and good to hear of the fond memories that they, and certainly the right hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), have of the place where they spent part of their lives. I gained my information on this subject over almost 40-odd years. My father had a friend called Said Abdi who came from Yemen. He would tell us about the issues and what was going on there. He was a Labour councillor, and he introduced me to the Labour party, so I have a lot to thank him for.

    As has been said, significant human rights abuses have taken place in Yemen. There has been huge, indiscriminate mining of the ports by the Houthis, and they have recruited young people as soldiers. That is inhumane and barbaric. As the right hon. Member for Beckenham said, there have been issues and mistakes made in some of the military attacks by the coalition, but there have also been huge sacrifices, particularly by the UAE. It lost over 150 soldiers in an ambush on its camp; we have to recognise that. That is a huge tragedy, but the biggest tragedy is for those people in Yemen whose children are starving, and who have all sorts of diseases that we would not expect people to have in this day and age. It has been a sorry state of affairs for the whole country. What is essentially a proxy war should not affect the people of Yemen, but it is being played out by people from a different arena using Yemen as a base.

    My concern—it was raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley (John Spellar), who is not in his place—is about south Yemen. We have a group of people who can, in this difficult situation, make at least some things work. On the negotiations, I am not advocating a partitioned country; I am saying that there should be support given to people to manage their own affairs regionally. That would not only give some stability to the region, but get the peace process moving, because we could see elements of peace there. It is no secret that the interference—the supply of arms—has predominately been by Iran. The only way we will get the peace process moving is by engaging people and getting them together to understand what the conflict is about.

    The United Nations is producing a report, and has been involved for a long time, but that work needs to be reinforced with more robust reporting about what is going on, and that reporting needs to consider people’s actual position. It needs to consider all of Yemen, but particularly south Yemen. We need to make progress, and we can only do that by trying to resolve at least an element of the problem, and seeing how we can move forward. Considering the time, I will stop, but it is important for the Minister to look at how we can get the peace negotiations going and engage with the south.

  • Khalid Mahmood – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

    Khalid Mahmood – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Khalid Mahmood on 2014-07-16.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the statement of 10 July 2014 by the Secretary General of the UN on the escalating tensions between Israel and Palestine.

    Mr Tobias Ellwood

    We support the statement of 10 July 2014 from the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. There has now been further escalation with Israel’s ground operation started on 17 July. The UK will continue working towards our three policy objectives for the Gaza crisis – to secure a ceasefire, to alleviate humanitarian suffering, and to keep alive the prospects for peace negotiations, which are the only hope of breaking this cycle of violence and devastation once and for all.

  • Khalid Mahmood – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    Khalid Mahmood – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Khalid Mahmood on 2014-04-28.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will take steps to remove any contractual gagging orders or similar measures applicable to staff in the West Midlands involved in the ongoing investigation into school governance in that area led by Ian Kershaw.

    Mr Edward Timpson

    The Department for Education hopes that any individual with relevant information about the serious allegations made in relation to a number of schools in Birmingham will come forward and share this with the Education Commissioner, Peter Clarke, and Ian Kershaw, the Chief Adviser for Birmingham City Council’s investigation.

    Amendments to The Employment Relations Act 1996, introduced by the Public Interest Disclosure Act (PIDA) 1998, mean that any confidentiality clauses in settlement agreements cannot have the effect of preventing a protected disclosure and any provision will be void to the extent it seeks to do so. The Department revised the model settlement agreements for new academies in January to make this absolutely clear. The PIDA Act 1998 also introduced provisions to protect workers from detrimental treatment or victimisation from their employer if, in the public interest, they blow the whistle on wrongdoing.