Tag: Lord Mendelsohn

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Mendelsohn on 2016-01-19.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government when work on the impact assessment for the Trade Union Bill was commissioned.

Baroness Neville-Rolfe

The Government has published detailed Impact Assessments for the Bill – on the Trade Union Bill, on the Reporting of Facility Time in the Public Sector, and on the Prohibition on Deduction of Union Subscriptions from Wages in the Public Sector. At a meeting with Peers in December, Ministers committed to publishing prior to the Lords Committee stage of the Bill, and they were published in good time on 21 January.

The Trade Union Bill’s impact assessment has been subject to scrutiny by the independent Regulatory Policy Committee, and its opinion has been published alongside the impact assessment.

They were reviewed and approved by the relevant Ministers in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Cabinet Office. The Permanent Secretary has been kept informed of progress on all stages of the Bill.

Policy officials and analysts in both Departments have worked together to produce the impact assessments as quickly as possible while ensuring that the analysis was thorough.

We have not asked civil servants working on the Bill in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Cabinet Office to fill out time sheets.

We do not record which particular documents each special adviser reads. Special advisers have access to departmental papers in line with the Special Advisers’ Code of Conduct and provide advice to Ministers.

I am placing copies of the relevant documentation in the Library.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Mendelsohn on 2016-05-04.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to legislate to ensure that all fees charged to pensioners by fund managers are made publicly available monthly, including transaction and research costs and all other costs that investors bear.

Lord O’Neill of Gatley

The Government is committed to the principle that people who have worked hard and saved should have access to appropriate and accessible investment options and understand the charges that they face. We appreciate the efforts that industry have made to fulfil this aim.

Since last April, the Government has ensured that trustees of defined contribution pension schemes report charges levied on members in schemes used for auto enrolment.

We are also engaging with international work on transparency, such as the legislation agreed at European Union level through the Packaged Retail and Insurance Based Investment Products (PRIIPs) and Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID). MiFID II will introduce new measures to increase transparency of research costs for clients of portfolio managers. Under these new measures, portfolio managers may only pay for research through their own funds or from a specific research payment account funded by its clients and subject to specific controls, including a research budget.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is also currently conducting a market study into asset management, which covers the issue of whether the level of fund management fees charged to consumers reflects a competitive market. We await the FCA’s assessment of competition in this sector. The FCA expect to publish an interim report in summer 2016 and a final report in early 2017.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Mendelsohn on 2016-05-23.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills has been asked by the Department for International Development to analyse why Africa’s share of global manufacturing has fallen from three percent in 1970 to less than two percent in 2014.

Baroness Verma

DFID, BIS and the FCO form a joint Trade Policy Unit which collectively works on issues of trade policy and trade facilitation and regularly scrutinises sectoral trade and growth trends across Africa.

While Africa’s share of global manufacturing has fallen since 1970, this is mostly driven by the rise in manufacturing production in China and India. Manufacturing production is increasing across Africa, but with varying experiences across countries. African manufacturing grew at 3.5% annually in real terms over the last decade. However, manufacturing still represents on a small fraction of economic activity and it is our assessment that manufacturing in Africa is lagging.

The World Bank calculates that 18 million jobs need to be created in Africa every year until 2035 to keep up with this growth. The Department for International Development is currently scaling up our efforts to boost manufacturing in Africa to help create jobs and economic opportunities. This adds to DFID’s strong portfolio on unlocking industrialisation and trade in Africa.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Mendelsohn on 2016-06-06.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what level of engagement they have had with the private sector in pursuit of the £1.6 billion of illegal assets calculated by the National Audit Office to be subject to confiscation orders but which will evade recovery.

Lord Keen of Elie

In 2014 the Home Office established the Serious and Organised Crime Financial Sector Forum, an initiative to bring together Government, law enforcement agencies, regulators and the financial sector in a public-private partnership to tackle crime. Under its auspices, the National Crime Agency has trialled sharing data on uncollected confiscation orders with the banks, and leads the Joint Money Laundering Intelligence Taskforce (JMLIT), which brings together banks and law enforcement agencies to share information to tackle money laundering.

Work is continuing with the Financial Sector Forum to explore effective ways of sharing data between private sector entities.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Mendelsohn on 2016-01-19.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what was the original date set for the publication of the impact assessment for the Trade Union Bill.

Baroness Neville-Rolfe

The Government has published detailed Impact Assessments for the Bill – on the Trade Union Bill, on the Reporting of Facility Time in the Public Sector, and on the Prohibition on Deduction of Union Subscriptions from Wages in the Public Sector. At a meeting with Peers in December, Ministers committed to publishing prior to the Lords Committee stage of the Bill, and they were published in good time on 21 January.

The Trade Union Bill’s impact assessment has been subject to scrutiny by the independent Regulatory Policy Committee, and its opinion has been published alongside the impact assessment.

They were reviewed and approved by the relevant Ministers in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Cabinet Office. The Permanent Secretary has been kept informed of progress on all stages of the Bill.

Policy officials and analysts in both Departments have worked together to produce the impact assessments as quickly as possible while ensuring that the analysis was thorough.

We have not asked civil servants working on the Bill in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Cabinet Office to fill out time sheets.

We do not record which particular documents each special adviser reads. Special advisers have access to departmental papers in line with the Special Advisers’ Code of Conduct and provide advice to Ministers.

I am placing copies of the relevant documentation in the Library.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Mendelsohn on 2016-05-04.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they track the performance of the fund management industry; and if so, whether they have identified any examples where managers have been able to reduce costs and passed those reductions on to investors.

Lord O’Neill of Gatley

The Government is committed to the principle that people who have worked hard and saved should have access to appropriate and accessible investment options and understand the charges that they face. We appreciate the efforts that industry have made to fulfil this aim.

Since last April, the Government has ensured that trustees of defined contribution pension schemes report charges levied on members in schemes used for auto enrolment.

We are also engaging with international work on transparency, such as the legislation agreed at European Union level through the Packaged Retail and Insurance Based Investment Products (PRIIPs) and Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID). MiFID II will introduce new measures to increase transparency of research costs for clients of portfolio managers. Under these new measures, portfolio managers may only pay for research through their own funds or from a specific research payment account funded by its clients and subject to specific controls, including a research budget.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is also currently conducting a market study into asset management, which covers the issue of whether the level of fund management fees charged to consumers reflects a competitive market. We await the FCA’s assessment of competition in this sector. The FCA expect to publish an interim report in summer 2016 and a final report in early 2017.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Mendelsohn on 2016-05-23.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of which sectors have (1) increased, and (2) reduced, their percentage of IT spend on cyber security between 2014 and 2015.

Baroness Neville-Rolfe

The Government’s recently published Cyber Security Breaches Survey contains figures for average investment in cyber security by sector grouping.

The full set of figures can be found in the table below and further detail can be found on pages 18-19 of the survey main report. There are no comparable figures for previous years.

Average investment in cyber security in last financial year by sector grouping:

Sector	Average Investment
Overall	£4,060
Financial/Insurance	£12,200
Information/Communications/Utilities	£10,000
Administration/Real Estate	£8,900
Retail/Wholesale/Transport	£4,110
Construction/Manufacturing	£3,090
Education/Health/Social Care	£1,280
Entertainment/Services/Membership	£1,220
Food/Hospitality	£511

The ful Cyber Secuirty Breaches Survey is attached.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Mendelsohn on 2016-01-19.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government for how many officials working on the impact assessment for the Trade Union Bill is it taking up 75 per cent or more of their working time.

Baroness Neville-Rolfe

The Government has published detailed Impact Assessments for the Bill – on the Trade Union Bill, on the Reporting of Facility Time in the Public Sector, and on the Prohibition on Deduction of Union Subscriptions from Wages in the Public Sector. At a meeting with Peers in December, Ministers committed to publishing prior to the Lords Committee stage of the Bill, and they were published in good time on 21 January.

The Trade Union Bill’s impact assessment has been subject to scrutiny by the independent Regulatory Policy Committee, and its opinion has been published alongside the impact assessment.

They were reviewed and approved by the relevant Ministers in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Cabinet Office. The Permanent Secretary has been kept informed of progress on all stages of the Bill.

Policy officials and analysts in both Departments have worked together to produce the impact assessments as quickly as possible while ensuring that the analysis was thorough.

We have not asked civil servants working on the Bill in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Cabinet Office to fill out time sheets.

We do not record which particular documents each special adviser reads. Special advisers have access to departmental papers in line with the Special Advisers’ Code of Conduct and provide advice to Ministers.

I am placing copies of the relevant documentation in the Library.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Mendelsohn on 2016-05-03.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills tracks the performance of FTSE 100 companies and is able to identify where any company has introduced a cost-cutting measure and correspondingly reduced executive pay, and if so, what percentage of those companies have done so.

Baroness Neville-Rolfe

It has not proved possible to respond to this question in the time available before Prorogation. Ministers will correspond directly with the noble Lord.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Mendelsohn on 2016-05-23.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to report on the progress of the Insurance Fraud Taskforce and its role in dealing with fraudulent claims and the operation of claims management companies; and what assessment they have made of the implementation of the recommendations of the Insurance Fraud Taskforce: final report published in January.

Lord O’Neill of Gatley

A Written Ministerial Statement was published on 26 May 2016 to announce that the Government accepts each of the recommendations addressed to it. We expect that all organisations tasked with taking forward recommendations do so with urgency. The Government will do what it can to assist and, in order to make sure that all of the recommendations are actively pursued, we will seek an update on progress later in the year.

The report highlighted the particular problem of fraud in relation to low value personal injury claims and the Government has established a programme of reforms in this area, particularly in respect of whiplash claims and regulation of claims management companies. We are pleased that the report’s recommendations reflect and support that reform programme.