Tag: Lord Storey

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Storey on 2016-05-24.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the site selection and assessment process of the Education Funding Agency, and how much weight is given to local public opinion during that process.

Lord Nash

The Education Funding Agency makes a value for money assessment of each site identified for a new free school. This takes into account factors such as the demand for places in the area and the suitability of the site, including any concerns from local residents.

Local consultations should take place during the selection of the site and the views of residents are factored in at several stages of the process.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Storey on 2016-06-08.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their policy on providing defibrillators in public places and schools.

Lord Prior of Brampton

We recognise that better provision of defibrillators and increasing the number of people trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation could help save more lives of those who have a cardiac arrest outside a hospital setting.

That is why the Chancellor announced in the budget in March 2016 that the Government is making available another £1 million to make public access defibrillators and coronary pulmonary resuscitation training more widely available in communities across England. This builds on last year’s funding of £1 million, which provided almost 700 more publicly accessible defibrillators in communities across England and increased the numbers of people trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

Details on how this second tranche of the funding can be accessed will be available in due course.

The Department for Education (DfE) is encouraging schools to purchase automated external defibrillators (AEDs) as part of their first aid equipment and in November 2014 announced new arrangements to allow schools to purchase AEDs at a competitive price. This is the result of a unique agreement between the DfE and the Department of Health in which devices are bought in bulk and the savings of around 50% are passed on to schools. Since the launch of this policy, 1,389 defibrillators have been provided to schools.

To help schools in considering whether to purchase a defibrillator, DfE has published advice on installing and maintaining AEDs on school premises. This has been developed drawing on the expertise of National Health Service ambulance services and voluntary and community sector organisations.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Storey on 2016-07-07.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what monitoring the Foreign and Commonwealth Office carries out to assess the progress in implementing the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative in relation to international commitments.

Baroness Anelay of St Johns

The UK is delivering on its international commitments through a mix of lobbying, programme delivery and the deployment of its team of experts. Project work is monitored on a quarterly basis and, in consultation with our overseas posts, adjusted where improvements are necessary. We also hold regular working level meetings with both non-governmental organisations and like-minded donors. Both serve to ensure the Government’s commitments remain relevant and deliver real impact where it is most needed. An ambitious campaign launched this year seeks to deepen this collaborative work in tackling the stigma associated with sexual violence, improve evidence gathering, enable more prosecutions and reduce the risks posed to civilians in over 13 focus countries. Updates to Parliament and other interested parties are currently via the National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security as well as the annual Human Rights report which give an overview of progress made against international commitments.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Storey on 2016-09-15.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government who the current trade envoys are, what the total cost of their provision is, and whether they will produce a report on their work.

Lord Price

The current trade envoys are:

Trade Envoy	Market(s)
Adam Afriyie MP	Ghana
Rushanara Ali MP	Bangladesh
Richard Benyon MP	Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mozambique
Sir Jeffrey Donaldson MP	Egypt
Richard Graham MP	Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, ASEAN Economic Community
John Howell MP	Nigeria
Andrew Murrison MP	Morocco, Tunisia
Mark Prisk MP	Nordic and Baltic Countries, Brazil
Lord Hollick of Notting Hill	Tanzania, Kenya
Rt Hon. Baroness Northover	Angola
Lord Popat of Harrow	Uganda, Rwanda
Lord Risby of Haverhill	Algeria
Rt Hon. Lord Astor of Hever DL	Kazakhstan, Oman
Rt Hon. Lord Lamont of Lerwick	Iran
Rt Hon. Lord King of Bridgwater	Saudi Arabia
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne	Iraq, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan
Rt Hon. Lord Janvrin	Turkey
Baroness Morris of Bolton	Jordan, Kuwait, Palestinian Territories
Lord Faulkner of Worcester	Taiwan
Lord Puttnam of Queensgate	Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia
Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury	Mexico

The 2016/17 budget for the Trade Envoy Programme is £333,936.

Trade Envoys, and Posts, report on market visits and UK engagements to identify actions and outcomes on an ongoing basis.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Storey on 2015-12-03.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what criteria they use in auditing compliance with Tier 4 licences for non-EU students.

Lord Bates

All Tier 4 licensed sponsors are assessed against criteria set out in the published Tier 4 Guidance for Sponsors. This includes the following four documents:

• Document one – Applying for a Tier 4 licence
• Document two – Sponsorship Duties
• Document three – Tier 4 Compliance
• Appendix D – record keeping

Some of the key criteria includes:

• Ensuring that each sponsor has a genuine and lawful trading presence.
• Ensuring that each sponsor holds the appropriate education oversight with the relevant external inspection body.
• Compliance visits; where checks are undertaken to establish whether an institution’s HR functions are appropriate.
• An annual basic compliance assessment (BCA); where the sponsor must meet demonstrate that their visa refusal, enrolment and course completion rates fall within the outlined requisites.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Storey on 2016-01-13.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether there are legal implications for a business that advertises on the internet to write a student’s essay or dissertation, which the student then pays for and submits as their own work for academic accreditation.

Baroness Evans of Bowes Park

The Government strongly condemns any form of cheating. All publicly funded providers of higher education courses are expected to comply with the UK Quality Code for Higher Education, published by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA). One of the requirements of the Code is to ensure that students do not obtain awards through any form of unacceptable academic practice relating to assessment, including plagiarism.

There is no centrally held set of data on the number of recorded plagiarism cases in UK Higher Education – responsibility for tackling plagiarism lies with the HE providers themselves, as autonomous organisations.

Institutions have a variety of mechanisms to address cheating by both international and EEA/UK students, including strong policies and specialist software. Between 2012 and 2015, the QAA carried out approximately 650 reviews of institutions. Of these, it only had to make recommendations to 30 individual universities and colleges on the need to improve systems and information related to plagiarism.

The QAA are discussing the legality of essay mills with the Consumer and Markets Authority.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Storey on 2016-01-21.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the planned process and timetable for consideration of a national funding formula for schools in England.

Lord Nash

We are committed to ending the unfair funding system that means children with the same needs attract different amounts of money simply because of where they live. As we announced at the Spending Review, we intend to do that by introducing a fair national funding formula in 2017. This would be a significant reform, and we will carry out a full formal consultation later this year.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Storey on 2016-02-03.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the budget of each Regional School Commissioner; who scrutinises and audits those budgets; how many staff are employed by each Commissioner; and whether those Commissioner budgets are made publicly available at the end of each financial year, and if so, how.

Lord Nash

Each Regional Schools Commissioner (RSC) has an annual budget of approximately £560k for the 2015-16 financial year. This consists of a programme budget of £40k per region and an administration budget of approximately £520k. The programme budget is to cover costs related to events and other communications activities. The administration budget is for staff costs, for example salary and travel. In addition, each RSC also has a Head Teacher Board (HTB) budget of approximately £100k annually to recompense the HTB members’ employer for loss of staff time.

There are a number of other budgets that are used to support the work of the RSCs and the delivery of the academies and free schools programmes, but these are not held by the RSCs themselves.

In line with the Department for Education’s internal review and governance arrangements, RSCs are required to provide financial reports each month, as well as an assurance statement at year end. Their budgets are included within the annual financial scrutiny and audit of the DfE accounts carried out by internal audit and externally scrutinised by the National Audit Office (NAO).

At present, each RSC office employs between 8 and 10 members of staff. The RSC and their office’s salary information are included within the Department’s salary details published on GOV.UK.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Storey on 2016-02-23.

To ask the Chairman of Committees, further to the Written Answer by the Chairman of Committees on 11 February (HL5625), whether agency staff are paid the London Living Wage for the first eight weeks of their employment; and if not, what hourly rate are they paid.

Lord Laming

In accordance with the terms of the House’s London Living Wage accreditation, all agency staff are paid at least the London Living Wage rate from day 1 of week 9 if they are working on parliamentary premises and employed for at least two hours of work in a week, for 8 consecutive weeks in a year.

The Administration does not hold information about specific hourly rates paid by agencies in weeks 1-8 as we pay a rate to the agency not the individuals; however, our recruitment framework agreement contractual terms stipulate that our contractors pay a rate that is at least the national minimum wage, and wherever possible we want agency staff to receive a salary commensurate with that which would have been paid to a permanent member of staff.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Storey on 2016-04-13.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have any plans to increase oversight of or the level of responsibility in home-schooling in the light of the 40 per cent rise in home-schooled students of secondary-school age over the last three years.

Lord Nash

I refer the Lord Storey to the answer to parliamentary question HL6799, submitted to Parliament on 14 March 2016, which states that:

“Some local authorities maintain voluntary registers of children educated at home but as they have no statutory basis, they cannot be regarded as an authoritative source of data.”

We continue to receive representations from local authorities and other stakeholders on this subject, but at present the responsibilities of parents and local authorities remain as in previous years.