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Tag: Lord Taylor of Warwick

  • Lord Taylor of Warwick – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Lord Taylor of Warwick – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Taylor of Warwick on 2014-06-09.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the impact of air pollution on the development of an irregular heartbeat and blood clots in the lung.

    Earl Howe

    In 2010, the Department’s expert advisory Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants (COMEAP) published an estimate of the mortality effect in 2008 of long-term exposure to particulate air pollution arising from human activities. The mortality burden for the United Kingdom was estimated as an effect equivalent to nearly 29,000 deaths.

    Air pollution has been linked with effects on the cardiovascular system. However, it has not been extensively and consistently linked to an increased risk of developing an irregular heartbeat and there are few studies investigating whether it raises the risk of blood clots in thelung.

  • Lord Taylor of Warwick – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Lord Taylor of Warwick – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Taylor of Warwick on 2014-06-09.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their estimate of the availability of beds for accident and emergency patients.

    Earl Howe

    Not all patients who attend accident and emergency departments are admitted into hospital and require a bed. In 2013-14, 24% of 21.8 million accident and emergency attendances resulted in an emergency admission. Information is collected every quarter on bed availability and occupancy, including general and acute beds. In 2013-14 there were, on average, 135,964 general and acute beds open overnight, of which 88.0% were occupied. Information is collected every month on critical care bed availability and occupancy. In 2013-14 there were, on average, 4,274 adult and paediatric critical care beds, of which 82.9% were occupied. This information does not separately identify bed availability or occupancy for patients admitted via accident and emergency or any other admission method.

  • Lord Taylor of Warwick – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

    Lord Taylor of Warwick – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Taylor of Warwick on 2014-06-09.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to reduce the number of children living in poverty.

    Lord Freud

    This Government remains committed to ending child poverty by 2020. Our approach, based on our published Evidence Review , is to tackle the root causes of child poverty, both now and in the future, by focussing on worklessness, low pay and raising educational attainment. This approach and the actions we propose to take are set out in full in our draft Child Poverty Strategy 2014-17. We will shortly publish the final version of the Strategy.

  • Lord Taylor of Warwick – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Lord Taylor of Warwick – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Taylor of Warwick on 2014-06-17.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government how much has been spent in each of the last five years to adapt National Health Service hospitals for obese people.

    Earl Howe

    This information is not collected centrally. Decisions on spending are a matter for local National Health Service organisations.

  • Lord Taylor of Warwick – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Lord Taylor of Warwick – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Taylor of Warwick on 2014-06-17.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government what support autistic adults receive to protect them from abuse and neglect; and whether they have any plans to increase that support.

    Earl Howe

    The Care Act 2014 sets out the local authority’s responsibility for adult safeguarding for the first time in primary legislation. This is vital to ensure clear accountability, roles and responsibilities for helping and protecting adults with care and support needs, including autistic adults, who are experiencing, or at risk of, abuse or neglect.

    The Act requires local authorities to carry out a safeguarding enquiry where they have reasonable cause to expect a person is at risk of abuse or neglect. Authorities must consider what if any actions are needed, and who should carry these out, to stop abuse and neglect taking place. The draft guidance clarifies that where a local authority has started a safeguarding enquiry it should continue the needs assessment for care and support in parallel, and determine whether the person has eligible needs which it must meet.

    The Act places the establishment of Safeguarding Adults Boards on a statutory footing, so as to ensure local authorities, National Health Service and police (as well as any other agency deemed appropriate) work together to develop and implement adult safeguarding strategies and conduct safeguarding adult reviews in serious cases to ensure lessons are learnt and applied. This will better equip local agencies with relevant care and support functions both to prevent abuse and to respond when it occurs.

    Transforming care, the Government’s programme to address issues identified by the abuse of people at Winterbourne View hospital aims to ensure that people with learning disabilities and autism are safe and get good quality care when they are in hospital, and where appropriate following an assessment of their care and needs, they are able to live with support in the community.

  • Lord Taylor of Warwick – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    Lord Taylor of Warwick – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Taylor of Warwick on 2014-03-13.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government what they are doing to ensure that children from less privileged backgrounds are not disadvantaged at school.

    Lord Nash

    Raising the attainment of disadvantaged pupils is a top priority for this Government. That is why we have invested in the pupil premium for schools, which has risen from £625 million in 2011-12 to £2.5 billion in 2014-15, giving schools the additional resources they need to raise disadvantaged pupils’ attainment, and give them a better start in life.

    We have extended eligibility for funding over the last three years, as well as raising the per-pupil funding rate. When the pupil premium was introduced in April 2011, schools received £488 for each pupil who was registered for free school meals or looked after by the local authority for six months or more. From April 2014, the funding will be £1,300 per primary aged pupil, £935 per secondary aged pupil and £1,900 for each pupil who is looked after for one day or more; or who left care through adoption or a Special Guardianship Order on or after 30 December 2005, or via a Residence Order.

    Headteachers are held accountable for the impact of this additional funding in three different ways. Firstly, the performance tables set out the attainment and progress of disadvantaged pupils and the gap between them and their peers. Secondly, Ofsted inspects the achievement of all pupils in a school. Where disadvantaged pupils are making insufficient progress, inspectors are likely to grade a school as requiring improvement and will recommend that the school undertakes a pupil premium review. Thirdly, schools are required to publish online how much pupil premium funding they receive, how they have used this funding and an evaluation of the impact that it has had.

    Our EBacc is driving up the number of pupils leaving school with the subjects most prized by employers and universities. Already, our introduction of the EBacc has seen the number of children studying at least 5 of the essential subjects rise.

    The free schools programme is another powerful way to ensure greater opportunity for more disadvantaged children. 174 free schools are open, 45% of which were set up in the 30% most deprived areas of the country; communities often poorly served for generations.

    Some of our most disadvantaged schools are seeing the improvements brought about by successful academy sponsors. 26.3% of pupils in secondary sponsored academies are eligible for free school meals, well above the national average for secondary schools of 15.1%, yet results in sponsored academies continue to improve faster than in local authority schools.

  • Lord Taylor of Warwick – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    Lord Taylor of Warwick – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Taylor of Warwick on 2014-03-26.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to tackle unauthorised absences of pupils during term-time.

    Lord Nash

    We know from evidence that pupils who have regular attendance at school are four times more likely to achieve five or more A*-C grades at GCSE including English and maths than those pupils who are persistently absent. This is why the Department for Education reduced the threshold at which pupils are classified as being persistently absent, from 20 to 15 per cent of school missed. This measure enables schools to identify earlier those pupils with troubling attendance patterns, and to do something about them.

    In 2012, we increased the level of the school attendance penalty fines of £50 and £100 to £60 and £120 respectively; and in 2013 reduced the overall timescales for paying fines from 42 to 28 days. Our reforms are working. In 2012/13, 300,895 pupils were persistently absent, down from 433,130 in 2009/10. This is a fall of almost a third. 130,000 fewer pupils were missing 15% of school in 2012/13 compared to 2010/11.

  • Lord Taylor of Warwick – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

    Lord Taylor of Warwick – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Taylor of Warwick on 2014-03-24.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is being done to reduce the number of cyclist deaths on United Kingdom roads.

    Baroness Kramer

    I refer the Noble Lord to my answer of 24 Feb 2014, Official Report, column WA170 (HL5360). Since my answer we have launched the THINK! campaign on 24 March 2014.

  • Lord Taylor of Warwick – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    Lord Taylor of Warwick – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Taylor of Warwick on 2014-06-10.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the adequacy of sex education in schools for life in the 21st century.

    Lord Nash

    Sex and relationship education (SRE) is compulsory in maintained secondary schools, and academies are expected to provide SRE as part of a broad and balanced curriculum. When teaching SRE, all schools must have regard to the Secretary of State’s statutory guidance.

    Schools are encouraged to develop their SRE practice with the support of specialist organisations and expert professionals who are best placed to provide schools with up-to-date materials and advice on changing technologies that fit within the framework of our sex and relationship education guidance. ‘Sex and relationships education (SRE) for the 21st century’, recently published by the PSHE Association, the Sex Education Forum, and Brook addresses changes in technology and legislation since 2000.

    We believe that headteachers and their staff are best-placed to decide what resources, including help from outside organisations, are needed to support excellent teaching of SRE. We have recently extended the grant funding to the PSHE Association until 2015 and we have commissioned them to develop a set of exemplar case studies of high quality teaching on key issues in PSHE and SRE.

  • Lord Taylor of Warwick – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    Lord Taylor of Warwick – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Taylor of Warwick on 2014-06-10.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the resources and support available to teachers to help equip students for adult life.

    Lord Nash

    The national curriculum is just one element in the education of every child that provides pupils with an introduction to the essential knowledge that they need to be educated citizens. It provides an outline of core knowledge around which teachers can develop exciting and stimulating lessons to promote the development of pupils’ knowledge, understanding and skills as part of the wider school curriculum.

    Programmes of study for citizenship, which is statutory at key stages 3 and 4, include a clear focus on democracy, government and how laws are upheld and made. For the first time, they include a requirement for pupils to be taught to manage their money well and make sound financial decisions. Citizenship education helps to prepare pupils to play a full and active part in society. In addition, personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education is a non-statutory subject that equips pupils with the knowledge and skills to make safe and informed decisions and to prepare for adult life.