Tag: Lord Warner

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

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what consideration they have given to the finding of the report by the Fair Admissions Campaign and the British Humanist Association last year An Unholy Mess that a significant number of religiously selective schools are asking parents for information they do not need, and are not allowed to ask for, such as whether they are UK nationals or speak English as an additional language.

Lord Nash

Admission authorities for all state-funded schools, including schools with a religious designation, are required to comply with the mandatory provisions of the School Admissions Code and other admissions law.

Where an objection is made to the Schools Adjudicator, if the arrangements are found to be unfair or fail to comply with the Code, the admission authority must make changes to ensure their arrangements are compliant without undue delay. Where an admission authority fails to implement decisions of the adjudicator, the Secretary of State may direct the admission authority to do so.

We continue to keep the Code under review, and, where we consider any changes are necessary to make the admissions system work more effectively for parents, these will be subject to a full public consultation.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Warner on 2016-05-25.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what guidance has been issued by the Department for Education to local authorities about the transfer of children’s social care services to an arms-length trust; and what role the Department and its Ministers play in advising or approving local authority decisions to make such transfers, including provision of financial support.

Lord Nash

The Department for Education has not issued guidance to local authorities about the transfer of children’s social care services to a trust. The Prime Minister announced in December 2015 that, where Ofsted find persistent or systematic failure in a council’s children’s social care services, we will appoint a commissioner to review, within three months, whether services should be removed from council control. There is now a presumption that services will be placed outside of the Council’s control in these cases, unless the Commissioner identifies good reasons not to do so.

Decisions to transfer local authority children’s social care services to other organisations are subject to ministerial approval only where a local authority is in intervention following an inadequate Ofsted judgement. Other high-performing local authorities are also considering innovative delivery models, such as trusts, for their services. Financial support may be provided on a case-by-case basis.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Warner on 2015-11-18.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what information they have received from the UN or other independent sources about the number of (1) deaths of, and (2) injuries to, (a) Palestinians, and (b) Israelis, in the Occupied Palestinian Territories as a result of attacks for each of the last three years; what information they have on the number of perpetrators brought to justice for such attacks in the last 12 months; and what representations they have made to the government of Israel in the past 12 months on those issues.

Baroness Anelay of St Johns

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs website, in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPTs) in 2013 there were 38 Palestinians fatalities and 3,800 injured; in 2014 there were 2,310 Palestinian fatalities and 16,626 injured; and so far from 1 January 2015 to 16 November 2015 there have been 106 Palestinian fatalities and 10,626 injured. According to the same website, there were 77 Israeli fatalities in 2014 in the OPTs; and so far from 1 January to 16 November 2015 there have been 14 Israeli fatalities in the OPTs.

We regularly discuss these issues with the Israeli government, both our condemnation of the attacks and the need to ensure justice for victims, and for the need for the perpetrators to be arrested and brought to justice. Officials from our Embassy in Tel Aviv most recently discussed these issues with the Israeli Ministry of Justice on 3 November 2015.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Warner on 2015-12-21.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the latest assessment available to the Department of Health or NHS England of the annual loss of bed days to the NHS owing to the inability to discharge people from acute hospitals who do not need clinically to be occupying a bed in those hospitals; what is the estimated cost of such occupancy; and what assessment has been made of the cost-effectiveness of the NHS purchasing accommodation directly in nursing or residential care homes for such patients when a local authority is unable to do so.

Lord Prior of Brampton

The latest figures show that between April and October 2015, there were 1,041,587 delayed transfer of care. The Department has made no formal estimate of the costs of delayed discharge to the National Health Service or of the cost-effectiveness of the NHS purchasing accommodation directly in nursing or residential care homes for such patients when a local authority is unable to do so.

It is recognised that such delayed discharges do use resource which could be deployed elsewhere, and all parts of the NHS and those with responsibility outside it, are continually looking for ways in which to reduce the number of delays.

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

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what consideration they have given to the finding of the report by the Fair Admissions Campaign and the British Humanist Association last year An Unholy Mess that a significant number of religiously selective schools are not allowing all applicants to be admitted, even when a school is undersubscribed, and what steps they are taking to ensure that all schools comply with the School Admissions Code in this regard.

Lord Nash

Admission authorities for all state-funded schools, including schools with a religious designation, are required to comply with the mandatory provisions of the School Admissions Code and other admissions law.

Where an objection is made to the Schools Adjudicator, if the arrangements are found to be unfair or fail to comply with the Code, the admission authority must make changes to ensure their arrangements are compliant without undue delay. Where an admission authority fails to implement decisions of the adjudicator, the Secretary of State may direct the admission authority to do so.

We continue to keep the Code under review, and, where we consider any changes are necessary to make the admissions system work more effectively for parents, these will be subject to a full public consultation.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Warner on 2016-05-25.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what changes to local authority accountability for children’s social care services take place if these services are transferred to the management of an arms-length trust.

Lord Nash

Statutory responsibility for children’s social care services remains with the local authority, but its functions are delegated to and carried out by the trust on the authority’s behalf. The accountabilities are set out in a service delivery contract between the authority and the trust.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Warner on 2015-11-25.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what guidance they plan to issue on the integration of health and social care services, in the light of their commitment to do so by 2020 at paragraph 2.49 of the Spending Review and Autumn Statement 2015; whether that guidance will cover integrated budgets for those services locally and nationally; and whether new legislation will be required to ensure that integration.

Lord Prior of Brampton

It is clear from progress already made up and down the country towards the integration of health and social care that there is no single ‘correct’ way to achieve the Government’s ambition of full integration by 2020. On this basis, the Government will encourage areas to design and implement those solutions that are most appropriate for their own context, and will avoid setting out an overly prescriptive policy framework, including with respect to the integration of budgets.

However, in order to ensure that adequate progress is made in the given timeframe, and that the benefits of integration are realised both for members of the public and for health and social care organisations, it will be important to set out the Government’s minimum expectations for integration. Areas will be expected to pay regard to these minimum expectations when setting out their plans for integration by 2020, and it will be by demonstrating that they have moved beyond this baseline that they will be entitled to graduate from the existing Better Care Fund programme management, which will continue to be mandatory in 2016-17.

The existing legislative framework already provides a great degree of flexibility for local areas wishing to pursue different approaches to the integration of health and social care. The Government will work closely with local areas in the years to 2020 to understand the limits of this legislative framework and to understand how any limits can be overcome.

It is the intention that guidance will be published in 2016 reflecting the position set out above, and it is likely that this guidance will include material on the integration of budgets.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Warner on 2016-01-20.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what percentage of gross domestic product was spent on (1) the NHS and public health, (2) publicly financed adult social care, and (3) both of those, in (a) 1996–97, (b) 2000–01, (c) 2009–10, and (d) for each year thereafter up to and including 2014–15.

Lord Prior of Brampton

Spend as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) is usually reported on a United Kingdom basis.

The Department is responsible for reporting on health spend in England and is not in a position to provide equivalent spend figures for health and adult social care by the devolved administrations.

HM Treasury publish UK health spend figures as a percentage of GDP which are shown in table below.

Spend on health in UK as % of GDP

Year	UK Public Spending on health as a % of GDP
1996/97	5.0%
2000/01	5.2%
2009/10	7.8%
2010/11	7.6%
2011/12	7.4%
2012/13	7.5%
2013/14	7.5%
2014/15	7.4%

Source: Table 4.4 HMT, Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses 2015.

Numbers shown do not include total spend on adult social care

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

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what consideration they have given to the finding of the report by the Fair Admissions Campaign and the British Humanist Association last year An Unholy Mess that a significant number of religiously selective schools are not making clear in their admission arrangements the process by which children with statements of special educational needs are admitted; and what steps they are taking to ensure that all schools have clear guidance regarding that.

Lord Nash

Admission authorities for all state-funded schools, including schools with a religious designation, are required to comply with the mandatory provisions of the School Admissions Code and other admissions law.

Where an objection is made to the Schools Adjudicator, if the arrangements are found to be unfair or fail to comply with the Code, the admission authority must make changes to ensure their arrangements are compliant without undue delay. Where an admission authority fails to implement decisions of the adjudicator, the Secretary of State may direct the admission authority to do so.

We continue to keep the Code under review, and, where we consider any changes are necessary to make the admissions system work more effectively for parents, these will be subject to a full public consultation.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Warner on 2016-05-25.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what Ofsted inspections of Birmingham City Council’s children’s social care services have been made since April 2014; whether Ofsted have indicated since then any major concerns about those services; and what information is available to the Department for Education Ministers to suggest that the City Council is not adhering to the three-year improvement plan approved by the City Council and the Department’s previous Commissioner in April 2015.

Lord Nash

The most recent Ofsted inspection of Birmingham City Council’s children’s services took place in March 2014. This inspection found services to be inadequate. Since then, Birmingham City Council has made some progress against its improvement plan, which ends in 2017. However, the current Commissioner for children’s services in Birmingham, Andrew Christie, and the council itself recognise that much more needs to be done. The Council is coming to the end of its current improvement plan and is exploring models for further improvement in future.