The below Parliamentary question was asked by Teresa Pearce on 2016-02-19.
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what estimate his Department has made of the proportion of railway station ticket offices that will be closed by (a) 2020 and (b) 2025.
Claire Perry
The Ticketing and Settlement Agreement protects the opening hours of Ticket Offices. If an operator wishes to make such changes to Ticket Office opening times, there is an industry process to follow.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord West of Spithead on 2016-03-14.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many orders for major surface warships have been made since the last General Election.
Earl Howe
None.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tim Loughton on 2016-04-12.
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, pursuant to the Answer of 21 March 2016 to Question 31461, when he plans to respond to Question 24897, tabled on 29 January 2016 by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham for answer on 3 February 2016.
Joseph Johnson
I have replied to my hon Friend.
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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Barker on 2016-05-19.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether there will be UK ministerial attendance at the UN High Level Meeting for ending AIDS in June.
Baroness Verma
The UK government will be represented at the UN General Assembly high-level meeting on ending AIDS at the UN headquarters in New York in June 2016 and the International AIDS Conference in Durban in July. Precise attendance has still to be finalised.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Myners on 2016-07-13.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have made an estimate of the cost of their monetary policy on the solvency of pension schemes, and whether they plan to use the profit made from quantitative easing to strengthen the financial position of the Pension Protection Fund.
Lord Freud
The UK’s monetary policy framework gives operational responsibility for monetary policy to the independent Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) at the Bank of England. Decisions on setting monetary policy are for the judgement of the Monetary Policy Committee.
The Government is sensitive to the fact that there will be those who gain and those who lose from any particular monetary policy decision. Such distributional effects typically balance out over the course of a policy cycle.
Over the last six years low interest rates have helped households and businesses through challenging economic times. Furthermore, as the Bank of England has explained in its article entitled "The distributional effects of asset purchases" published in its 2012 Q3 Quarterly Bulletin: "Without the Bank’s asset purchases, most people in the United Kingdom would have been worse off. Economic growth would have been lower. Unemployment would have been higher. Many more companies would have gone out of business. This would have had a significant detrimental impact on savers and pensioners along with every other group in our society."
The Pension Protection Fund is financially sustainable and there are no plans to further strengthen it. The PPF 2015/16 annual report said that the Fund has over £22 £23 billion assets under management and is 115 116.3 per cent funded.
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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Edward Argar on 2016-09-15.
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what recent assessment she has made of the humanitarian situation on the ground in Yemen.
Rory Stewart
Yemen is one of the most serious and complex humanitarian crises in the world. The United Nations (UN) estimates that 21.2 million people in Yemen require humanitarian assistance to meet their basic needs for food, water, sanitation, and healthcare, or protect their fundamental rights. Yemen is also experiencing an economic crisis, which has driven up food and other prices, and reduced people’s purchasing power.
Ultimately, only an end to the conflict will address the humanitarian crisis. The UK is working closely with other countries to de-escalate the conflict and is providing significant support to UN-led peace talks. The UK is also working with the UN and other countries to improve commercial and humanitarian access to and within Yemen.
The Secretary of State recently co-hosted an international event on Yemen to shine a spotlight on the humanitarian crisis. At the event, the UK announced a further £37 million, bringing our total humanitarian support for Yemen to £100 million for 2016/2017.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andrew Rosindell on 2015-11-18.
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what discussions he has had with his French counterpart on the ISIL attacks in Paris and the implications of those attacks for the Government’s foreign policy.
Mr David Lidington
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr Hammond) met his French counter-part Laurent Fabius in Vienna the day after the cowardly terrorist attacks and offered hiscondolences to the French people. The Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the member for Witney (Mr Cameron) met President Hollande yesterday to discuss how we can strengthen the counter-terrorism co-operation between our two countries and work together to defeat ISIL.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Emily Thornberry on 2015-12-16.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what his estimate is of the notional average weekly change in benefit which working families currently claiming housing benefit would face as a result of removing the family premium from the calculation of their housing benefit entitlement.
Justin Tomlinson
This policy only applies to new claims to Housing Benefit (HB), or those who have a first child while claiming HB. The impact for working families will not be as much as the premium itself because of the income taper, which reduces the impact on average to around £10.63 per week.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sharon Hodgson on 2016-01-20.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many local authorities her Department has identified as being non-compliant with the statutory requirements relating to the content of the Local Offer since September 2014.
Edward Timpson
Local authorities have made good progress complying with the statutory special educational needs duties in the Children and Families Act 2014 since they came into force in September 2014. We continue to monitor progress.
All local authorities have published a Local Offer of the services and support available to children and young people in their area with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Responsibility for publishing and maintaining Local Offers lies with each local authority. The Department supports local authorities to help make sure they meet all statutory requirements for their Local Offer, and that the quality of services continues to improve.
In summer 2014, the Department conducted a review of Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans and plan templates from half of local authorities. The majority of the EHC plan templates we reviewed were judged likely to meet the requirements in the SEND Code of Practice. Where changes were needed, this was often due to inaccurate labelling of the required sections. Feedback was provided to individual local authorities alongside information to all local authorities about the key areas for focus. Since September 2014, EHC plans have been continually monitored. Where individual EHC plans are considered not to be fully compliant, advice on improvement is provided to the local authority.
Figures returned by local authorities and published in the Statements of SEN and EHC plans Statistical First Release[1] in May 2015 show that, of the 1,360 new EHC plans issued between 1 September 2014 and 15 January 2015, 64.3% were within the statutory 20 week time limit when excluding exception cases.
The Department for Education is providing specific additional funding to Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to support their inspection of the effectiveness of local areas in fulfilling their new SEND duties. We are in the process of setting individual budgets as part of our internal business planning process.
Ofsted and CQC conducted pilots as part of their wider consultation on their inspection proposals. These pilots explored different approaches to securing evidence in what is a complex area, involving a range of education, social care, and health providers at the local level. Ofsted and CQC will publish their response to the consultation on these new inspection arrangements in spring 2016. In addition, they will evaluate the impact of inspections, which will begin later in 2016.
The Department draws on a wide range of evidence to determine whether the SEND provisions of the Children and Families Act have improved outcomes for children. Our intention is that a combination of local accountability measures; data and analysis; and independent inspection will show how the SEND system is performing and whether outcomes are improving for children and young people.
The SEND inspections will evaluate local areas’ effectiveness in identifying and meeting the needs of children and young people. We will draw on a wide range of statistics[2], including information on educational attainment, absence and exclusions and research into families and young people’s experience of the new system.
A summary of the available data on SEN and disability is available at
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/statements-of-sen-and-ehc-plans-england-2015
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-special-educational-needs-sen
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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Richard Burden on 2016-02-19.
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 15 February 2016 to Question 26202, how many items of correspondence his Department has received from the public on the extension of the plug-in grant for motor cycles.
Andrew Jones
The last Government announced plans for a new grant to support plug-in motorcycles on 27 March 2015. Since then, the Office for Low Emission Vehicles has answered 38 items of correspondence from 20 members of the public on this issue.