The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Cooper on 2016-04-18.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many times he has attended public meetings with the Health Committee since his appointment.
Jane Ellison
Attendance at Committee meetings is a matter of public record and is dependent on a request from the Committee. My Rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State has attended five public meetings with the Health Committee.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Patten on 2016-05-18.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the effect on bovine health in Exmoor of the National Trust’s advice to their tenant farmers not to participate in badger culls.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
Alongside strengthening cattle testing and movement controls and improving biosecurity on farm and when trading, licensed badger control in areas where bovine TB is rife, like Exmoor, is an essential part of the Government’s 25-year strategy to eradicate the disease in England.
Badger control licence applications from groups of local farmers and landowners are assessed against criteria that include the area of accessible land. Provided that enough land is accessible to achieve an effective badger population reduction across the wider area, Natural England can issue a licence. Thus, even if some local landowners do not participate, long term disease reduction benefits can still be realised across the wider area.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jess Phillips on 2016-07-12.
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what (a) legal and (b) other costs were incurred by local authorities in relation to special educational needs and disability tribunals in each of the last five years.
Mr Marcus Jones
Information on the costs incurred by local authorities in relation to special educational needs and disability tribunals is not collected by the Department.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Mark Durkan on 2016-10-07.
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, how many UK citizens are known to have been detained, interrogated and subsequently denied entry by Israel in the last 12 months.
Mr Tobias Ellwood
According to Israeli figures 129 000 British nationals have visited Israel since 1 January 2016, and 50 British nationals have been refused entry into Israel through Ben-Gurion Airport. Of these, 25 sought assistance from the British Embassy. A further 65 British nationals have been refused entry at the Allenby Bridge.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Jolly on 2015-11-17.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many Iraqi interpreters contracted by the armed forces during military operations between 2003 and 2009 have been granted asylum in the UK in each year from 2009 to 2015.
Lord Bates
Information on the previous occupations of asylum applicants is not centrally recorded and is held in an individual’s paper case file or within the notes section of the case information database (CID). Such data are not aggregated in national reporting systems, which would mean this question could be answered only through a disproportionately expensive manual case search to collate the data.
The Home Office publishes immigration statistics annually and quarterly, which are available from the Home Office research and statistics website.
This includes information on asylum applications by nationality. The latest statistics can be found in asylum volume 1, data table as_01 at the following link : https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/immigration-statistics-april-to-june-2015-data-tables
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Champion on 2015-12-15.
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many unaccompanied children seeking asylum have been referred by her Department to the Refugee Council Children’s Section for advice in the last two years.
James Brokenshire
All unaccompanied asylum seeking children are referred to the Refugee Council’s panel of advisers.
Age-assessments of unaccompanied asylum seeking children are conducted by local authorities. The guidance to local authority practitioners states that most assessments should be completed within 28 days, however the timescale for assessment should be responsive to the needs of the child or young person. The Home Office does not collect statistics on how many and what proportion are carried out within this timescale.
Statistics on the number of age disputes raised and resolved for asylum applicants for each quarter from January 2010 to September 2015 are available on GOV.UK at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/476915/asylum3-q3-2015-tabs.ods
The Home Office does not keep a record of the number of appeals against age assessments conducted by local authorities.
Home Office policy is not to return unaccompanied asylum seeking children whose claim has been refused unless there are safe and adequate reception arrangements in place. Statistics on the number of children removed from the UK in 2014 are available on Gov.UK at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/476919/removals1-q3-2015-tabs.ods
However, these statistics include all nationalities and non-asylum cases.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Dholakia on 2016-01-26.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many prisoners have been tested for (1) hepatitis B, (2) hepatitis C, and (3) HIV, in each of the last three years.
Lord Prior of Brampton
Public Health England (PHE) collects data on people in prison tested for blood-borne viruses (BBVs) via the Sentinel Surveillance Study. This system does not currently receive reports from all prisons in England where testing occurs. Currently 28 prisons report data representing approximately 30% of the standing prison population in England so this data does not represent the total amount of testing currently happening in the prison estate.
Table 1 shows data from this system on the total number of prisoners tested for BBVs in the calendar years 2012-2014. Similar information from this study for the year 2015 will not be available until mid-year 2016. NHS England also collects data on levels of testing for BBVs in prisons via the Health & Justice Indicators of Performance (HJIPs). The numbers of tests for BBVs in these data are presented in Table 2. The higher number is due to the greater coverage of prisons by this dataset. NHS England data is not used for 2012, 2013 and 2014 is not available because HJIPs were only introduced last year.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Jones of Cheltenham on 2016-02-23.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many people living in each of the Overseas Territories are in receipt of a UK state pension which is (1) frozen, or (2) uprated annually.
Baroness Altmann
The Government has a clear position, which has remained consistent for around 70 years: UK state pensions are payable worldwide and uprated abroad where we have a legal requirement to do so for example in the European Economic Area or countries where we have a reciprocal agreement that allows for uprating. There are no plans to change this.
Details of the numbers of people in receipt of the state pension, and whether they live in countries where the state pension is frozen or uprated, is included at Annex A. Countries where the UK state pension is up-rated are identified by an asterisk by the name of the country.
The Government’s view is that the UK will be stronger, safer and better off in a reformed EU. Of course there is uncertainty about how a vote to leave the EU could impact on access to pensioner benefits for UK pensioners living in other parts of Europe. These questions would need to be answered as part of the process of negotiating the UK’s exit if there is a vote to leave. We could only consider the detail of access to pensions and benefits for people in receipt of UK state pensions who are resident in Europe as part of the process for leaving the EU.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Henry Bellingham on 2016-03-10.
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what expenses were claimed by the five most senior people at the Environment Agency during the last financial year.
George Eustice
The expenses claimed by the five most senior people at the Environment Agency in the last financial year can be found at:
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The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Hanson on 2016-04-18.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what consultation he expects to undertake on the implementation plan for England for the UK strategy on rare diseases.
George Freeman
There are no plans to consult on the implementation plan for England on the UK Strategy for Rare Diseases. NHS England published a Statement of Intent to implement the UK Strategy in February 2014. Implementation of the Strategy is also included in NHS England’s Five Year Forward View.
The UK Rare Disease Forum is responsible for monitoring progress on implementation of the Strategy across the United Kingdom. It published its first progress report on 29 February 2016. This recognises that significant progress has been made against majority of the 51 recommendations in the report. Further reports will be published in 2018 and 2020.