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Tag: Parliamentary Question

  • Ian Blackford – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    Ian Blackford – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ian Blackford on 2016-10-19.

    To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the effect of the quantitative easing programme on defined benefit pension schemes.

    Simon Kirby

    Monetary policy is set independently by the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Bank of England. The minutes to the MPC’s August meeting, in which the Committee expanded its asset purchase programme, noted that ‘lower yields posed potential risks to some aspects of the functioning of the financial system, for example by increasing the deficits of many pension funds’ but concluded that ‘at present, however, those effects appeared to be relatively limited’.

  • Ben Bradshaw – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    Ben Bradshaw – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ben Bradshaw on 2015-11-16.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prisoners released on a Home Detention Curfew in Devon broke their curfew conditions between 2011 and 2014.

    Andrew Selous

    The number of prisoners released on Home Detention Curfew (HDC) in England and Wales has fallen in recent years. This is principally due to the reduction in the number of prisoners eligible for the scheme.

    The Ministry of Justice only collates data on the number of prisoners released on HDC who are then recalled to prison for breach of their curfew conditions and this data is only available for England and Wales as a whole. It would incur disproportionate cost to isolate from this overall data those recalled prisoners who had been released on HDC from prisons in Devon.

    This data is published and can be located at the following link (table A3.5 details HDC recalls):

    https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/424903/prison-releases-annual-2014.xlsx

    “

  • Lord Storey – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    Lord Storey – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Storey on 2015-12-08.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government what role local authorities and school governors have in agreeing annual school budgets.

    Lord Nash

    Maintained schools receive a delegated budget from their local authority. Local authorities are required to maintain a scheme for financing schools that sets out the framework for the financial relationship between them and the schools they maintain. This requires that the school’s formal annual budget plan must be approved by the governors. This approval is undertaken on the basis that the budget is being used for the purposes of the school.

    Under the scheme for financing schools, a local authority’s responsibilities are to review schools’ budget plans; to carry out high level monitoring of school budgets; to agree a deficit reduction programme with schools in deficit; to challenge excess surplus balances held by schools without good reason; to intervene in schools for which there are financial concerns.

  • Ruth Cadbury – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport

    Ruth Cadbury – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ruth Cadbury on 2016-01-19.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment he has made of the potential effect of relocation of Ofcom departments from London to other areas of the country on Ofcom’s ability to maintain its service standards.

    Mr Edward Vaizey

    The location of Ofcom departments and its offices is a matter for Ofcom, who are independent from Government.

  • Ian Austin – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    Ian Austin – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ian Austin on 2016-02-10.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what consideration his Department plans to give to local availability of courses in area reviews of further education.

    Nick Boles

    Government will produce an evaluation of the area review programme and its potential to impact on groups protected by the Equality Act 2010. The reviews do not however, mandate action, and colleges are independent corporations, so it will be for each college’s governing body to assess the potential impact on groups protected by the Act, as part of its decision to accept or reject any recommendation requiring a change to their provision.

    Each area review steering group will consider relevant data relating to current courses delivered within their area, assess the relevance of these courses to local learner and employer needs and determine how current and future demand can be best met through the recommendations of the area review.

    Individual area reviews are expected to take about four months, the timescale being dependent on the number of colleges and complexity of the local issues involved in each area. The overall review process has been divided into five waves of area reviews and is scheduled to be completed by March 2017

    We expect the costs of completing an area review to be met within existing budgets, with minimal additional costs to the colleges, local authorities or LEPs involved. The Departments and their agencies will undertake this work with no additional staffing. Additional costs will be minimal.

    The costs arising from the recommendations of each review will be explored as part of the process. We expect the colleges, alongside local authorities and LEPs with devolved skills budgets, to consider how these costs can be met locally. Where there are costs that cannot be met, but which are essential to the successful implementation of the review, we have announced a facility for transitional funding to support this. We will provide more detail in due course.

  • Steve Reed – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

    Steve Reed – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve Reed on 2016-03-08.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of his Department’s weekly collection support scheme; whether that scheme is still in use; and how many local authorities were awarded funding through that scheme.

    Mr Marcus Jones

    The Department’s Weekly Collection Support Scheme has been a success. It has protected weekly collections of residual waste for 6 million households and demonstrated how councils with weekly collections can deliver cost-effective, convenient waste services for residents while seeing their recycling rates increase. Light-touch monitoring of the scheme has ensured councils are spending money on the projects set out in their bids, and has captured good practice. The 81 local authorities awarded funding through the scheme are expected to monitor and evaluate the performance of their projects and to volunteer to make that data publicly available.

    While the scheme’s funding was allocated over the course of three years (2012-15), the scheme runs for five years and comes to an end in November 2017.

    This Government continues to encourage councils to support the wishes of local people about regularity of bin collections and champions frequent and convenient waste collections which protect the environment and public health.

  • Tim Loughton – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

    Tim Loughton – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tim Loughton on 2016-03-24.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how much Network Rail has paid to Southern Rail in compensation for late running and skipped stopping in each of the last three years.

    Claire Perry

    This information is published on Network Rail’s website – http://www.networkrail.co.uk/transparency/datasets/ – covering the years 2012-13 to 2014-15. 2015-16 is not yet available.

    “

  • Lord Foulkes of Cumnock – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    Lord Foulkes of Cumnock – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Foulkes of Cumnock on 2016-04-28.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the corrected Written Answer by Lord Faulks on 13 April (HL5044), how many of those Writs were sent to Peers in (1) each region of England, (2) Scotland, (3) Wales, and (4) Northern Ireland.

    Lord Faulks

    A total of 808 Writs were sent to Life and Hereditary Peers across the regions of England and the counties of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as follows:

    East of England 61; East Midlands 15; North East 19; North West 26; South East 108; South West 49; West Midlands 19; Yorkshire & Humber 27; Central London 164; Greater London 221; Scotland 61; Wales 18; Northern Ireland 20.

  • Virendra Sharma – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

    Virendra Sharma – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Virendra Sharma on 2016-06-07.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment his Department has made of the effect of the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016 on access to housing for post-release offenders.

    Justin Tomlinson

    The Government set out its assessment of the impacts of the welfare policies in the Welfare Reform and Work Act on 20th July 2015. It set out its assessment of the impacts of the social rents policies in the Act on 28th September 2015.

    A link to the impact assessments is included:

    http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2015-16/welfarereformandwork/documents.html

    “

  • Justin Tomlinson – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Cabinet Office

    Justin Tomlinson – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Cabinet Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Justin Tomlinson on 2016-09-02.

    To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what total reduction in government spending has been attributed to policies drawn up by the Behavioural Insights Team since 2010.

    Ben Gummer

    The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) does not track the cumulative impact of all its work over time, only some of which focus on reducing spending or increasing revenue collection.

    However, BIT has now run some 350 trials, each of which shows the impact of different policy interventions in different contexts. These show that the team has helped to save or bring forward hundreds of millions of pounds of revenue and has made efficiency improvements in many different areas of UK Government policy.

    This includes:

    -changing the messages in letters from HMRC to late tax payers was part of a group of trials that helped bring forward more than £200m of late tax debts;

    -changing the messages in letters sent by Local Authorities to late payers of Council Tax is estimated to bring forward an extra £3m in one local authority alone;

    -changing the way that Jobcentres support people back to work has been rolled out to some 25,000 Job Advisors and is expected to help hundreds of thousands of people back to work faster.

    -informing GPs who overprescribe antibiotics that most practices prescribe fewer antibiotics than theirs reduces the number of unnecessary prescriptions by around 150,000 per year; and

    -working with HMCTS to send personalised text messages to people who were delinquent in their court fines. This intervention, which significantly increased payment rates prior to a bailiff intervention, could raise £860,000 per week if rolled out nationally and prevent up to 150,000 bailiff interventions per year.

    BIT also works with governments around the world and is seeing similar effects in its work in Australia, Singapore and with cities across the USA.

    These findings, and many others, are published once a year in BIT’s Update Report. The next edition of this is due later this month [September 2016].