The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Lexden on 2016-06-08.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to continue the Official History Programme; and if so, how.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
I refer the Noble Lord to the statement given by my Noble Friend Lord Gardiner of Kimble on 10 December 2015.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Berkeley on 2016-09-05.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether consultants working for HS2 Ltd will be prevented from participating in any tender for main contractor roles in the design and delivery of HS2 in order to avoid any conflict of interest and to ensure a fair tender process.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
HS2 Ltd has a Conflicts of Interest Panel that considers actual, potential and perceived conflicts of interest on a case-by-case basis. This Panel is chaired by HS2 Ltd’s General Counsel. This Panel is supported by an in-house Compliance team.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Walmsley on 2016-10-20.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action is being taken to increase diagnosis of patients with atrial fibrillation.
Lord Prior of Brampton
NHS England’s Sustainable Improvement Team is taking action to promote the use of GRASP-AF (Guidance on Risk Assessment and Stroke Prevention for Atrial Fibrillation) within general practitioner (GP) practices in England. GRASP-AF is an audit tool developed by and trialled in the National Health Service which greatly simplifies the process of identifying patients with Atrial Fibrillation (AF) who are not receiving the right management to help reduce their risk of stroke.
The Sustainable Improvement Team is also working with NHS RightCare, a programme committed to improving people’s health and outcomes, to help promote the use of GRASP-AF in the programme’s 65 first wave clinical commissioning groups (CCGs). NHS RightCare’s ‘Commissioning for Value’ packs help CCGs identify priority areas such as AF, and the GRASP AF tool provides a practical method of addressing any inequalities. NHS England’s intention is that the work with NHS RightCare will increase the number of CCGs using GRASP-AF in a systematic way.
Anonymised data from GRASP-AF can be uploaded to CHART Online, a secure web enabled tool that helps practices improve performance through comparative data analysis. This allows practices and CCGs to benchmark their management of AF with other practices across England and so help identify and reduce any variation in practice.
The use of GRASP-AF is voluntary and its use therefore varies across CCGs. Currently 2,248 GP practices have uploaded data from GRASP-AF to CHART online across 151 out of the 209 CCGs. Of these, 19 CCGs have all GP practices in their area uploading data.
In addition to the NHS action outlined above, all local authorities in England are required to offer the NHS Health Check programme, with the large majority commissioning general practice to provide them on their behalf. More than 15 million people aged 40-74 are, have been or will be eligible for an NHS Health Check between 2014 and 2018. The programme’s best practice guidance recommends that a pulse check is carried out as part of the process of taking a blood pressure reading and those individuals who are found to have an irregular pulse rhythm should be referred for further investigation.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Rachel Reeves on 2015-11-09.
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what estimate he has made of the number of tax credit claimants who will be eligible for the Government’s planned 30 hours of free childcare per week; and what the average reduction in childcare cost will be for each such claimant.
Damian Hinds
This Government is committed to moving from a high welfare, high tax, low wage economy to a lower welfare, lower tax, higher wage society. As the Chancellor made clear, the Government will set out at Autumn Statement how we plan to achieve the same goal of reforming tax credits, saving the money we need to save to secure our economy, while at the same time helping in the transition.
As announced at Summer Budget, the Chancellor announced that free entitlement childcare would be doubled from 15 hours to 30 for working parents. This will not be rolled out until September 2017, with early implementation in some areas in September 2016.
Information about the age, gender and number of children in receipt of tax credits can be found in HMRC’s Child and Working Tax Credits Statistics, April 2015. Available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/personal-tax-credits-provisional-statistics-2013-to-2009
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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kirsten Oswald on 2015-12-08.
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what estimate he has made of (a) the number of investors who lost money in the collapse of the Connaught Fund and (b) their combined loss.
Harriett Baldwin
This is a matter for the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which is operationally independent from Government.
This question has been passed on to the FCA. They will reply directly to the Honourable Member by letter. A copy of the letter will be placed in the Library of the House.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Robert Flello on 2016-01-13.
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to the briefing by the National Audits Office entitled Delivering major projects in government, published on 6 January 2016, what plans his Department has to increase the amount of data it publishes on major projects.
Mr Robert Goodwill
The Department for Transport (DfT) accounts for a whole life value of £92bn within the Government Major Projects Portfolio (GMPP).
The DfT follows the Cabinet Office transparency policy by publishing the Department’s data in line with requirements, including the annual publication of GMPP data, SRO appointment letters and individual project cases.
The Department continually assures project delivery in relation to costs, timings and benefits through clear governance and project and programme management (PPM) requirements, which must be satisfied throughout the life cycle of a project. This includes investment board endorsement at key project planning and delivery stages, and independent assurance within the Department. Further external assurance is provided for example by the Infrastructure and Project Authority (IPA). The department uses a widely understood and highly regarded economic tool, known as WebTAG, for calculating costs.
In addition to individual project assurance, the Department works with the IPA on both GMPP and its own portfolio reporting requirements. The Department has been actively involved in work to improve the collection, collation and analysis of key areas of project delivery, including costs and benefits, in line with the recent IPA review and refresh of GMPP data collection.
As part of the Department’s internal governance, regular portfolio reporting on the aggregated performance and health of major projects is presented to the Department’s investment board. The Department has recently assessed the maturity of its portfolio reporting and has an action plan to further develop its capability in key areas.
The Department reports infrastructure projects that are £50m or more on the National Infrastructure Pipeline (NIP) which details public and private infrastructure investment which is either forecast, being delivered, or completed. It is published on the Treasury’s website (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-infrastructure-pipeline-july-2015).
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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kirsty Blackman on 2016-02-05.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 2 February 2016 to Question 24107 on tribunals: Scotland, how many of those people whose data was breached were made aware that that breach had occurred.
Mr Shailesh Vara
Her Majesty’s Courts & Tribunals Service takes its responsibility for data incidents very seriously and treats each case on its individual merits. Notifying individuals of data breaches or incidents is considered, but is not a mandatory action in every instance.
Informing people and organisations about a breach is not an end in itself. Notification should have a clear purpose, whether this is to enable individuals who may have been affected to take steps to protect themselves or to allow the appropriate regulatory bodies to perform their functions, provide advice and deal with complaints.
The above criteria is considered when deciding whether or not to inform individuals or organisations of a data breach. In relation to the incidents referred to in this PQ it is unclear, as no statistical information has been retained, as to whether or not individuals were notified.
Guidance on data breach notification is set out by the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) in the link below:
https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/principle-7-security/
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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Cunningham on 2016-03-02.
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what estimate his Department has made of the total number of active Daesh fighters in (a) Iraq, (b) Libya and (c) Syria in each of the last 24 months; and if he will make a statement.
Mr Tobias Ellwood
The latest available US figures suggest that there are approximately 19,000 – 25,000 Daesh fighters in Iraq and Syria, compared to estimates of 20,000 – 31,000 fighters in 2014. Estimates for the number of Daesh fighters in Libya are between 3,000 – 6,000.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ruth Cadbury on 2016-03-24.
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many emergency landings there have been at Heathrow Airport in the last five years.
Mr Robert Goodwill
The Department does not collect data on how many emergency landings there have been at Heathrow Airport. However if serious enough, such incidents would be counted amongst data for safety related events. These are defined as an event which endanger or which, if not corrected or addressed, could endanger an aircraft, its occupants or any other person. They have to be reported to the Civil Aviation Authority as part of the Mandatory Occurrence Reporting Scheme (MORS).
Occurrence reporting is now covered by (EU) Regulation No 376/2014. The Regulation requires that the reporting, analysis and follow-up to such occurrences remain confidential. However, the Regulation does permit information to be released on request to interested parties that have a genuine safety related need for the information. An application can be made at www.caa.co.uk.
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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jack Dromey on 2016-05-04.
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the oral contribution of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Office of 26 April 2016, Official Report, column 1363, on the Policing and Crime Bill, what steps she is taking to ensure that cybercrime is included in the crime statistics produced by the Office for National Statistics.
Mike Penning
In April 2012, the Home Secretary transferred the responsibility for the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) and the publication of crime statistics to the independent Office for National Statistics (ONS) – to ensure the public had confidence in the statistics after years of poor data management.
A major strength of the CSEW has been its ability to compare crime types over time back to the 1980s. As ONS have acknowledged, over a period of time, new technologies such as the internet have expanded the scope of existing crime types and developed new ones, particularly in fraud and cybercrime. Therefore, following a period of extensive development work, ONS introduced new questions to the CSEW in October 2015. ONS have said that they will release estimates of fraud and cyber crime based on the first six months data (October 2015 to March 2016) alongside the main statistical bulletin in July 2016 and will label them as experimental statistics.
It is important to recognise that these data are not simply uncovering new crimes, but finding better ways of capturing existing crimes which were not measured as well in the past.