The below Parliamentary question was asked by Christopher Chope on 2016-03-03.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many of the non-UK EU nationals to whom national insurance number registrations were issued in the year to end of September 2015 were (a) resident in the UK, (b) in employment, (c) self-employed and (d) jobseekers at the time of registration.
Priti Patel
The information requested is not available and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Douglas Carswell on 2016-03-24.
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what the outcomes have been of her Department’s programme of post-conflict development in Northern Uganda.
Mr Nick Hurd
The Post-Conflict Development Programme for Northern Uganda aims to improve service delivery in health, support the most vulnerable and help young people find employment, amongst other activities. This is in line with the new UK Aid Strategy which includes tackling the root causes of instability and conflict. Some of the main achievements include:
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Madeleine Moon on 2016-05-04.
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what guidance there is for briefing relatives following Boards of Inquiry which take place when there has been an in-service death; and if he will make a statement.
Penny Mordaunt
Boards of Inquiry were replaced in 2008 by Service Inquiries. The policy on Service Inquiries, which includes support to families, is laid out in Ministry of Defence Joint Service Publication (JSP) 832, Guide to Service Inquiries.
Further, JSP 751, Joint Casualty and Compassionate Policy and Procedures, provides the framework and direction on casualty management, from which the single Services develop and deliver their support for bereaved families. No distinction is made between operational and non-operational deaths.
Although JSPs 832 and 751 lay out the overarching policy and processes, the single Services may involve different organisations in supporting bereaved families according to individual need and local circumstances.
In the case of a Defence Safety Authority Service Inquiry, next of kin are offered a personal brief from the Inquiry President on the findings before they are published.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ian Murray on 2016-06-09.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what information his Department holds on the number of job outcomes in Scotland for the Work Choice programme in each of the last three financial years for which such information is available.
Priti Patel
For all Work Choice providers excluding Remploy, there have been 1,350 job outcomes in Scotland in the financial year 2013/14, 1,290 in 2014/15, and 700 in 2015/16.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Hague of Richmond on 2016-09-06.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress has been made to implement the Elephant Protection Initiative since it was launched at the London Conference on Illegal Wildlife Trade in 2014.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
The Government has conducted informal discussions with representatives of the arts and antique sector on the scale of legal trade in ivory currently taking place. An accurate assessment is challenging as records for antiques may not necessarily record an item as containing ivory where this is only a small component of a larger item. Extrapolation from available data indicates that sales of items containing ivory may be worth in the order of several tens of millions of pounds per annum.
TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring organisation, has recently published its report: “A Rapid Survey of the UK ivory market”. Although not an exact comparison with a survey conducted in 2004, TRAFFIC’s survey found the number of market stalls offering ivory for sale had declined by approximately two-thirds and the number of items offered for sale had halved. No new or raw ivory was seen in any of the physical market outlets or online platforms; only one ivory item seen for sale was reportedly from after the legal cut-off (1947) for antique ivory being sold without Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) documentation within the EU. Ivory is a key UK wildlife crime priority with an enforcement action plan in place to tackle risk. For example, UK Border Force through Operation Quiver has in particular successfully targeted ivory sent through postal systems.
We are actively exploring options with interested parties and other Government Departments about how to implement the UK Government’s manifesto commitment to press for a total ban on ivory sales. The UK has successfully lobbied for the EU-wide adoption of the existing UK ban on trade in raw ivory tusks, which was agreed through European Council Conclusions on an EU Action Plan on Wildlife Trafficking adopted in June. Trade in such tusks presents the greatest risk of poached ivory entering the legal market. In addition, these conclusions urged EU Member States to consider further measures to put a halt to commercial trade in ivory from elephants.
A substantial number of proposals on elephant and ivory related issues will be discussed at the Conference of Parties to CITES to be held in South Africa between 24 September and 5 October 2016. This will include discussions on the existing global ban on the trade in ivory, which the UK is committed to maintaining, and the role of domestic ivory markets in illegal trade. The UK is, and will continue to, play a full role in these discussions.
In relation to the confirmation by the USA Government to limit commercial trade in African elephant ivory to items more than 100 years old, with some exemptions, the then Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Environment and Rural Affairs, Rory Stewart, discussed this issue with the USA Government during a trip earlier this year. In addition officials in Defra are in regular contact with their US counterparts and have discussed the US measures on a number of occasions.
Finally on the Elephant Protection Initiative, this has grown from 5 to 14 members since the London Conference in February 2014. A Ministerial-level meeting of members to agree governance arrangements took place in Addis Ababa in September 2015. Range states have been supported to develop their National Elephant Action Plans and through these a number of priority conservation projects have been funded.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Neil Gray on 2016-10-21.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what he expects the savings to his Department to be of the proposed changes to the employment and support allowance work-related activity group; and how much funding has been allocated to the proposed work and health programme.
Penny Mordaunt
The forecasted savings from the proposed changes to the Employment and Support Allowance work-related activity group from April 2017, can be found in Table 2.2 of the Budget 2016, available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/budget-2016-documents/budget-2016
The 2015 Spending Review announced funding rising to at least £130 million a year by 2019/20 for the new Work and Health programme. The programme is one part of a wider offer of support for disabled people and our Work and Health Green Paper will be looking at how we can go even further.
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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Stoddart of Swindon on 2015-11-17.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the ratio of NHS employees to the UK population; and how this compares with major European countries and the USA.
Lord Prior of Brampton
This information is not collected by the Department. Health is a devolved matter across the four countries of the United Kingdom and the Department is only responsible for the health and care system in England.
The ratio of National Health Service staff in England to the population of England is 0.019824. This is normally expressed as a ratio per 100,000 population, which in this case is 1,982.4 full-time equivalent staff per 100,000 population.
The Department does not hold information on estimates of the number of health care staff in other countries.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Andy Slaughter on 2015-12-09.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many prison officers who have received (a) severance and (b) redundancy packages since May 2010 have subsequently been re-employed as prison officers.
Andrew Selous
Between 1 May 2010 and 30 September 2015 60 prison officers left the prison service, received severance payments and have subsequently re-joined the National Offender Management Service as prison officers.
Over the last Parliament, NOMS delivered £334m prison efficiency savings and £169m savings in prison capacity management through prison closures and the introduction of benchmarking.
Voluntary exit was used in the last Parliament as a result of the closure of uneconomic prison places. These prison closures and benchmarking reforms have delivered savings of £300 million a year, with the average cost per prison place falling in real terms by 19% since 2009/10.
This figure is rounded to the nearest 10, with numbers ending in 5 rounded to the nearest multiple of 20 to prevent systematic bias. As with all HR databases, extracts are taken at a fixed point in time, to ensure consistency of reporting. However the database itself is dynamic, and where updates to the database are made late, subsequent to the taking of the extract, these updates will not be reflected in figures produced by the extract. For this reason, HR data are unlikely to be precisely accurate, and to present unrounded figures would be to overstate the accuracy of the figures. Rounding to 10 accurately depicts the level of certainty that is held with these figures.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kevin Brennan on 2016-01-19.
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what assessment he has made of the potential effect of the privatisation of the Green Investment Bank on the level of investment it will make in the UK green economy.
Anna Soubry
The privatisation of the Green Investment Bank will allow the company to increase its investments in the UK green economy. It will be able to raise more capital free from being on the Government balance sheet. It will also be free from State Aid restrictions on the green investments it can make.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Stephen Hammond on 2016-02-11.
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to support the Metropolitan Police in tackling terrorism in London.
Mr John Hayes
We have ensured the police have the necessary powers and resources to tackle the terrorist threat, including in London, where the Metropolitan Police play a leading role in tackling terrorism across the country.
Counter-Terrorism Policing spending will be protected over the next Spending Review period. Indeed, for 2016/17 it will be increased in real terms to £670 million for England and Wales. An additional £34 million will also be provided to enable a national uplift in armed policing capability and capacity to respond more quickly and effectively to a firearms attack.