The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Mendelsohn on 2016-05-03.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will introduce a duty on shareholders of a significant size to address executive pay and company performance and increase those shareholders’ reporting requirements to pension trustees.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
It has not proved possible to respond to this question in the time available before Prorogation. Ministers will correspond directly with the noble Lord.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Bird on 2016-06-15.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the Office for National Statistics report on the levels of (1) persistent, and (2) overall, poverty rates in the United Kingdom, what new actions they intend to take to eradicate poverty and the causes of poverty in this Parliament.
Lord Freud
This Government’s welfare reforms are focused on supporting people to find and keep work whilst ensuring that we are protecting the most vulnerable. At the end of the Parliament we will be spending over £60bn – 3% of GDP – supporting people on low incomes.
We know that work is the best route out of poverty. Evidence shows that almost three-quarters of poor workless families who found full employment escaped poverty; and that the highest poverty exit rate of 75% was for families that moved from part to full employment. The number of children living in workless households is down by 449,000 since 2010
Our new life chances approach to poverty and disadvantage will include a set of indicators to measure progress in tackling the root causes of poverty such as worklessness, educational attainment and family stability.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Taylor of Warwick on 2016-09-12.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they plan to support all businesses in the UK to best take advantage of the opportunities presented by the EU referendum result.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe
We remain committed to making Britain the best place in Europe to start and grow a business and build an economy that works for all. The best way of supporting business is to ensure that the economic fundamentals are strong. Employment is at a record high, there are almost a million new businesses in our country since 2010, and the budget deficit has been reduced by almost two thirds.
The BEIS ministerial team have during the summer met businesses, investors, workers and local leaders in all four home nations, as well as travelling to India, China and Japan.
Furthermore, and for the first time, each local enterprise partnership area and each of the devolved Administrations will have a specific Minister in my Department assigned to them. Personal relationships matter in business, and that should start with the Business Department.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Grant Shapps on 2016-10-20.
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent estimate he has made of the date that the first phase of High Speed 2 will be completed and open to the public.
Andrew Jones
The hybrid Bill for HS2 Phase One is proceeding through Parliament and we are aiming to achieve Royal Assent by the end of 2016, with construction starting in 2017 and the first trains running by the end of 2026.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Shannon on 2015-11-23.
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what discussions he has had with the Afghan government on sexual abuse of and physical attacks on young boys and girls in Afghanistan.
Mr Tobias Ellwood
The UK continues to raise this issue both with the Government of Afghanistan and in multilateral fora. We welcome the Government of Afghanistan’s public commitment of support for human rights and eliminating violence against women and girls, most recently at the September 2015 Senior Officials Meeting in Kabul.
Through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Human Rights and Democracy Programme Fund almost £400,000 has been allocated to address the psychological needs of victims of sexual harassment and violence; support state institutions to improve their response to victims; and raise awareness of the threats.
We are also funding the United Nations Population Fund in Afghanistan (UNFPA) to provide family protection units, which will include psychological aftercare for survivors of sexual violence. This complements the Department for International Development’s work to strengthen access to justice for survivors of violence.
Afghanistan is one of six focus countries for the UK’s National Action Plan for Women, Peace and Security, for which there is a joint implementation plan across FCO, MOD, and DFID. We have also been involved and continue to support the Afghan National Action and Implementation plan.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Emily Thornberry on 2015-12-15.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of Return to Work plans produced by the Fit for Work service made recommendations to employers which were accepted in full since the launch of that service.
Justin Tomlinson
The number and proportion of Return to Work Plans produced by the Fit for Work service that made recommendations to employers which were accepted in full is not readily available and to provide the information requested would incur disproportionate cost.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Nic Dakin on 2016-01-25.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many teachers have been recruited through the Troops to Teachers scheme.
Nick Gibb
One cohort has completed their training to date with a further two cohorts currently in training. In total, 144 teachers have been recruited through the scheme.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Freyberg on 2016-02-22.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government for those trusts carrying out radical prostate cancer treatments, what were the results for the following responses to the most recent National Prostate Cancer Audit: (1) the number of operations undertaken in the audit period, (2) the proportion of those operations with a hospital length of stay of over three days, and (3) the proportion of those operations requiring emergency readmission within 90 days.
Lord Prior of Brampton
The proportion of men diagnosed with locally advanced prostate cancer between 2010 and 2013 (the Audit period) who had radical treatment, and the proportion who had a hospital length of stay over three days and who required an emergency readmission within 90 days following an operation, are presented by health region in the attached headed Table 1.
It should be noted that the results presented are based on an analysis of data from the English Cancer Registry linked to the Hospital Episode Statistics. These data were collected before the start of the National Prostate Cancer Audit (NPCA) in April 2013.
The number of radical prostatectomies undertaken in men diagnosed between 2010 and 2013, and the proportion of men who had a hospital length of stay over three days and who had an emergency readmission within 90 days following an operation, are presented in the attached headed Table 2. The results of 56 men included in the data set used to generate Figure 8 in the NPCA Annual Report 2015 could not be included in Table 2. Of these men, 37 were treated in National Health Service trusts that treated fewer than five patients during the Audit period; and for 19 patients it was not possible to identify the NHS trust where they had undergone treatment without incurring disproportionate cost.
The first results for the patient-reported outcomes of men who were diagnosed with prostate cancer between 1 April 2014 and 30 September 2014, and who underwent radical treatment (prostatectomy, external beam radiation, brachytherapy, cryotherapy, and high-intensity focused ultrasound), will be included in the NPCA’s Annual Report 2016, which is due to be published in the last quarter of 2016. These results will include incontinence rates.
Men who had radical prostate cancer treatment were invited to complete a questionnaire about their experiences of care as well as about treatment outcomes, 18 months after the date of diagnosis. It was decided that questionnaires should be sent out at this time after diagnosis because it can take more than one year for men who have radiotherapy, in combination with androgen deprivation therapy, to complete their treatment. Subsequently, it will take at least three months for men to fully recover from the transient side effects of the radiotherapy. In order to include all men and to measure the final treatment outcome – rather than outcomes still affected by the transient side effects – an 18-month period was chosen.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Robert Jenrick on 2016-03-10.
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, if he will take steps to ensure disabled access on all platforms at Bingham railway station.
Claire Perry
I would like to assure the hon. Member that we are committed to improving accessibility at railway stations. However, many stations date from a time when the needs of disabled customers were simply not considered and at present only around 460 of our 2,500 stations have step free access to every platform. We have therefore continued with the Access for All programme, launched in 2006, which by 2019 will have provided step free access at more than 200 stations and has already delivered smaller scale access improvements at over 1200 stations.
In 2013 we asked the industry to nominate stations for the latest tranche of Access for All funding. 278 were put forward and we selected 68 of these to add to the programme. To ensure the best possible value for money, these were chosen based on their annual footfall, weighted by the incidence of disability in the area. We also took into account the priorities of the industry and other factors such as the availability of third party funding. Around a third were also chosen to ensure a fair geographical spread across the country.
Bingham was not among the 278 stations nominated.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Gary Streeter on 2016-03-23.
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she is taking to ensure that public bodies under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 comply with their duty to pick up roadside litter.
Rory Stewart
The Government is committed to localism and the transfer of power to local communities. This is particularly relevant in dealing with litter, which requires a local approach, tailored to the characteristics of the area and the community in which the problems occur.
It is up to councils to decide how best to meet their statutory duty to keep their relevant land clear of litter and refuse and how to prioritise this against other local services.
Councils are responsible for keeping their “relevant land” clear of litter and refuse, including local roads. Highways England (formerly the Highways Agency) is responsible for clearing litter from motorways and some trunk roads. Standards of cleanliness for litter and refuse are set out in the Code of Practice on Litter and Refuse, which provides a practical guide to the discharge of councils’ cleansing duties under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 (EPA).
If a litter authority which is responsible for publicly-accessible land fails to keep land clear of litter and refuse, it can be taken to court. If the court agrees that the complaint is justified, it can issue a Litter Abatement Order (LAO) requiring the litter authority to clear land of litter within a certain time. The litter authority can also be ordered to pay the complainant’s costs.
It is a criminal offence not to comply with an LAO – anyone not complying can be fined up to £2,500. They can also get further fines of up to £125 a day for each day the offence continues after conviction. Court action can be avoided if litter authorities clear the land within five days of being notified of the complainant’s intention to seek a Litter Abatement Order.