Tag: Parliamentary Question

  • Gordon Marsden – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    Gordon Marsden – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Gordon Marsden on 2016-02-04.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, whether he consulted the devolved administrations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland before deciding to withdraw funding from the UK Commission for Employment and Skills.

    Nick Boles

    The decision by Whitehall Departments to withdraw funding from the UKCES during 2016-17 was taken as part of the spending review given the need to make savings in non-participation budgets to allow the core adult skills participation budgets to be protected in cash terms.

    The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has subsequently been working with the Devolved Administrations on the future arrangements for working together on common issues within the context of our devolved skills systems.

  • Greg Knight – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    Greg Knight – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Greg Knight on 2016-03-02.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what progress his Department has made on implementing the recommendations of the whiplash reform programme.

    Dominic Raab

    Further reforms were announced in the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement in November. Those reforms will remove the right to compensation for pain, suffering and loss of amenity from minor whiplash injuries, and reduce legal costs by raising the small claims limit for personal injury claims to £5,000. The government will consult on the detail of these reforms in due course, with a view to implementing them as soon as the necessary legislation is in place.

  • Lord Taylor of Warwick – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    Lord Taylor of Warwick – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Taylor of Warwick on 2016-04-18.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government what actions they plan to take to redress the gender balance in engineering, construction and transport apprenticeships.

    Baroness Neville-Rolfe

    Inspiration starts at school. Schools are legally required to secure the independent advice and guidance that all young people need when making career choices. Through the Careers and Enterprise Company, Enterprise Advisers work directly with schools to develop effective links with other local businesses to equip young people with the skills they need.

    We are encouraging more young women to enter science and engineering careers, including apprenticeships. The annual Tomorrow’s Engineers Week (TEWeek) encourages them, to consider a career in engineering. The Your Life campaign inspires young people to study maths and physics as a gateway to STEM careers. The STEM Ambassadors programme is a network of over 28,000 volunteers working with schools across the UK, 40% of whom are women.

    The construction sector is working with the Construction Leadership Council to highlight the opportunities the sector offers. Women into Construction, an independent not-for-profit organization, provides bespoke support to women wishing to work in the construction industry and assists contractors in recruiting motivated and trained women.

    We are launching a new communications campaign in May aimed at promoting the benefits of apprenticeships. Our promotional campaigns include role models of successful female apprentices in sectors where they are under-represented.

  • Greg Knight – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

    Greg Knight – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Greg Knight on 2016-05-25.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what plans the Government has to provide (a) refuges and (b) other support to family members in rural areas experiencing domestic abuse and other relationship problems; and if he will make a statement.

    Mr Marcus Jones

    Domestic Abuse is a devastating crime and we are determined to ensure that no one is turned away from the support they need irrespective of where they live. Government has committed £80 million of extra funding up to 2020 to tackle violence against women and girls. In the strategy to end violence against women and girls published on 8 March, we set out our ambition to improve services for women suffering from domestic abuse committing to a new Statement of Expectations to set out for the first time what we expect from local areas. To support this, we are launching a new two year fund, which will be open to local authorities across the country including those from rural areas, to bid for funding for refuges and other forms of accommodation based support and to help local areas take the steps they need to meet the National Statement.

    This builds on the £3.5 million funding in 2015/16 and is on top of the £10 million funding to strengthen the provision of safe accommodation in the last spending review period. The Government does recognise the distinct challenges faced by victims of domestic abuse in rural areas and has supported bids for funding from rural areas for example Suffolk, Shropshire and Somerset.

    Our Troubled Families Programme is about transforming the way local services support families with multiple problems. It incentivises services to come together, working with and understanding the needs of the whole family instead of constantly reacting to their individual problems. 29% of families in entry to the programme between 2012 and 2015 were experiencing domestic violence or abuse.

  • Rosie Cooper – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    Rosie Cooper – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Rosie Cooper on 2016-07-21.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recourse there is for individuals who have been prevented from earning a wage due to the time taken for the processing of Disclosure and Barring Service certificate applications.

    Sarah Newton

    The Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) has a target to issue 95% of certificates within 8 weeks, which it is close to achieving. The DBS is reliant on police forces completing their checks in a timely manner.

    DBS will liaise with the police on behalf of a customer who is experiencing delays when their enhanced level DBS application is with the police to undertake statutory checks. In these cases DBS will aim to resolve the customer’s issues as quickly as possible, and keep the customer informed until resolution. However, the DBS cannot provide financial remedy for any complaint about police actions including the timescales taken by the police to complete a check. It would be up to individual police forces to comment on any local redress policies.

    If the delay is due to maladministration on behalf of DBS, the DBS redress policy is designed to ensure that the person who is the subject of that maladministration is not disadvantaged. Further information can be found on the DBS website: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/disclosure-and-barring-service/about/complaints-procedure

  • Will Quince – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    Will Quince – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Will Quince on 2016-10-07.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment her Department has made of the trends in the level of uptake of (a) creative, (b) artistic and (c) technical subjects at GCSE since June 2015.

    Nick Gibb

    The Department for Education does not define GCSE subjects as ‘technical’ or ‘creative’.

    Provisional information on the proportion of pupils entered for at least one arts GCSE between 2009/10 and 2015/16 is published as part of the ‘Provisional GCSE and equivalent results in England’ statistical first release (SFR)[1].

    [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/gcse-and-equivalent-results-2015-to-2016-provisional (Table 1c)

    “

  • Caroline Lucas – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Energy and Climate Change

    Caroline Lucas – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Energy and Climate Change

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Caroline Lucas on 2015-11-09.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, when she expects to make a decision to proceed with an order for a European pressurised reactor at Sizewell C.

    Andrea Leadsom

    EDF have announced they intend to deploy two EPR reactors at Sizewell C but have not yet confirmed a timescale for the project. It is therefore too soon to indicate a timescale for the planning and regulatory consents which such a project would need, although the EPR has already successfully completed the Generic Design Assessment process.

  • Diana Johnson – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

    Diana Johnson – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Diana Johnson on 2015-12-08.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to promote women’s participation in Afghan democracy and civil society.

    Mr Tobias Ellwood

    Women’s participation in democracy and civil society is a top human rights priority for both the UK and the Government of Afghanistan. We contributed £20 million over the 2014/2015 election cycle. Our election support provided assistance to the Independent Election Commission’s (IEC’s) Gender Unit to improve voter education amongst women and the development of early warning systems at voting centres to reduce the barriers for women voters. In addition, funding was provided to the Asia Foundation, who oversaw training for 300 female provincial council candidates and public outreach work to help broaden support for women’s political participation. I also met with women human rights defenders during my visit to Afghanistan on 10 December.

    We are also supporting women in civil society through programming on education, women’s economic empowerment, and women’s political participation as well as access to justice and tackling gender-based violence.

  • Mark Hendrick – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

    Mark Hendrick – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Mark Hendrick on 2016-01-12.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what plans his Department has to update planning guidance on using money from Section 106 agreements to fund flood prevention projects.

    Brandon Lewis

    The Government is investing in flood protection at record levels, with an unprecedented 6-year commitment of £2.3 billion in more than 1,500 projects to better protect an additional 300,000 homes by 2021.

    National planning policy is designed to protect people and property from flooding. Local planning authorities are expected to avoid inappropriate development in areas at risk of flooding by directing development away from areas at highest risk. In addition government guidance is clear that policies for seeking section 106 planning obligations should be set out in Local Plans or neighbourhood plans to enable fair and open testing of the policies at examination.

    Mitigation measures to make development acceptable in flood risk areas can be made a requirement of any planning consent. All local planning authorities are expected to follow the strict tests set out in national planning policy and guidance. Where these tests are not met, national policy is very clear that new development should not be allowed.

    The Government’s preferred approach for enabling developer contributions to infrastructure is the Community Infrastructure Levy, which is faster and more transparent than individually negotiated section 106 agreements. The Levy can fund infrastructure requirements where they are most needed across an area. Legislation and Government guidance specifies that flood defences form part of the infrastructure that can be funded in this way. More than 100 authorities currently charge the Levy and well over 100 more have made substantive progress towards doing so.

  • Paula Sherriff – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    Paula Sherriff – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Paula Sherriff on 2016-02-04.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, when he plans to publish his response to the results of his Department’s consultation on tips, gratuities, service and cover charges; and whether he plans that that response will include proposals for reform of those payments.

    Nick Boles

    The Government received 183 responses to the investigation into tipping. We are looking closely at the evidence that was submitted and considering the available options. We will consider whether any further action is required and publish our response in due course.