Tag: Parliamentary Question

  • Lord Birt – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    Lord Birt – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Birt on 2016-01-14.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Bates on 30 November 2015 (HL3832), what assessment they have made of Eurostat’s figures for comparative police numbers in EU countries; whether they accept that police numbers in England and Wales per head of population are at 64 percent of the average of France, Germany, Italy, and Spain; and whether they consider police numbers in England and Wales to be at an appropriate level.

    Lord Bates

    Comparisons of police numbers between different EU countries should be made with extreme caution. This is because different countries have different legal systems, police responsibilities vary considerably, and there are differences in definitions used.

    Decisions on the size and composition of the police workforce are operational matters for Chief Officers working with their Police and Crime Commissioners and taking into account local priorities. What matters is how officers are deployed, not how many of them there are. All forces need to look at the way frontline services are delivered to ensure that the quality of service provided is maintained or improved.

  • Liz McInnes – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

    Liz McInnes – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Liz McInnes on 2016-02-09.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what change there has been in the levels of rough sleeping in Greater Manchester since 2010.

    Mr Marcus Jones

    Rough sleeping statistics for individual local authorities and England are published in Table 1 of the Department’s Rough Sleeping in England publications for each year. These are available at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/homelessness-statistics

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  • Charlotte Leslie – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Charlotte Leslie – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Charlotte Leslie on 2016-03-07.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of reflecting NHS Trust fines in remuneration packages of the managers responsible for the Trust at the time of the incidents in respect of which those fines arose.

    Alistair Burt

    We have taken steps to ensure that success and failure are not rewarded equally in NHS Boardrooms. We now require all executive pay above £142,500 in National Health Service trusts for new appointments to include at least 10% of basic pay dependent on meeting individual performance targets which are set locally but could include targets set by clinical commissioning groups so that failure to meet them could trigger both a fine and a loss of basic pay for the leaders of the trust. The guidance to NHS trusts from NHS Improvement recommends that this “earn-back” arrangement should also apply to other executive posts in the trust. We also request this from NHS foundation trusts.

  • Virendra Sharma – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

    Virendra Sharma – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Virendra Sharma on 2016-04-08.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what recent discussions he has held with the government of the United Arab Emirates on the number of political prisoners held in that country; and what representations he has made on behalf of such prisoners.

    Mr Tobias Ellwood

    We regularly discuss human rights with the UAE. If we have concerns regarding arrests, convictions or sentencing we make these clear to Emirati authorities, as part of our broader strategic engagement.

  • Lord Mendelsohn – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    Lord Mendelsohn – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Mendelsohn on 2016-05-09.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to support research and development to provide continually up-to-date defence against cybercrime.

    Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon

    The Home Office continues to work closely with police forces to ensure that we are best placed to tackle the threat posed by cyber crime.

    Through the National Cyber Security Programme (NCSP), we invested over £90 million during the last Parliament to bolster the law enforcement response.

    As the Chancellor announced in November, this Government has committed to spending £1.9 billion on cyber security over the next five years, including for tackling cyber crime.

    The Home Office is also supporting the work led by Chief Constable Stephen Kavanagh, the National Policing Lead for Digital Investigation and Intelligence (DII), to build capabilities to combat the full range of digital crime types. In addition we are providing funding through the Police Transformation Fund to support police led programmes to provide a step-change in digital capability.

  • Ann Clwyd – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

    Ann Clwyd – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Ann Clwyd on 2016-06-14.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what steps he is taking to ensure that the Burmese government relaunches the Prisoner of Conscience Affairs Committee or establishes a new Committee with a mandate to review the cases of people charged or deprived of their liberty for the exercise of their human rights.

    Mr Hugo Swire

    The release of some 200 political prisoners during its first few weeks in office is a strong demonstration of the new Burmese Government’s commitment to reforming human rights and the rule of law in Burma. However, we remain concerned that arrests, detentions and sentencing of political activists could continue while the military retains control of the Home Ministry, Police and Courts.

    Tackling the causes of political prisoners will require a thorough but longer-term process of legislative and judicial reform. Having an effective Political Prisoners Committee will be an important element of that process and is something we have consistently called for and will continue to do.

    The Government has long campaigned on the issue of political prisoners in Burma. We have maintained pressure through bilateral and international actions such as the two annual UN resolutions on Burma in which we have played an instrumental part. I raised this issue directly with the then Minister for the Presidency, U Aung Min, during my visit to Burma in July 2015. We will work with the new Government to help it continue to make progress.

  • Keith Vaz – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

    Keith Vaz – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for International Development

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Keith Vaz on 2016-09-09.

    To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, if she will estimate the number of (a) refugees, (b) internally displaced persons and (c) persons of concern resulting from conflict in Yemen.

    Rory Stewart

    Since March 2015, the United Nations (UN) estimates that:

    1. 179,654 people have arrived in Djibouti, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Oman from Yemen, including Yemeni refugees and asylum-seekers;
    2. 2,205,102 people are internally displaced within Yemen; and
    3. 21.2 million people are in need of some form of humanitarian assistance.
  • Peter Kyle – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

    Peter Kyle – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Communities and Local Government

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Peter Kyle on 2015-11-10.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what estimate he has made of the number of small firms likely to be affected by the expiry of the Small Business Rate Relief scheme at the end of March 2016.

    Mr Marcus Jones

    The Government is continuing to consider representations, which included business rates reliefs, to inform decisions on reform of the business rates system. The Government has confirmed the review will conclude by the end of the year.

  • Debbie Abrahams – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport

    Debbie Abrahams – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Debbie Abrahams on 2015-12-10.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, if he will commission research on the proportion of public and private service providers which offer access to their services through video relay.

    Mr Edward Vaizey

    Annual correspondence with the FTSE 100 companieshas indicated that from 2013 to present there has been a steady increase in the number of companies that provide video relay. With regards to public sector, DWP plan to launch a pilot service by the end of the year.

  • – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Wales Office

    – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Wales Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by on 2016-01-14.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the answer by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales, Alun Cairns, on 13 January (HC Deb, col 845) in which he states that the Northern Powerhouse stretches from north Wales to Newcastle”

    Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth

    The Northern Powerhouse is part of the Government’s long-term economic plan to rebalance growth across the regions of the UK and enable the north to be greater than the sum of its parts. The exact extent of the North in the context of the Northern Powerhouse is not prescribed by the Government. The Northern Powerhouse and devolution are locally-led and it is for the local areas of the North to decide on the extent of their involvement.