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Tag: Parliamentary Question

  • Lord Jopling – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Leader of the House of Lords

    Lord Jopling – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Leader of the House of Lords

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Jopling on 2014-05-07.

    To ask the Leader of the House, in the light of the answers on 6 May to written questions tabled by Lord Mendelsohn, what steps he will take to ensure that the replies to written questions answer the question which was put as fully as possible.

    Lord Hill of Oareford

    As Leader of the House, I have a particular responsibility to encourage departments to be punctual in answering written questions, but the content of each answer is a matter for the minister concerned. The Ministerial Code says that “Ministers should be as open as possible with Parliament and the public, refusing to provide information only when disclosure would not be in the public interest”.

  • Mrs Sharon Hodgson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Deputy Prime Minister

    Mrs Sharon Hodgson – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Deputy Prime Minister

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Mrs Sharon Hodgson on 2014-05-07.

    To ask the Deputy Prime Minister, what steps the Government is taking to raise the number of people registered to vote.

    Greg Clark

    The Government is introducing online registration as of 10th June in England and Wales which will make it more convenient to register to vote.

    In addition, five national organisations and every Electoral Registration Officer in Great Britain are sharing £4.2 million funding aimed at maximising the rate of voter registration, as part of the transition to Individual Electoral Registration. These organisations have received funding to find new ways of reaching a range of under registered groups such as young people and encouraging them to register to vote.

  • Virendra Sharma – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Virendra Sharma – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Virendra Sharma on 2014-05-06.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate he has made of the number of people (a) infected and (b) diagnosed with viral hepatitis in each of the last 10 years.

    Jane Ellison

    Hepatitis A, B, C and E are viruses that affect the liver. Where tests can differentiate acute from chronic infections data is presented as newly acquired infections and where not data is presented as newly diagnosed cases.

    Cases of confirmed newly acquired hepatitis A virus infection are reported by laboratories to Public Health England.

    Table 1: Hepatitis A laboratory reports (newly acquired infections) , England (2002-2012).

    Year

    Number of hepatitis A reports

    2002

    1,278

    2003

    999

    2004

    610

    2005

    469

    2006

    374

    2007

    344

    2008

    344

    2009

    341

    2010

    359

    2011

    252

    2012

    279

    Data on acute hepatitis B infections are reported both from laboratories and from Health Protection Teams to Public Health England. Reporting in this way commenced in 2008.

    Table 2: Reports of acute hepatitis B infections (newly acquired infections), England (2008-2012)

    Year

    Number of hepatitis B reports

    2008

    620

    2009

    597

    2010

    512

    2011

    589

    2012

    554

    Laboratory reports of newly diagnosed cases of hepatitis C are reported to Public Health England.

    Table 3: Laboratory reports of hepatitis C (newly diagnosed cases) , England (2002-2012)

    Year

    Number of hepatitis C reports

    2002

    4,809

    2003

    5,570

    2004

    6,240

    2005

    6,295

    2006

    6,961

    2007

    7,808

    2008

    8,407

    2009

    8,662

    2010

    7,882

    2011

    9,917

    2012

    10,873

    Notes:

    1. At present serological tests are not able to differentiate between acute and chronic cases of hepatitis C infection. Therefore, laboratory reports of hepatitis C contain both recently acquired infections and past infections. For this reason the data represent newly diagnosed cases of hepatitis C as opposed to newly acquired infections.

    2. Hepatitis surveillance data for 2013 will be available in August 2014.

    Laboratory reports of confirmed cases of hepatitis E are reported to Public Health England. Surveillance began in 2003.

    Table 4: Laboratory reports of hepatitis E (newly acquired infections) , England (2003-2012)

    Year

    Number of hepatitis E reports

    2003

    122

    2004

    145

    2005

    294

    2006

    239

    2007

    161

    2008

    168

    2009

    166

    2010

    258

    2011

    435

    2012

    530

  • Chris Ruane – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Deputy Prime Minister

    Chris Ruane – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Deputy Prime Minister

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chris Ruane on 2014-05-06.

    To ask the Deputy Prime Minister, if he will extend the carryover of electors from household registration to individual registration from the General Election 2015 to the freeze date for the next boundary review in December 2015.

    Greg Clark

    The Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 provides for those who have not registered under (Individual Electoral Registration) to be ‘carried forward’ until December 2016, at which point they will be removed from the register if they have not made a successful application to register. The Act contains a provision that allows an Order to be made in Parliament in the summer of 2015 that will conclude ‘carry forward’ in December 2015.

  • Chris Ruane – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Deputy Prime Minister

    Chris Ruane – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Deputy Prime Minister

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chris Ruane on 2014-05-06.

    To ask the Deputy Prime Minister, with reference to the Answer of 20 July 2010, Official Report, column 298W, on electoral register, how many electoral registration officers have been convicted of an offence related to failure to take sufficient steps to register electors under section 9A of the Electoral Registration Act 2006.

    Greg Clark

    The Government is not aware of any Electoral Registration Officer being convicted of an offence related to their statutory duty to take all reasonable steps to maintain the completeness and accuracy of the register.

  • Chris Ruane – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission

    Chris Ruane – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chris Ruane on 2014-05-06.

    To ask the hon. Member for South West Devon, representing the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, with reference to the Answer of 5 July 2011, Official Report, column 1103W, on electoral register, which electoral registration officers rated themselves too highly in their self-assessment and had their ratings reduced in each year for which data is available.

    Mr Gary Streeter

    The Electoral Commission informs me that information about those Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) whose assessments it revised to ‘below the standard’ in each of 2008, 2009 and 2010 is available in the answer provided on 5 July 2011 [63427].

    Those EROs whose assessments the Commission has revised to ‘below the standard’ in 2011 and 2012 are shown in the tables below:

    2011

    2012

    Performance Standard 3

    Performance Standard 3

    Angus

    Arun

    Arun

    Braintree

    Braintree

    Broxbourne

    Broxbourne

    Castle Point

    Castle Point

    East Hampshire

    Chichester

    East Hertfordshire

    Clackmannanshire

    Eastbourne

    East Ayrshire

    Great Yarmouth

    East Devon

    Gwynedd

    East Dorset

    Lancaster

    East Hertfordshire

    Merthyr Tydfil

    East Lothian

    Mid Sussex

    Edinburgh, City of

    North Hertfordshire

    Falkirk

    North Warwickshire

    Fife

    Powys

    Gravesham

    Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead

    Great Yarmouth

    South Oxfordshire

    Hart

    Uttlesford

    Maldon

    Vale of White Horse

    Malvern Hills

    West Oxfordshire

    Medway

    Performance Standard 4

    Merthyr Tydfil

    Eden

    Midlothian

    Performance Standard 6

    Milton Keynes

    Eden

    Mole Valley

    North Ayrshire

    North Devon

    North Lanarkshire

    North Somerset

    North Warwickshire

    Perth and Kinross

    Powys

    Rhondda, Cynon, Taff

    Sedgemoor

    Shropshire

    Solihull

    South Ayrshire

    South Lanarkshire

    Stirling

    Suffolk Coastal

    Tandridge

    Taunton Deane

    Thanet

    The Vale of Glamorgan

    Torfaen

    Warwick

    West Devon

    West Lothian

    West Oxfordshire

    West Somerset

    Wycombe

    The Commission informs me that it is in the process of analysing the detailed registration data relating to the 2013 canvass, which informs its assessments of EROs’ performance. Once this work has been completed, it will publish final assessments of performance for 2013, including the details of any EROs whose assessments it has revised.

  • Philip Davies – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Attorney General

    Philip Davies – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Attorney General

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Philip Davies on 2014-05-06.

    To ask the Attorney General, how many (a) men and (b) women have been (i) investigated, (ii) given an administrative penalty, (iii) given a caution and (iv) convicted in court for benefit fraud since the prosecution of such cases was transferred to the Law Officers’ Department.

    Oliver Heald

    Allegations of benefit fraud are investigated by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Administrative penalties are financial penalties, which can be offered as an alternative to prosecution, where there has been no previous fraud penalty of any form. These are issued by the DWP and Local Authorities. Cautions are issued by the Police.

    The records held by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) identify the number of offences in which a prosecution commenced and, reached a first hearing in magistrates’ courts, rather than the number of defendants prosecuted and convicted or their gender.

    No central records of the prosecution outcomes of offences are held by the CPS. To obtain details of the number of people prosecuted for and convicted of offences of benefit fraud, which can be charged under various sections of the Social Security Administration Act 1992, Section 35 of the Tax Credits Act 2002 or the Fraud Act 2006, including their gender, would require a manual exercise of reviewing individual case files to be undertaken at a disproportionate cost.

    Furthermore, cases of benefit fraud are also prosecuted by Local Authorities so any data the CPS can glean from a manual exercise would not provide a complete record.

  • Philip Davies – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    Philip Davies – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Philip Davies on 2014-05-06.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people have been given more than one life sentence on separate sentencing occasions in the last 30 years; and for what offences each person received each such life sentence.

    Jeremy Wright

    A life sentence is mandatory for murder and discretionary life sentences are available for other very serious offences. This Government has introduced an automatic life sentence for a second very serious violent or sexual offence.

    Under a life sentence, the court determines the minimum period to be served in prison for the purposes of punishment and deterrence. Once that period has been served it is for the Parole Board to determine if and when the offender may be released from prison on life licence and subject to recall for the rest of their life.

    Table 1 shows the number of offenders who have been sentenced to life in the 12 months ending September 2013 who previously had one or more previous life sentence on a separate sentencing occasion within the last 30 years, in England and Wales. The table also shows details of their latest and previous offences for which they received a life sentence.

    Reoffending rates for life sentenced prisoners are very low. A small number of life sentence prisoners commit offences in prison which result in a second life sentence. Some life sentence prisoners can also receive a second life sentence on conviction for offences committed prior to being imprisoned (e.g. a previous murder or rape).

    The figures provided have been drawn from an extract of the Police National Computer (PNC) data held by the Department. The PNC holds details of all convictions and cautions given for recordable offences committed in England and Wales. In addition, as with any large scale recording system the PNC is subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.

    Detailed information on the length of time served by individual life sentence prisoners, and offence information is not readily available, so I will write to the Honourable Member.

  • Steve McCabe – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

    Steve McCabe – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Work and Pensions

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve McCabe on 2014-05-06.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he has taken to ensure that unemployed people who volunteer for the Help to Work Scheme do not do the same work as offenders on community service orders.

    Esther McVey

    These are two entirely different schemes and we would expect the requirements of placements for offenders to be very different. The welfare to work companies we have contracted to provide Community Work Placements are experienced at delivering different programmes across different areas of Government.

  • Baroness Greengross – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Baroness Greengross – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Greengross on 2014-05-06.

    To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many (1) non-cancer and (2) cancer-based lymphoedema and lipoedema patients were identified by the National Health Service in each of the last three years; how many such patients were treated by the National Health Service in each of the last three years; and what was the cost of those treatments.

    Earl Howe

    Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) data does not separately identify those cases of lymphoedema that are associated with cancer from those that are not, and is unable to identify cases of lipoedema as there is no coding available for this condition, based on the tenth revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD).

    Further to this, HES data is not linked to costing information and therefore this information cannot be provided.

    In the following table we have provided the number of finished admission episodes (FAEs) for patients with a primary diagnosis of lymphoedema from 2010-11 to 2012-13.

    Year

    FAE

    2010-11

    1,887

    2011-12

    2,026

    2012-13

    2,099

    Note:

    An FAE is the first period of admitted patient care under one consultant within one healthcare provider. FAEs are counted against the year or month in which the admission