The below Parliamentary question was asked by Paul Blomfield on 2015-10-29.
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what the annual budget for the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate was in 2011-12.
Nick Boles
The budget for the Employment Agency Standards inspectorate for 2011-12 was £776,643.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Paul Blomfield on 2015-12-14.
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, when his Department’s consultation on a new system of maintenance support for higher education students wishing to study part-time from 2018-19 will be launched.
Joseph Johnson
The consultation will be launched in the new year.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Paul Blomfield on 2016-01-25.
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what funding has been allocated for national minimum wage enforcement activity within his Department from 2015-16.
Greg Hands
The Government is committed to increasing compliance with minimum wage legislation and effective enforcement of it. Everyone who is entitled to the minimum wage should receive it.
Employers who pay workers less than the minimum wage not only have to pay arrears of wages at current minimum wage rates but also face financial penalties of up to £20,000 per underpaid worker. A further increase in penalties will come into force in April 2016 and will increase the penalty percentage from 100% to 200% of the underpayments owed to each worker, up to the existing maximum.
The extra funding was allocated in two tranches. The first of £3 million has been used by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to recruit additional staff primarily into front line compliance posts to increase the scope and coverage of interventions aimed at identifying employers who do not pay the minimum wage.
The second tranche of £1 million has been used to appoint staff into new roles specifically geared to promoting compliance with the National Minimum Wage, through education and support for employers, helping workers to understand their rights, and tackling serious non-compliance where deliberate behaviour is suspected.
Staff across HMRC contribute to enforcing National Minimum Wage, including people who work in legal advice, debt management, technical support and criminal investigation. However, HMRC does not record the specific numbers of those staff involved beyond those identified in UIN 16853.
HMRC does not breakdown the overall budget allocated into specific activities. For details of the overall budget in 2015/16, I refer the honourable member back to the answer provided at UIN 16853. Funding allocations for 2016/17 onwards have yet to be confirmed.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Paul Blomfield on 2016-02-03.
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans she has to include LGBT issues in sex and relationship education in schools.
Edward Timpson
All schools should offer high quality, age-appropriate sex and relationship education (SRE), and build a curriculum that meets the needs of all their students. We expect schools to ensure that young people feel that SRE education is relevant to them.
SRE is compulsory in all maintained secondary schools and many primary schools also teach SRE, in an age-appropriate manner. We expect academies and free schools to deliver relationship education as part of their provision of a broad and balanced curriculum. Any school teaching SRE must have regard to the Secretary of State’s SRE guidance.
We welcome the supplementary SRE guidance, SRE for the 21st Century, produced by Brook, the PSHE Association and the Sex Education Forum, which includes guidance on ensuring that SRE is inclusive. All children and young people, regardless of background or identity, are entitled to quality SRE that helps them build confidence and stay healthy.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Paul Blomfield on 2016-02-11.
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, if he will publish the cost-benefit analysis related to his Department’s decision to close its Sheffield office.
Joseph Johnson
The Department intends to close the Sheffield office at St Paul’s Place by January 2018. This intention is based on the strategic vision for the Department by 2020 that seeks to save 30-40% of its operating costs, reduce the number of locations it operates from (from currently around 80 to 7 centres and a regional footprint for the provision of local services), and halves the number of its Partner Organisations.
The location strategy is based on the need to simplify delivery and focus expertise in specific areas. This includes locating the policy function in one place, close to Ministers, in the HQ in London. This decision was based on on-going analysis and discussions, leading to the decision by the Executive Board.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Paul Blomfield on 2016-02-23.
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, pursuant to the Answer of 11 February 2016 to Question 25610, how many national minimum wage enquiries were made to (a) the Pay and Work Rights Helpline and (b) Acas between 2009-10 and 2014-15 by (i) domiciliary and (ii) residential care workers.
Nick Boles
Information on the number of enquiries to the Pay and Work Rights Helpline or Acas by workers from the ‘domiciliary care’ and ‘residential care’ sector is not available. The answer of 11 February 2016 to Question 25610 represents the most detailed breakdown of trade sector information available.
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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Paul Blomfield on 2016-03-21.
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many victims of trafficking have brought civil claims against their traffickers in each of the last five years; how many such claims have resulted in awards for damages; and what the value of such awards was in such cases.
Mike Penning
The information requested is not held centrally.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Paul Blomfield on 2016-04-08.
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, with reference to paragraph 1.129 of Budget 2016, HC 901, from which part of his Department’s budget the £100 million allocated to deliver low-cost second stage accommodation for rough sleepers will come.
Mr Marcus Jones
One person without a home is one too many and we are committed to do all we can to prevent homelessness.
We announced at Budget an additional £100 million to deliver low cost ‘move on’ accommodation to enable people leaving hostels and refuges to make a sustainable recovery from a homelessness crisis, providing at least 2,000 places for vulnerable people to enable independent living. We will reprioritise money within our existing capital budgets to deliver this accommodation. This will not affect delivery of the Government’s Starter Homes and Shared Ownership programmes.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Paul Blomfield on 2016-04-19.
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what the annual cost is of policy staff from his Department’s office at St Paul’s Place, Sheffield travelling to London.
Joseph Johnson
The Permanent Secretary has recently written to the Chairs of the Public Accounts Committee and the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee. His letter contains details of the potential maximum savings from a closure of the Department’s Sheffield office at St Paul’s Place, and can be seen at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/518244/letter-martin-donnelly-sheffield-office.pdf.
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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Paul Blomfield on 2016-05-18.
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what analysis she plans to undertake of the data gathered from border exit checks; and whether those checks will provide accurate data on emigration disaggregated by route.
James Brokenshire
Exit checks were introduced in April 2015. They will, over a period of time, provide us with a range of insights into the behaviours of migrants and how they comply with restrictions placed upon their length of stay in the UK.
Data collected from exit checks is a record of cross border movement. It may in the future help inform but will not in itself answer questions on emigration.
The Home Office has announced that it is considering the use of exit checks data for statistical reporting and intends to publish an initial evaluation of the use of exit checks for this purpose. The evaluation will be a technical assessment of the analysis carried out thus far and of the further analysis necessary to better understand short, medium, and long term opportunities.
The initial evaluation of the use of exit checks will be published on 25 August to coincide with the next quarterly immigration statistics release.
Publication of the initial evaluation on the use of exit checks will be on the GOV.UK website