Tag: Richard Burden

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Richard Burden on 2016-07-13.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, if he will list the UK representatives appointed to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

Alok Sharma

The list of the members of the UK delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) is available on the country pages of the IHRA website. The current UK delegation is:

Sir Eric Pickles (UK Envoy for Post Holocaust Issues) – Head of Delegation
Sue Breeze (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) – Deputy Head of Delegation
Karen Hamling (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) – Deputy Head of Delegation
Samantha Abrahams (Holocaust Educational Trust) – Communication Working Group
Paula Cowan (University of the West of Scotland – Faculty of Education, Health and Social Sciences, School of Education) – Academic Working Group
Alan Fell (JW3 – Jewish Community Centre London) – Education Working Group
Trudy Gold (JW3 – Jewish Community Centre London)
Jerold Gotel (JW3 – Jewish Community Centre London) – Education Working Group
Ben Helfgott (’45 Aid Society of Holocaust Survivors) – Museums and Memorials Working Group
Olivia Marks-Woldman (Holocaust Memorial Day Trust) – Museums and Memorials Working Group
Alex Maws (Holocaust Educational Trust) – Education Working Group
Michael Newman (Association of Jewish Refugees) – Communication Working Group
Alice Pettigrew (Institute of Education, University of London) – Education Working Group
Karen Pollock (Holocaust Educational Trust) – Education Working Group
Paul Salmons (Institute of Education, University of London) – Education Working Group

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Richard Burden on 2016-09-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent steps his Department has taken to (a) improve access to and (b) decrease waiting times for services provided by GPs.

David Mowat

To implement the Government’s commitment to transform access to general practice (GP), £175 million has been invested in the GP Access Fund to test improved and innovative access to GP services. Across the two waves of the Access Fund, there are 57 schemes covering over 2,500 practices and 18 million patients – a third of the population – have benefited from improved access and transformational change at local level.

This includes more appointments being made available, especially at times more convenient for patients, such as weekday evenings and weekends. It also includes different approaches like telephone consultations and better use of the wider primary care workforce (such as Advanced Nurse Practitioners, pharmacists, the voluntary sector, physiotherapists and paramedics) to deliver improved access to patients.

These approaches have helped release local GP capacity, improve patient choice, and more appropriately matched the needs of patients with the most appropriate professional to care for them. In addition to Access Fund sites, clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) may offer local initiatives for improving access to GPs.

Practices in the GP Access Fund are testing an automated appointment measuring interface (the GP Appointment Tool) to give them detailed information about their activity and how it varies over time. This will help practices match their supply of appointments more closely to demand. It will be available for every practice from 2017-18.

The General Practice Forward View, published in April 2016, announced that an extra £2.4 billion a year will be invested in GP services by 2020-21. As part of overall investment in general practice, NHS England will provide over £500 million of recurrent funding by 2020-21, on top of current primary medical care allocations, to enable CCGs to commission and fund extra capacity across England. This is to ensure that by 2020, everyone has access to GP services, including sufficient routine appointments at evenings and weekends to meet locally determined demand, alongside effective access to out-of-hours and urgent care services.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Richard Burden on 2016-10-10.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the (a) status and (b) latest estimated or final cost is of each of the 19 road schemes announced in December 2014 for the Midlands.

Mr John Hayes

The current status of the 19 schemes announced in December 2014 for the Midlands is given in Highways England’s Delivery Plan for 2016-2017, which is available at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/highways-england-delivery-plan-2016-to-2017

Overall schemes which are under construction are coming in or under budget. For schemes under development we would expect some movement in timescales or costs but overall Highways England is on course to deliver its commitments within the allocated funding.

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Richard Burden on 2015-11-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the Office of Road and Rail (ORR) monitoring framework; and what guidance he has provided to the ORR as it develops its enforcement plan.

Claire Perry

In terms of rail, Ministers and Department for Transport officials regularly discuss the regulation of Network Rail and the railways with the Office of Rail and Road (ORR).

In 2015 ORR has carried out consultations on both its railways and Highways Monitoring enforcement policies. DfT responded to both consultations. I understand ORR will publish revised policies in due course.

In relation to monitoring Highways England, the Infrastructure Act 2015 conferred the monitoring function on ORR and Highways England was appointed as a Strategic Highways Company on 1 April 2015.

The ORR Highways Monitor has been provided with statutory guidance to develop its enforcement plan. This statutory guidance was jointly issued with HM Treasury on 20 March 2015 and can be found on the gov.uk website.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Richard Burden on 2015-11-04.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what discussions he has had with Volkswagen on irregularities in the levels of carbon dioxide emissions from cars manufactured by that firm; and if he will make a statement.

Andrew Jones

The Government takes the unacceptable actions of Volkswagen (VW) Group extremely seriously. As we investigate what went wrong and what we can do to stop it happening again, the priority of course remains to protect the public. We expect VW to take every step necessary to protect its UK customers, but it is right that the Government carry out their own thorough and independent investigation.

A written statement was made today (10 November) informing the House of the latest developments on the Department for Transport’s vehicle emissions testing programme, following the revelations that VW had fitted defeat devices to some of its vehicles.

The Vehicle Certification Agency (VCA) is working to confirm that this issue is not industry wide. They have tested two VW group vehicles known to contain a defeat device and will rerun laboratory tests on popular cars sold in the UK to compare real world driving emissions against laboratory performance. This will include measuring CO₂ .

The Secretary of State spoke to Dr Herbert Deiss of VW on 4 November to discuss CO₂ emissions, seeking information on those vehicles affected in the UK and the extent of the discrepancy. VW have stated that they are working hard to clarify the situation and are liaising with relevant approval authorities.

The Secretary of State has written jointly with the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills to VW seeking clarification on several issues. Separately, officials from the Department for Transport, and its Agencies have held a number of discussions with VW regarding the recall of affected vehicles.

The Department for Transport has not made a specific assessment of on road emissions in relation to type approval requirements, but officials are aware of the findings in published reports suggesting significant differences.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Richard Burden on 2015-11-13.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent discussions the Government has had with (a) the Egyptian authorities, (b) airlines and (c) other national and international bodies on changes to the allocation of slots for flights arriving and leaving Sharm el-Sheikh airport.

Mr Robert Goodwill

Both the Department for Transport (DfT) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) have been in regular liaison, and worked in partnership, with the Egyptian authorities to agree the allocation of slots for UK aircraft at Sharm-el-Sheikh since the temporary resumption of UK-bound flights on 6 November. As is the usual practice, UK airlines have agreed the slot timetables directly with the Egyptian authorities for the flights being arranged. Both the FCO and DfT spoke with other national bodies at Sharm-el–Sheikh on the overall initial allocation.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Richard Burden on 2015-11-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, pursuant to the Answer of 16 November 2015 to Question 15540, what assistance his Department gave to (a) Kent County Council, (b) other operational organisations and (c) businesses to cover costs and losses during the implementation of Operation Stack in 2015.

Anna Soubry

My department provided no direct financial assistance to those organisations or to businesses to cover costs and losses during the implementation of Operation Stack in 2015.

The Business Support Helpline was available to businesses seeking advice on managing disruption throughout.

In the Autumn Statement, the Chancellor of the Exchequer committed £250 million into finding a long term solution to Operation Stack.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Richard Burden on 2015-12-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what Government spending was on the Plug-in car grant in each of the last five years; and what estimate his Department has made of Government spending on that grant in each of the last five years.

Andrew Jones

The plug-in car grant awards consumers a discount on the cost of a new ultra low emission vehicle. It has proved successful in growing the UK’s early market for ultra low emission vehicles, which is now the largest in the EU and the fourth largest in the world. The Government intends that nearly all cars and vans will be zero emission by 2050.

Government spending on the plug-in car grant in each of the last financial years was as follows:

2010/11 £1m

2011/12 £4.5m

2012/13 £11m

2013/14 £20.5m

2014/15 £90.5m

The plug-in car grant is guaranteed to continue at £5,000 per vehicle until February 2016. The Chancellor announced at Spending Review 2015 that more than £600m will be spent on support for ultra low emission vehicles in the five years from 2015 to 2020. This funding means the grants can remain for several years after February, as long as there is a demonstrable market need. Future grant levels will be announced shortly.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Richard Burden on 2015-12-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, how many households in (a) Birmingham, Northfield constituency, (b) the West Midlands and (c) the UK have prepayment meters; and what the change in the number of such meters has been in each of those areas over the last five years.

Andrea Leadsom

Data on methods of payment for domestic energy consumers are published in Quarterly Energy Prices, tables 2.4.2 and 2.5.2.

This is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/quarterly-domestic-energy-price-stastics .

The tables below show the proportion of customers within the region using pre-payment meters for each year since 2010. Data is only available at the Public Electricity Supply (PES) region level.

	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014
Electricity
West Midlands	15.3%	15.8%	16.3%	16.6%	17.0%
UK	15.0%	15.4%	15.8%	16.3%	16.7%
Gas
West Midlands	13.4%	14.0%	14.8%	15.3%	15.7%
GB	12.6%	13.2%	14.0%	14.5%	15.1%

Data above are produced from a sample survey (DECC’s domestic fuel inquiry).

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Richard Burden on 2016-01-13.

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what assessment she has made of the potential effect of the removal of eligibility for Renewables Obligations Certificates for onshore wind on businesses which are considering developing wind farms.

Andrea Leadsom

The Government was elected with a commitment to end subsidies for new onshore wind projects. Onshore wind has made a valuable contribution to the UK energy mix in recent years but has now reached the point where there is enough capacity in the pipeline for the UK to meet its 2020 renewable commitments. Having proposed early closure of the RO to onshore wind, we conducted an engagement exercise to understand better the views of stakeholders on the proposal. To protect investor confidence a grace period was proposed in June 2015, and we subsequently amended this in response to stakeholder feedback over the summer, for example to take account of a possible investment hiatus whilst the measures pass through Parliament. We consider this will strike the right balance between consumer and industry interests.

An impact Assessment was published whilst the Bill was in the House of Lords that set out the potential impacts of our proposals. This can be viewed online at:

http://www.parliament.uk/documents/impact-assessments/IA15-007F.pdf

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