Tag: Sarah Wollaston

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-04-12.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether he expects to be consulted in cases where a Bulk Personal Dataset is required from his Department by an Agency under the provisions of Part 7 of the Investigatory Powers Bill.

George Freeman

The Investigatory Powers Bill does not include any powers to require the provision of a bulk personal dataset (BPD) to a security and intelligence agency. It does require that there should be robust and transparent safeguards relating to such an agency’s use of BPDs. This includes a new requirement for warrants to authorise the retention and examination of BPDs.

The Bill provides for both class BPD warrants, covering datasets of a particular class, and specific BPD warrants, covering an individual dataset. The draft statutory Code of Practice provides further guidance on the factors that the security and intelligence agencies should consider in determining which type of warrant to apply for. These include whether the nature or provenance of the dataset raises particularly novel or contentious issues; whether it contains a significant component of intrusive data; and whether it contains a significant component of confidential information relating to members of sensitive professions. All warrants will be subject to the ‘double-lock’ safeguard meaning that they will be subject to approval by both a Secretary of State and a Judicial Commissioner.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-09-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many vacant posts at each grade there are at the National Maritime Operations Centre in Fareham.

Mr John Hayes

The current vacancies at the National Maritime Operations Centre in Fareham are as follows:

• Maritime Operations Controller – 1
• Maritime Operations Specialist – 3
• Maritime Operations Officer/Senior Maritime Operations Officer – 9.5

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-09-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what maximum length of time is considered safe from when an emergency call is received in a coastguard control room to when the coastguard vehicle is ready to leave its station.

Mr John Hayes

Each incident involving a Coastguard Rescue Team is different in its context given geography, terrain, weather conditions, prevailing traffic conditions and the availability of individual volunteer Coastguard Rescue Officers. For this reason the Maritime and Coastguard Agency does not collate or maintain data in the format you have requested either locally or nationally. However, it can provide specific response times for specific incidents.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2015-12-01.

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the planning protection for Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty; and if he will make a statement.

James Wharton

The National Planning Policy Framework provides strong protection for Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is for decision makers to apply that policy and related legislation. The local planning authorities have responsibility for determining planning applications and developing local plan policies in the first instance.

The strong protection for these valued areas is supported by planning guidance. We keep this guidance under review to ensure it reflects up-to-date planning policy.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-01-28.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department has taken to improve access to mental health services for children who have (a) been the victims of abuse and (b) experienced other trauma.

Alistair Burt

The information needed to link individuals who have experienced various forms of trauma with those who have experienced mental health problems is not collected centrally.

We are committed to improving child and adolescent mental health services, which is why we are investing an additional £1.4 billion in services for children and young people with mental health problems over the course of this Parliament. The guidance issued by NHS England in August last year on Local Transformation Plans for children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing specified that the plans should address the full spectrum of need including those with particular vulnerability to mental health problems such as those who have been sexually abused or exploited. The bespoke assurance process that was undertaken by NHS England will therefore have addressed the extent to which this has been addressed in local plans.

NHS England has commissioned a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the Local Transformation Plans, in order to support policy makers, local commissioners and services to understand and use the data that is contained within the plans to drive further improvements. Local Transformation Plans will be reviewed from a narrative, analytical and financial perspective, with thematic reviews carried out in key focus areas that align with Future in Mind principles.

Sensitive and routine enquiry will be introduced in targeted health services, such as sexual health clinics and mental health services, to help identify those children who have been subjected to abuse and other traumatic experiences.

NHS England also published a Commissioning Framework for Adult and Paediatric Sexual Assault Referral Centre (SARC) Services in August 2015 which outlines the core services in SARCs and referral pathways to other services. These are now being rolled out throughout England and should lead to improved services for those who have experienced sexual assault, including children and young people.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-05-23.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the implications for his policies are of the findings in The Lancet Series on breastfeeding, published in January 2016; and what steps his Department is taking to increase breastfeeding rates.

Ben Gummer

Following the discontinuation of the Infant Feeding Survey, the Department has been exploring with Public Health England (PHE) and other key stakeholders alternative methods and sources of information to monitor the impact of its policy on infant feeding.

In future, the Maternity and Children’s Dataset will regularly capture data on breastfeeding initiation and prevalence from all women using NHS services rather than using a survey sample. This means that local service providers and commissioners can have up-to-date (e.g. quarterly) information about outcomes for their local populations, enabling service provision to be more agile, responsive and targeted.

The Government is committed to supporting breastfeeding through the Healthy Child Programme. Breastfeeding is also included in the Public Health Outcomes Framework so that the improvements can be tracked, and action taken as needed.

Since 2010, we have recruited more than 2,100 additional midwives who will provide women with the information, advice and support they need with breastfeeding. A further 6,000 midwives are in training. There are also 3,400 more health visitors than in 2010.

The Department is working with PHE, NHS England and UNICEF to try and encourage women to breastfeed for the first six months, although we recognise that not all mothers choose to or are able to breastfeed.

Support and information is currently available to health professionals and parents through NHS Choices, the National Breastfeeding Helpline, UNICEF UK Baby Friendly Initiative, the Start4Life Information Service for Parents and local peer support programmes.

The Department has not retained a record of how many full-time equivalent staff there were with a specific focus on breastfeeding between 2010 and 2016; breastfeeding policy has always formed part of the larger maternity policy for which the Department has the policy lead. Resources to cover this policy area would have fluctuated according the level of work required at any one time.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-09-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many times in the last two years the Northern Maritime Operations Centre in Fareham has had staffing levels below what is considered safe.

Mr John Hayes

The operational concepts and procedures that underpin Her Majesty’s Coastguard’s national network mean that the Coastguard Centres within it no longer have fixed geographic boundaries. This enables Coastguards at either the National Maritime Operations Centre (NMOC) or any of the 9 Coastguard Operations Centres (CGOC) to coordinate any incident anywhere around the UK coast irrespective of their location. As a result workload is now managed on a national basis rather than Centre by Centre as was previously the case. National capability and Coastguard staff from any Centre are now available to provide additional support to any individual Centre within the network when it is considered necessary by senior operational managers.

Due to this inherent flexibility Her Majesty’s Coastguard sets ‘Optimum Suggested’ staffing for the network as a whole rather than for each centre. Over the last two years since the national network became operational out of a total of 1,427 watches (both day and night) the network has been staffed below ‘Optimal Suggested’ levels on 137 watches.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-09-05.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether the coastguard turned down any request from any other service for assistance during inland floods in the last five years.

Mr John Hayes

Her Majesty’s Coastguard does not specifically record occurrences when other Category 1 Responders or any other service requests assistance. Information may be held within the text narrative of an incident record but this would require a check of tens of thousands of records over the last two to five years.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2015-12-01.

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what plans he has to provide additional practice guidance on applying planning policy and legislation in Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

James Wharton

The National Planning Policy Framework provides strong protection for Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is for decision makers to apply that policy and related legislation. The local planning authorities have responsibility for determining planning applications and developing local plan policies in the first instance.

The strong protection for these valued areas is supported by planning guidance. We keep this guidance under review to ensure it reflects up-to-date planning policy.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sarah Wollaston on 2016-01-28.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether, as part of the NHS Five Year Forward View, local sustainability and transformation plans should include measures to improve children and young people’s mental health; and on what outcomes they will be assessed.

Alistair Burt

Local health economies are developing a five year Sustainability and Transformation Plan which will set out how they will implement the Five Year Forward View in their area. They will identify and collectively agree the priorities to address over the next five years. We expect the improvement of children and young people’s mental health to be a key priority for many local health economies and NHS England will support these areas to develop transformative plans for these services. Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) will be assessed through a new CCG assessment framework and their progress with transformation will be included.