The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sharon Hodgson on 2014-06-10.
To ask the Deputy Prime Minister, what consideration his Office gives to the diversity policies and records of businesses or other organisations when considering their bid for commercial contracts or grants.
Mr Nick Clegg
I refer the hon. Member to the answer given by My Rt Hon Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office today.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sharon Hodgson on 2014-06-10.
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what targets his Department has for increasing diversity; and what progress has been made on meeting those targets in the last year.
Hugh Robertson
I refer the hon. Member to the answer given by the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr Maude), on 16 June 2014, Official Report, column 434W.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sharon Hodgson on 2014-06-10.
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what proportion of staff within her Department who have been subject to formal disciplinary proceedings in each of the last five financial years classed themselves as white British.
Mr Alan Duncan
Declaration of ethnicity for staff at DFID is voluntary and it is therefore not possible to confirm the ethnicity of any staff who have been subject to disciplinary proceedings.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sharon Hodgson on 2014-06-10.
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many complaints have been made against employers registered in (a) Washington and Sunderland West constituency, (b) the Sunderland local authority area and (c) the North East region for paying employees less than the National Minimum Wage in each of the last three years.
Mr David Gauke
The Government takes the enforcement of NMW very seriously and HMRC enforces the national minimum wage legislation on behalf of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and has done so since the introduction of NMW in April 1999. It does that by investigating all complaints made about employers suspected of not paying the minimum wage, and carrying out targeted enforcement where it identifies a high risk of non-payment of NMW across the whole of the UK.
HMRC does not capture complaints or the outcomes of its investigations by reference to Government regions, constituencies or county. Its management information relates to the work of teams who are multi-located. Additionally, because it resources to risk, work relating to a specific geographical area is not always done by the NMW team based in that area.
Prior to 6 April 2009, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) issued penalty notices to those employers who failed to comply with an enforcement notice, within 28 days. A new enforcement regime, introduced in April 2009, saw the introduction of automatic penalties for employers who are found to have underpaid their workers.
I refer the hon. Member to the answers I gave the hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) on 6 May 2014 contained in Official Report column 110W which gives the number of completed inspections and number of non-compliant cases across the UK in the financial years 2009/10 to 2013/14.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sharon Hodgson on 2014-06-10.
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what targets his Department has for increasing diversity; and what progress has been made on meeting those targets in the last year.
Andrea Leadsom
In common with other government departments the Treasury has diversity targets for its workforce (gender, ethnicity and disability), monitors progress and implements diversity initiatives where appropriate.
HM Treasury diversity targets for its Senior Civil Service (SCS)
|
Group |
Target |
|
Women |
42 % |
|
BME |
5% |
|
Disability |
5% |
HM Treasury’s diversity targets for its employees below the SCS
|
Group |
Target |
|
Women Range E |
50% |
|
Women Range D |
50% |
|
BME Range E |
14% |
|
BME Range D |
18% |
|
Disability Range E |
6% |
|
Disability Range D |
8% |
On progress against the targets the Treasury publishes information on the proportion of its employees by gender, ethnicity and disability by each Civil Service pay scale. The most recent information, March 2013, is in HM Treasury’s Annual Report and Accounts 2012-13, page 43, available on the Treasury’s external website.
The March 2014 data will be published in the Annual Report and Accounts 2014 in due course
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sharon Hodgson on 2014-06-10.
To ask the Deputy Prime Minister, what proportion of staff within his Office who have been dismissed following formal disciplinary proceedings in each of the last five financial years classed themselves as white British.
Mr Nick Clegg
I refer the hon. Member to the answer given by My Rt Hon Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office today.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sharon Hodgson on 2014-06-10.
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what consideration his Department gives to the diversity policies and records of businesses or other organisations when considering their bid for commercial contracts or grants.
Mr David Lidington
I refer the hon. Member to the answer given by the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr Maude), on 16 June 2014, Official Report, column 434W.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Sharon Hodgson on 2014-06-10.
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what targets her Department has for increasing diversity; and what progress has been made on meeting those targets in the last year.
Mr Alan Duncan
DFID has aligned with the Civil Service-wide diversity targets for levels of representation in the Senior Civil Service (SCS). These targets are:
· 39% of the SCS to be women – DFID has achieved this target as 39% of our SCS are women.
· 34% of top management posts (Director and above) to be held by women DFID has exceeded this target as 42% of such posts are held by women.
· 5% of the Senior Civil Service to be minority ethnic staff – DFID has exceeded this target as 7% of our SCS are minority ethnic.
· 5% of the Senior Civil Service to be disabled people – DFID has exceeded this target as 6% of our SCS identify as having a disability.
In addition to this DFID has made a commitment to improve staff engagement survey scores for people with disabilities as this is recognised as an issue across government. DFID has improved the overall staff engagement survey score for staff with disabilities from 65% in November 2012 to 71% in November 2013.
The speech made by Sharon Hodgson, the Labour MP for Washington and Sunderland West, in the House of Commons on 16 May 2022.
I will speak very quickly, Madam Deputy Speaker. When I became chair of the all-party parliamentary group on dyslexia and other specific learning difficulties in 2016, the implementation of the Children and Families Act 2014 was under way. I had taken that piece of legislation through Parliament as a shadow Minister so I was hopeful that it might lead to an advance in SEND provision in schools, but things have obviously not gone to plan. The new SEND Green Paper implies by its very existence that something has gone wrong.
Let us look at some numbers. Pupils with SEN are less likely to meet the expected standards on reading, writing and maths by the end of key stage 2, with only 22% of children with SEN achieving that compared with 74% of those with no recorded SEN. This continues at GCSE with only 27% of SEN children achieving a grade 4 or above in English and maths compared with 71% of those with no recorded SEN. In 12 years of a Conservative Government, those with SEND have endured a broken system, leaving a lasting impact on their futures.
As we know, special educational needs and disabilities are sometimes invisible, making them hard to identify and support. Many working class children are categorised as poor readers, not because they might have dyslexia but because they come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Others who might have dyslexia but do not have the money to access private assessment and diagnosis might never get the support that they need. Far from levelling up, this Government imprison those children in lower expectations.
As we make the necessary strides in special educational needs assessment, so the system supporting those needs faces greater strain on capacity. This is all about cost. I hope that that is not the reason for the conspicuous absence from the Government’s recent Green Paper of the three Ds: dyslexia, dyspraxia and dyscalculia. The Government finally recognise the need for new high-level alternative provision, but I implore them to expand their priorities to specific learning difficulties. They can have a profound effect on a child’s educational development, and without wider assessments we can only guess at the incidence rates of the conditions. In the meantime, children will struggle through their school years and lose the chance to fulfil their potential. That is not to say that those with specific learning difficulties are less able than their peers. On the contrary, neurodiverse individuals exhibit problem solving, lateral thinking and innovation skills often in excess of those exhibited by neurotypical individuals.
This year I was proud to be involved in the launch of Neurodiversity in Business, an initiative that at last count has seen more than 100 companies across the country, including the likes of Deloitte and the Bank of England, championing neurodiverse workers. They recognise the unique skills and benefits that neurodivergent employees bring to an organisation, and that is to be greatly welcomed and encouraged as it is so true. I welcome the Government’s consultation on SEND provision, and I will certainly engage with the consultation in due course. I encourage all colleagues and organisations in the sector to do the same.
On another topic, I would like to take a moment to draw the House’s attention to food insecurity. We know that families are struggling with the cost of living crisis—a crisis that is only going to get worse. More adults are reporting skipping meals—57% more in April than in January—and more children are unable to access nutritious food. At the same time public sector caterers, who make up an important part of the protection against food insecurity, are facing supply chain disruptions and what have been described to me as stock price explosions. It is getting more expensive to run the industrial kitchens in our schools, hospitals and prisons. It is therefore getting so much harder to ensure that services offer the same nutritious food.
The Government are allowing food insecurity to become worse, allowing standards to decline and doing nothing to prevent a public health crisis along the way. This is happening on their watch and there was nothing in the Queen’s Speech to address it. That means it will only get worse until we have a change of Government to one with the will and the plan to grow the economy and be on the side of working people.