Tag: Steve McCabe

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve McCabe on 2016-09-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the implications for her policies on the provision of mental health services for young people in (a) the community and (b) school of the recent 10 per cent increase in instances of depression and anxiety among school-aged girls.

Edward Timpson

Children and young people’s mental health is a priority for this Government, supported by an additional £1.4 billion over the lifetime of this Parliament. Each clinical commissioning group has worked with partners, including schools and colleges, to develop a Local Transformation Plan setting out how they will provide support for the full spectrum of mental health conditions, including early intervention measures.

Schools and colleges have an important role to play in supporting the mental health of children and young people, and we will continue to invest in this. We have provided them with a range of information, support, advice and guidance to help them develop ‘whole-school’ approaches to best suit the needs of their pupils. This includes guidance on: teaching about such issues as depression and anxiety within their personal, social, health and economic education curriculum, and providing effective school-based counselling. Teachers can also access free online support for pupils with a range of mental health issues, including depression and anxiety, through the MindEd website.

We want to support schools and colleges further, and to help us to know where to best direct this support we are currently conducting a large-scale survey asking them what approaches they use, as well as what they find to be the most effective. The results should be available next spring.

The Department of Health has also commissioned a new prevalence survey that should provide updated information on a range of specific mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression. This is due to report in 2018.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve McCabe on 2016-09-14.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what proportion of total spending on High Speed 2 has been on (a) wages and (b) performance bonuses.

Andrew Jones

From 2009-10 to 2015-16, the Government spent £1.4bn on the HS2 programme. The total payroll costs for HS2 Ltd permanent staff for the same period were £94.6m, out of which £113.5k was spent on performance related pay.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve McCabe on 2016-10-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, (a) how many and (b) what proportion of staff employed by his Department are non-UK nationals.

Mr David Jones

All Government Departments are bound by legal requirements concerning the right to work in the UK and, in addition, the Civil Service Nationality Rules.

Evidence of nationality is checked at the point of recruitment into the Civil Service as part of wider pre-employment checks, but there is no requirement on departments to retain this information beyond the point at which it has served its purpose.

More broadly, the Government will be consulting in due course on how we work with business to ensure that workers in this country have the skills that they need to get a job. But there are no proposals to publish lists of the number or proportion of foreign workers.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve McCabe on 2016-10-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, (a) how many and (b) what proportion of the staff employed by his Department are non-UK nationals.

David Mowat

Nationality is not a mandatory field in the Department’s Business Management System where the details of staff are registered. This means that a fraction of the workforce are ‘undeclared’ with respect to nationality.

All the figures given in the table below are as of 6 October 2016. These figures do not include contractors, temporary agency workers or the staff of service companies.

Nationality	Headcount in category	Proportion of workforce in category
British	1,572	82%
Non-UK	104	2%
Undeclared	247	13%
Total employed	1,923	100%

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve McCabe on 2016-10-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, (a) how many and (b) what proportion of the staff employed by his Department are non-UK nationals.

Mr John Hayes

Many staff self-declare their nationality on the staff system. Evidence of nationality is checked at the point of recruitment into the Civil Service as part of wider pre-employment checks and copies of this evidence are held on file for the duration of the person’s employment and for a further two years after they cease working for the department.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve McCabe on 2016-10-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 12 September 2016 to Question 44480, what monitoring mechanisms are in place to collect data on the effects of his Department’s devolution policies.

Andrew Percy

The Government believes that local areas are best placed to monitor the effects of devolution policies within their locality. All devolution deals include a commitment to putting in place a monitoring and evaluation plan, which is locally developed and administered with government support and signed off by government.

Combined authorities are also required to have local scrutiny committees, helping to ensure that those best placed to monitor devolution activity are empowered to do so.

It is the government’s view that this is an appropriate and proportionate approach to decentralising power.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve McCabe on 2016-10-10.

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will meet FairFuelUK to discuss fiscal incentives for the use of cleaner fuels.

Jane Ellison

Treasury Ministers and officials meet with a wide variety of organisations in the public and private sectors as part of the process of policy development and delivery.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve McCabe on 2015-11-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what (a) the Government’s policy is and (b) guidance his Department has issued on the use of e-cigarettes as an alternative to smoking; and if he will make a statement.

Jane Ellison

The Government believes that vaping/using e-cigarettes is significantly less harmful than smoking tobacco products. Evidence suggests that smokers can substantially benefit their health by fully substituting the use of e-cigarettes for smoking. Public Health England has been working with Local Stop Smoking Services encouraging them to be open to the use of e-cigarettes, where clients choose to use them to support their quit attempts, alone or alongside other nicotine replacement therapies and the behavioural therapy that the services offer.

The first e-cigarette was licenced by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency earlier this month. The Government continues to encourage applications for licensed medicinal products to enable both general practitioners and Local Stop Smoking Services to prescribe products which have demonstrated that they meet appropriate standards of safety, quality and effectiveness.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve McCabe on 2016-01-26.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answers of 23 November 2015 to Questions 16300 and 16301, what proportion of cases with a current liability the 110 non-compliant cases that have been closed as part of the CSA case closure programme represent.

Priti Patel

The 110 non-complaint cases represent 0.02% of the cases with a current liability as at the quarter ending September 2015.

Notes

1. The percentage figure is rounded to 2 decimal places.
2. Cases include those paying via Collection Service and Maintenance Direct.
3. The non-compliant case figure was at October 2015.
4. The percentage figure is of the number of cases with a current liability as at September 2015 (574,400).

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Steve McCabe on 2016-02-09.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate he has made of the average patient waiting times for A&E departments at hospital sites that have introduced a (a) co-located urgent care centre and (b) model that integrates primary care staff within the A&E department in the last 12 months.

Jane Ellison

The location and structure of urgent and emergency care services is a matter for local commissioners, taking account of guidance issued by NHS England. This guidance includes Safer, faster better: good practice in delivering urgent and emergency care, which was published in August 2015, to support frontline providers and commissioners in re-designing urgent and emergency care services.