The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tania Mathias on 2016-02-29.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether his Department is taking steps to increase awareness amongst small retailers of EU directive 2014/40/EU, section 14, regulating packet sizes for cigarettes.
Jane Ellison
The Government is developing guidance on the implementation of Article 14 of the revised Tobacco Products Directive (2014/40/EU) and is considering how best to raise awareness of the changes.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tania Mathias on 2016-05-26.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will take steps to reduce the cost to the NHS of postage of appointment notifications to patients.
George Freeman
The National Information Board’s strategy document Personalised Health and Care 2020 (published November 2014) set out the aim to support greater uptake of the use of digital systems in health and care to create a National Health Service paper free at the point of care by 2020. This will remove the system’s reliance on paper and will help reduce postal service costs for the NHS.
In the case of appointment letters for patients the new NHS e-referral system, introduced last year, already allows healthcare providers to choose not to send out appointment letters, instead allowing patients to access the information directly from the NHS e-referral system. Patients have an option to print off the details of their appointment if they prefer to have a paper copy of the information. We expect increasing numbers of providers will use this functionality to help contain costs.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tania Mathias on 2016-09-06.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how much the NHS spent from the public purse on printing and postage of employees’ payslips in the last year for which figures are available; and if he will take steps to ensure that NHS employees receive their payslips electronically.
Mr Philip Dunne
The Department contracts for the NHS Electronic Staff Record system. This contract includes printing and despatch of employee payslips to a single distribution point at each National Health Service organisation in England at a total price of £1.9 million (data relates to the period September 2015 – August 2016). This price reduces by around 20% each year within the contract.
The Electronic Staff Record solution already provides electronic payslip access via a facility called Employee Self Service.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tania Mathias on 2015-10-16.
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment his Department made of Sir Howard Davies’s potential business links to Heathrow Airport; and what other due diligence it conducted before appointing him as chair of the Airports Commission.
Mr Robert Goodwill
Sir Howard Davies was required to complete and sign a register of interest disclosure form stating any potential conflict with his work in leading the independent Airports Commission. Registers of all the Commissioners’ interests are available on the Airports Commission’s website at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/airports-commissioners-conflicts-of-interest-disclosure.
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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tania Mathias on 2015-10-16.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, for what reason his Department’s guidance on accessible communication formats published on 14 August 2014 does not include email as an accessible format; and what consultation his Department had with disability groups before producing that guidance.
Justin Tomlinson
The guidance referred to was published before 2010 and moved from the Office for Disability Issues (ODI) website to GOV.UK last August. It was written for government communicators on how to make effective use of accessible communications formats. It was not about specific means of communication, e.g. email, letters etc. This document is due to be reviewed and updated.
Stakeholders groups were involved when the document was originally produced, and will be invited to be part of the review process.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tania Mathias on 2015-09-16.
To ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, what steps she is taking to prevent discrimination against single people.
Caroline Dinenage
Certain provisions in the Equality Act 2010 – for example permitted exceptions from the age discrimination requirements for retail concessions to students and pensioners – are likely to be of particular benefit to single people.
Single status is not a protected characteristic in the Equality Act 2010. In the provision of goods and services we believe there is a balance to be struck between the interests of single people and the commercial considerations of business. The government, therefore, has no plans to change the Equality Act 2010.