The below Parliamentary question was asked by Valerie Vaz on 2016-02-22.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people with epilepsy have been assessed as being fit to work by their work capability assessments in each year since 2010.
Priti Patel
The information requested is shown in the table below.
|
Assessment type |
10/11 |
11/12 |
12/13 |
13/14 |
14/15 |
|
FFW outcomes |
2,200 |
4,000 |
3,300 |
1,500 |
900 |
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Valerie Vaz on 2016-07-13.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to the Answer of 2 March 2016 to Question 28759, whether the mental health needs of children with epilepsy and other long-term conditions will be considered by the expert group convened by his Department and the Department for Education.
Nicola Blackwood
The Expert Working Group announced in the Department for Education and the Department of Health’s oral evidence to the Education Committee on 3 February 2016 as part of their Inquiry into the Mental Health and Wellbeing of Looked After Children will not be considering the mental health needs of children with epilepsy and other long-term conditions. The Working Group will look specifically at the mental health needs of looked after children and young people, adopted children and care leavers. The aim of the Group is to develop care pathways for children in these particular circumstances, including any who might also have long term conditions or disabilities. Further work will be carried out during the implementation of the Five Year Forward View and of the transformation programme for children and young people’s mental health which is set out in Future In Mind which will lead to improvements for all children and young people experiencing mental health problems.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Valerie Vaz on 2016-02-22.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people with epilepsy are claiming employment and support allowance and personal independence payments.
Priti Patel
The number of Employment and Support Allowance claimants with epilepsy as their main disabling condition, as at August 2015, is 44,720.
Information on the number of people in receipt of Personal Independence Payment at 31 October 2015, by a range of conditions including epilepsy, has been published and can be found at:
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk.
Guidance on how to extract the information required can be found at:
https://sw.stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Getting-Started—SuperWEB2.html
“
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Valerie Vaz on 2016-07-18.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate he has made of the cost to the public purse of the cancellation of the care.data scheme; and what plans he has for the deletion of all constituent information under that scheme.
Nicola Blackwood
NHS England and the Health and Social Care Information Centre are not in a position to provide a final statement of expenditure at the present time. No data has been extracted from general practitioner practices under the care.data programme.
However, NHS England has been clear that the evidence and groundwork from the care.data programme will be incorporated into the health and care system’s Paperless 2020 programme on technology and improving patient care, as overseen by the National Information Board, in close collaboration with the primary care community, in order to retain public confidence and drive better care for patients.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Valerie Vaz on 2015-10-16.
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether the Wilson Doctrine has been consistently applied to the communications of the hon. Member for Walsall South; and whether that hon. Member has been subject to surveillance.
Mr John Hayes
The Government’s position on the Wilson Doctrine was set out by the Prime Minister in a written ministerial statement made on 4 November 2015.
As the Prime Minister made clear, the Wilson Doctrine has never been an absolute bar to the targeted interception of the communications of Members of Parliament or an exemption from the legal regime governing interception. The Doctrine recognised that there could be instances where interception might be necessary.
The Prime Minister announced that as matter of policy the PM will be consulted should there ever be a proposal to target any UK Parliamentarian’s communications under a warrant issued by a Secretary of State. This applies to Members of Parliament, members of the House of Lords, the Scottish Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Welsh Assembly and UK members of the European Parliament. It applies to all activity authorised by a warrant issued by a Secretary of State: any instance of targeted interception and, electronic surveillance and equipment interference, when undertaken by the Security and Intelligence Agencies. This is in addition to the rigorous safeguards already in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) and the Code of Practice issued under it which set out a series of robust safeguards for any instance of interception.
It is long standing policy of successive Governments neither to confirm nor deny any specific activity by the Security and Intelligence Agencies. Under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 it is an offence for anyone to identify an individual interception warrant or an individual interception that takes place.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Valerie Vaz on 2015-10-20.
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what assessment he has made of the level of charges levied by funeral directors for their goods and services.
Nick Boles
The Department has not made an assessment regarding this issue.
If there is evidence of anti-competitive behaviour by funeral directors, this should be referred to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the UK’s independent competition authority, for consideration.
The speech made by Valerie Vaz, the Labour MP for Walsall South, in Westminster Hall on 3 November 2022.
It is a pleasure to serve with you as Chair, Mr Davies, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) for suggesting this debate. We both went along to the Backbench Business Committee and were able to pitch the debate, because—like my brother and my sister—she and I were born in Aden, and we did say we wanted to go back and visit it in all its beauty. I left when I was 10 years old, so I do remember quite a lot of it. It is important that the Backbench Business Committee has granted us this debate at this time, because amid the millions of ongoing problems and crises that are going on around the world today, the prolonged conflict in Yemen has been forgotten.
We wanted to draw the House’s attention to the dreadful state of affairs in Yemen, which has already been outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley and which we cannot simply stand by and watch from the sidelines. We are a great nation and we have always stood up against what is wrong in this world—we were the framers of the European convention on human rights—and we owe that to the thousands of innocent people who are dying in Yemen.
I will set out the background to the conflict. It has been eight years in the making, which is almost as long as the time I spent in Yemen. The eight-year-old conflict in Yemen is between the internationally recognised Government, who are backed by the Saudi-led military coalition, and Houthi rebels, who are supported by Iran.
After almost a decade of this prolonged conflict, the parties involved are far from reaching a peaceful solution. The failure in October 2022 to renew the ceasefire agreements is alarming and disturbing. But it is good that there was a ceasefire. The peace efforts gained some momentum in April, when Yemen’s new governing council helped to consolidate anti-Houthi forces, a move that could set the stage for inclusive negotiations. The first nationwide ceasefire in years allowed commercial flights to resume from Sanaa and some fuel ships to dock in Hodeidah.
After six months of relative peace, however, the parties failed to renew the ceasefire agreements. Both the Yemeni Government and the Houthis have blamed each other for the disintegration of the deal, which has led them back to heavy fighting and plunged Yemen into a full-scale crisis.
I will outline some really upsetting and disturbing statistics, which my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley has already touched on. The United Nations Development Programme estimates that more than 370,000 people have died as a result of this war, with indirect causes, such as lack of food, water and health services, causing almost 60% of those deaths. According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, three out of four Yemenis require humanitarian aid and protection and 4 million are internally displaced. Five million are at risk of famine and the cholera outbreak has affected over 1 million people. Fewer than half of the health facilities in Yemen are functioning, and many that are operational do not have even the basic equipment they need. Some health workers have not even been paid their salaries. In March, about 17.4 million people were in need of food assistance, with a growing proportion of the population having to cope with emergency levels of hunger. The conflict’s death-toll has been growing.
This is an urgent humanitarian situation, because the crisis in Yemen is exacerbated by the effect of the war on the humanitarian footprint and thousands of innocent people. An economic crisis continues to compound the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Yemen. In autumn last year, the sharp depreciation of Yemen’s currency significantly reduced people’s purchasing power, so it was more difficult for them to purchase even the basic necessities, taking them even further out of reach. With around three quarters of Yemen’s population living in poverty, disease is rampant and of course the pandemic made matters worse.
This beautiful country is being destroyed and fragmented, town by town, street by street, and house by house. We are in the midst of a terrible war in Yemen and the humanitarian impact of this war on the Yemeni people, especially women and children, is painful for us to watch as silent bystanders.
So how can we go forward? The UN-backed peace negotiations have made limited progress. I, too, want to acknowledge the incredible work of Hans Grundberg, the UN’s special envoy of the Secretary-General to Yemen. He is looking at de-escalating mechanisms through the military co-ordinating committee, turning swords into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks. And of course I also acknowledge Martin Griffiths for his work on the Stockholm agreement.
The regional conflicts and tensions among the actors involved have simply turned this crisis into a prolonged war. All the actors involved seem to be wedded to a military solution, but war can never be a solution for the millions of people who are suffering.
I have a series of questions for the Minister. Will he pursue every effort for an immediate ceasefire in Yemen, as well as for the implementation of the Stockholm agreement? Will he look at establishing a new international accountability mechanism for Yemen? The existing mechanism is simply not enough. We need independent reporting on war crimes. Will the Minister, as the UK penholder, consider drafting an appropriate resolution immediately that moves the country on to a peace process? We have done it in Northern Ireland. There are people who can facilitate a peace process. Even today, there is peace negotiated in Ethiopia.
We cannot stand by and watch the destruction of a country and the death of so many innocent civilians. The situation in Yemen is tragic and heartbreaking. The war and the stalemate have led to the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, because of widespread hunger, disease and attacks on innocent civilians. The country is burning and the people are suffering. I know we have our own problems to deal with here, but ignoring this massive crisis is a disgrace to humanity.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Valerie Vaz on 2015-10-09.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the BCG vaccines for non-invasive grade 3 aggressive bladder cancer.
George Freeman
One of the two United Kingdom licensed Bacillus Calmette-Guérin bladder instillations has been unavailable since 2012, and the manufacturer of the other has increased its production as far as possible to help meet the shortfall. The Department and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency are working closely with both suppliers, as well as others in the supply chain, to ensure that everything possible is being done to make supplies available for patients who need this treatment. The British Association of Urological Surgeons has issued advice for clinicians to ensure that all patients with high risk, non-muscle invasive bladder cancer receive effective evidence based treatment.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Valerie Vaz on 2015-10-09.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the merits of providing concessions to ease the cost of automatic-enrolment pensions for small businesses.
Justin Tomlinson
In 2010 the independent Making Automatic Enrolment Work (MAEW) review considered the impact of automatic enrolment on small businesses. Following the recommendations of the MAEW review, the Pensions Act 2011 introduced a package of measures to reduce costs and make implementation easier for small employers. DWP’s impact assessments continue to monitor the costs and benefits of automatic enrolment on small businesses.
DWP is working hard to minimise the additional costs of automatic enrolment, particularly for small employers. The National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) was established by the Government specifically to ensure that smaller firms have access to high quality, good value pension provision.
NEST continues to undertake service improvements, including making it possible for small employers to set up and run NEST directly through their payroll software. The Pensions Regulator is also undertaking research and testing in order to enhance its tools and educational material, and to simplify the automatic enrolment process for small employers.
The decision to defer the staging period of small and micro firms from April 2014 to June 2015 brought significant easement to small and micro employers, leading to lower contribution costs and lower administrative costs. Additionally the contribution level is being phased in, in order to help employers adjust to these costs. The minimum employer contribution is currently 1% and this will rise to 3% when the auto-enrolment programme is fully rolled out over the next few years.
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Valerie Vaz on 2015-10-09.
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of the effect of the costs of automatic-enrolment of pensions on small businesses.
Justin Tomlinson
In 2010 the independent Making Automatic Enrolment Work (MAEW) review considered the impact of automatic enrolment on small businesses. Following the recommendations of the MAEW review, the Pensions Act 2011 introduced a package of measures to reduce costs and make implementation easier for small employers. DWP’s impact assessments continue to monitor the costs and benefits of automatic enrolment on small businesses.
DWP is working hard to minimise the additional costs of automatic enrolment, particularly for small employers. The National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) was established by the Government specifically to ensure that smaller firms have access to high quality, good value pension provision.
NEST continues to undertake service improvements, including making it possible for small employers to set up and run NEST directly through their payroll software. The Pensions Regulator is also undertaking research and testing in order to enhance its tools and educational material, and to simplify the automatic enrolment process for small employers.
The decision to defer the staging period of small and micro firms from April 2014 to June 2015 brought significant easement to small and micro employers, leading to lower contribution costs and lower administrative costs. Additionally the contribution level is being phased in, in order to help employers adjust to these costs. The minimum employer contribution is currently 1% and this will rise to 3% when the auto-enrolment programme is fully rolled out over the next few years.