Tag: Vicky Foxcroft

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Vicky Foxcroft on 2015-10-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps he is taking to improve supported accommodation for homeless young people in (a) Lewisham Deptford constituency, (b) London Borough of Lewisham, (c) London and (d) England.

Mr Marcus Jones

The Government is committed to preventing homelessness and is taking specific action across England to support young homeless people into stable accommodation, education, training or employment.

We have invested £14 million to enable Crisis to support 10,000 vulnerable single people into privately rented tenancies, of which 41 projects are specifically targeted at young people.

Our £15 million Fair Chance Fund payment by results scheme is supporting 1,600 vulnerable homeless 18-25 year olds into accommodation, education, training and employment. Projects for the scheme are being delivered across England including Greenwich.

In addition, the Government is investing £40 million in Platform for Life, a lower rent shared accommodation programme to provide young homeless people with a stable base for work and study.

We have also implemented the ‘Youth Accommodation Pathway’ good practice model that supports young people to remain in the family home where it is safe to do so and offers tailored support for those who cannot. This has been disseminated across all English local authorities.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Vicky Foxcroft on 2015-10-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children aged between four and seven in (a) Lewisham, Deptford constituency, (b) the London Borough of Lewisham and (c) London received free school meals in each of the last five academic years.

Mr Sam Gyimah

Prior to the 2014/15 academic year, the department did not collect data on the number of free school meals given out to pupils below school level. The department does not, therefore, hold information on receipt of free school meals by pupils of different ages for earlier years.

Data from the January 2015 school census at regional and local authority level can be found in table 8e of ‘Schools, Pupils and their Characteristics: January 2015 statistics’[1]. Constituency level data can be obtained by aggregating the underlying school level data from the same publication. This is available in the ‘SFR16_2015_Schools_Pupils_UD’ file within the underlying data, which contains information on each school within constituencies and the number of infant pupils who took a free school meal on census day.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2015

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Vicky Foxcroft on 2015-10-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 23 July 2015 to Question 7788, whom his Department has consulted on the matter of compensation packages for people affected by NHS contaminated blood.

Jane Ellison

The Department is considering wider reform of the ex-gratia financial assistance and other support for those affected with HIV and/or hepatitis C by infected NHS-supplied blood or blood products. We are doing this within the context of the spending review and in a way that is sustainable for the future.

In order to help develop the shape and structure of any new scheme, we plan to consult publicly on scheme reform soon. The Department has alrady engaged with representative groups of infected/affected individuals. These individuals were nominated from the Contaminated Blood Campaign, Tainted Blood and The Haemophilia Society. The event was held in a neutral venue and had an independent facilitator. A report from this one off event will be made public soon. Discussions are ongoing with other interested parties.

While we are working to establish a full and fair resolution, liability has not been established in the majority of cases, so it would not be appropriate to talk about payments in terms of compensation, particularly on the scale that some may envisage.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Vicky Foxcroft on 2015-10-20.

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many people have taken their own life in (a) Lewisham, Deptford constituency, (b) the London Borough of Lewisham and (c) Greater London in each of the last three years.

Mr Rob Wilson

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Vicky Foxcroft on 2015-10-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent (a) meetings and (b) correspondence she has had on the setting up of buffer zones around abortion clinics; and if she will make a statement.

Mike Penning

I refer the Hon Member to the answers I gave to 5385 and 7247 on 13 July and 22 July 2015. We have also received correspondence from Members of Parliament on behalf of their constituents on this issue. The Home Office has not issued guidance to the police on this matter.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Vicky Foxcroft on 2015-10-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to tackle the rise in cases of domestic violence in London.

Karen Bradley

Tackling domestic abuse is a key priority for this Government.

The Office for National Statistics has ascribed national increases in police recorded violent crime to improvements in police recording.

The Government is providing £10 million to fund specialist domestic and sexual violence services and national helplines up to April 2016, including part-funding to 23 Independent Domestic Violence Advocates and eight Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Coordinators in London. New guidance for the police has been published by the College of Policing, new training has been piloted and for the first time police are collating domestic violence data against a national standard.

The Government recognises that local areas are best placed to meet local need.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Vicky Foxcroft on 2015-10-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will estimate the number of litigants in person in the family courts who are cross examined by their abuser.

Caroline Dinenage

The Ministry of Justice does not collect information centrally on Litigants in Person, or on who is cross examining witnesses in family court cases.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Vicky Foxcroft on 2015-10-20.

To ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, what assessment her Department has made on accessibility of utilities bills for (a) people with disabilities and (b) elderly people.

Caroline Dinenage

The Equality Act 2010 protects service users from discrimination on a number of grounds, including disability and age. In the case of disability, it also requires providers of services to make reasonable adjustments for customers who require them. The government has recently published a memorandum to the Act, on post-legislative scrutiny. A link to the memorandum can be found here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/441838/Memo_to_Women_Equalities.pdf

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Vicky Foxcroft on 2015-10-09.

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to paragraph 1.44 of the Summer Budget 2015, what assessment his Department has made of the potential effects of changes to child tax credits on the incidence of (a) in-work poverty and (b) homelessness.

Damian Hinds

The Government is making changes to Child Tax Credits which will help put welfare spending on a more sustainable path. The Government wants to move from a low wage, high tax, high welfare society to a higher wage, lower tax, lower welfare society.

The changes will ensure that work will always pay more than a life on benefits, support will be focused more on those on the very lowest incomes and the system will be fairer upon those who pay for it, as well as those who benefit from it. Taking the welfare changes in the Summer Budget together with the record increases in the income tax personal allowance and the introduction of the New Living Wage, 8 out of 10 working households will be better off by 2017/18.

The Summer Budget publication also sets out illustrative examples (Table 1.8, p.40) of the combined impact of the changes to welfare, the personal allowance and the National Living Wage on individual households.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Vicky Foxcroft on 2015-10-09.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to paragraph 2.110 of the Summer Budget 2015, what assessment his Department has made of the potential effect of limiting backdating in housing benefit to four weeks on homelessness provision reliant on funding from that benefit.

Justin Tomlinson

No assessment has been made. Housing Benefit is not designed to provide support for homelessness funding – that is a matter for the Department for Communities and Local Government and the devolved Governments in Scotland and Wales.