Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Kilburn)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, for what reason people with communal heating systems are not subject to the energy price cap.
Answered by Greg Hands - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The CMA completed its investigation into the energy market in 2016. It reported that default tariff customers of the large energy suppliers were paying an average of £1.4billion a year more than they would in a truly competitive market. In response, the Government legislated for Ofgem to introduce a cap on household default gas and electricity tariffs.
Heat networks typically buy their energy through commercial contracts which, in the past, resulted in competitive heat prices for those on networks. Commercial contracts are not covered by the existing Default Tariff Price Cap. The Energy Security Bill will provide Ofgem with powers to regulate heat networks.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Kilburn)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how many full-time equivalent staff there are employed at Companies House who work solely on investigating the accuracy of company returns and suspicious entries.
Answered by Paul Scully
The Registrar of Companies has no current powers to verify or investigate information properly delivered in accordance with the requirements of the Companies Act 2006 or other enactments.
Whilst there is no single role that looks purely at the accuracy of company returns and suspicious entries, Companies House have 90 full time equivalents working in their Integrity and Intelligence Team.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Kilburn)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether Companies House has plans to increase the number of full-time equivalent staff it employs in 2022 to work solely on investigating the accuracy of company returns and suspicious entries.
Answered by Paul Scully
Budgets for 2022/23 have yet to be finalised. However, Companies House is being provided with £63m over the Spending Review period in order to complete its transformation programme. It is expected that as part of this, Companies House will take a much more active role in interrogating entries on the register, and that the number of staff engaged in these activities will increase.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Kilburn)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether his Department has plans to bring forward legislative proposals to modernise flexible working legislation.
Answered by Paul Scully
The Government’s manifesto included a commitment to encourage flexible working and to consult on whether flexible working can be made the default unless employers have good reasons not to. We will issue this consultation in due course.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Kilburn)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what his planned timetable is for the consultation on flexible working; and what publications will be published by his Department’s Flexible Working Taskforce.
Answered by Paul Scully
The Government has committed to consult on whether flexible working can be made the default unless employers have good reasons not to. The consultation will be launched in due course.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Kilburn)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department has taken to procure doses of covid-19 vaccine boosters to help deliver immunity to tackle new coronavirus variants which may have greater levels of resistance to available covid-19 vaccines.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
The Government is assessing our existing vaccine portfolio against current variants, working closely with vaccine manufacturers and Public Health England to understand the efficacy of our current vaccine portfolio against new variants.
The Government has also established a new partnership with the vaccine manufacturer, CureVac, to rapidly develop new vaccines in response to new Covid-19 variants should this be needed. The new agreement will utilise UK expertise on genomics and virus sequencing to allow new varieties of vaccines based on messenger RNA technology to be developed quickly against new strains of Covid-19. An initial order has been made for 50 million doses.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Kilburn)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what plans his Department has to introduce statutory adoption pay for self-employed adoptive parents; and what plans he has to enable self-employed adoptive parents to receive the same benefits as other self-employed parents.
Answered by Paul Scully
The Government recognises that it is crucial to the success of an adoption placement that an adopter takes time off work to care for and bond with their child. This is why employed adoptive parents have broadly the same rights and protections as birth parents.
So far, the Government has focused on supporting employed parents as they do not generally have the same level of flexibility over their work as self-employed parents do. But we recognise that affordability may limit the time away from work that some self-employed adopters can take, and this is why statutory adoption guidance says that Local Authorities should consider making a payment - equivalent to Maternity Allowance - in cases where adopters do not qualify for any statutory payment because of their self-employment. Prospective adopters are also entitled to an assessment of their family’s needs and can benefit from a range of support including discretionary means-tested financial support, advice, information and counselling, and support services.
We are not ruling out providing further support for self-employed parents in the future and we continue to keep differences in treatment between self-employed and employed people under review. Since 2010, we have taken significant steps to equalise the state benefits provided to the employed and self-employed, including giving the self-employed access to the full rate of the new State Pension for the first time.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Kilburn)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what plans his Department has to extend statutory parental leave entitlements to special guardians.
Answered by Paul Scully
The Government recognises the value of the challenging but rewarding role played by special guardians who welcome a child in their home.
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is working with the Department for Education, which leads on childcare policies, to assess employment policies in this area.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Kilburn)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to support local councils in the distribution of the £500 million top-up to the Additional Restrictions Grant funding.
Answered by Paul Scully
The Additional Restrictions Grant is a discretionary fund which, meaninglocal authorities have the ability to develop support schemes that suit their local economy.
On the 14th January, the full guidance for local authorities on the Business Support Package for the January Lockdown - including the additional £500m in Additional Restrictions Grant funding - was published. All local authorities have also been issued with a new FAQ pack to assist in the operation of the grant schemes.
We are committed to carrying out a full new burden assessment, recognising that additional requirements have been placed on local authorities to deliver this much needed support to businesses quickly.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Kilburn)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what plans he has to extend the Green Homes Grants: Local Authority Delivery Scheme (LAD) after March 2021.
Answered by Anne-Marie Trevelyan - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Green Homes Grant, Local Authority Delivery Scheme is part of a package of measures aimed at providing an urgent stimulus to the economy. BEIS intend to allocate £200million to Local Authorities over 2 phases: phase 1A delivery by March 2021 and phase 1B for delivery by September 2021. A further £300m will be allocated to the regional Local Energy Hubs for delivery by December 2021. This aims to balance the aim of the scheme to support economic recovery whilst being pragmatic over delivery timescales.
These economic stimulus schemes are part of a longer term, sustained investment in the growth of skills and jobs to build the supply chains necessary to achieve net zero. We have recently published the Energy White Paper and we plan to publish a Heat and Building Strategy outlining our approach alongside an updated Fuel Poverty Strategy for England, that builds upon the commitments in the Prime Minister’s ten-point plan for a green industrial revolution, to extend the Energy Company Obligation and implement the Home Upgrade Grant.