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Written Question
Homicide: Sentencing
Tuesday 5th December 2023

Asked by: Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government when the Ministry of Justice plans to publish a consultation on sentencing for murders committed in domestic settings, in particular (1) consulting on increasing the tariff from 15 to 25 years, and (2) consulting on the perpetrator’s hands being treated as weapons.

Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)

On Monday 27 November, the Government launched a public consultation on a minimum term starting point in sentencing for (i) murders preceded by controlling or coercive behaviour against the murder victim, and (ii) all murders committed using a knife or other weapon. The consultation will close on 4 March 2024. The consultation can be found here.


Written Question
What Works Centre for Wellbeing
Tuesday 21st February 2023

Asked by: Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask His Majesty's Government who is the ministerial lead for Mission 8 of Levelling Up; and how they intend to work with the What Works Centre for Wellbeing.

Answered by Baroness Scott of Bybrook - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)

The Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities is the ministerial lead for the well-being mission. As part of the Government's exploratory work on the well-being mission we have engaged with a range of experts including the What Works Centre for Wellbeing and we will continue to work in a collaborative way across and beyond Government to deliver the mission.


Written Question
What Works Network: Finance
Monday 20th February 2023

Asked by: Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what are the current funding levels for each What Works Centre within the What Works Network.

Answered by Baroness Neville-Rolfe - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)

The What Works Network helps deliver more effective and efficient public sector services by creating and sharing high-quality evidence to inform decisions by practitioners and policymakers.

The 13 What Works Centres that comprise the network receive funding from a variety of sources, and departments and public bodies are major funders for many.

  1. The Education Endowment Foundation received a £125 million endowment in 2011 from the DfE, to be spent over 15 years. It received a subsequent £137 million endowment from DfE in 2022. It receives additional funding from the DfE and other parties as outlined in its annual report and financial statements. In the financial year ending March 2022, it reported £30.4 million in grants from DfE.

  2. The Youth Endowment Fund received a £200 million endowment in the Home Office in 2019, to be spent over 10 years. It receives additional funding from the Home Office (via a Centre of Excellence grant) and other parties as outlined in its annual report and financial statements.

  3. The Youth Futures Foundation received £90 million via the Dormant Assets Scheme in 2019, and a further £20 million via the scheme in 2022. It receives a small amount of other grant income as outlined in its annual report and financial statements – in 2021 this other grant income was approximately £21,000.

  4. The Centre for Homelessness Impact is primarily funded by an anonymous private donor. In the financial year ending June 2022, this total was £1.65 million. It receives additional funding from other parties – including DLUHC, MoJ, the Cabinet Office and the National Institute for Health Research – as outlined in its annual report and financial statements. In the financial year ending June 2022, this additional funding amounted to approximately £462,000.

  5. The Centre for Ageing Better received a £49.6 million endowment from the National Lottery Community Fund in 2014, to be spent over 15 years. It receives additional funding from other parties – including UKRI in the fiscal year ending March 2022 – as outlined in its Report of the Trustees and financial statements.

  6. The Wales Centre for Public Policy was awarded £9 million in 2022, to be spent over five years. Its core funders are the Economic and Social Research Council, the Welsh Government and Cardiff University.

  7. The What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and three government departments: BEIS, DLUHC, and DfT. It has received approximately £1.4 million per year under its current grant.

  8. Two centres – the Early Intervention Foundation and What Works for Children’s Social Care – have recently merged into one centre, which is operating as What Works for Early Intervention and Children’s Social Care. DfE has been the primary funder of both organisations historically, and plans to be the primary funder of this merged organisation in the future. The funding figures provided relate to the centres in their previous forms.

    • What Works Children’s Social Care was primarily funded by the DfE. In the financial year ending March 2022, the grants it received from DfE totalled approximately £17.4 million.

    • The Early Intervention Foundation received funding from multiple government departments and other funders, as outlined in its annual report and financial statements. In the financial year ending March 2022, it received approximately £2.4 million in restricted and unrestricted funding from its core cross-government grant, and approximately £184,000 from the Home Office.

  9. What Works Centre for Wellbeing receives funding from a wide range of sources. Its largest funder is the National Lottery Community Fund – in the financial year ending March 2022, it received approximately £357,000 from them. It does not receive significant public funding – in the financial year ending March 2022, it received approximately £81,000 from DCMS.

  10. The Centre for Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in Higher Education is primarily funded by the Office for Students, who’ve supported the centre with £4.5 million over 4 years since 2019.

Finally, there are three What Works Centres which sit within professional, arms-length or non-departmental public bodies. These are:

  1. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)

  2. The What Works Centre for Crime Reduction (part of the College of Policing)

  3. The Money and Pensions Service

Smaller What Works Centre functions sit within each of these larger organisations. The Cabinet Office does not have information regarding the precise funding levels available for the What Works sub-teams within these larger organisations, but the aggregate funding levels for these organisations should be accessible in the public domain.


Written Question
Counter-terrorism
Friday 22nd April 2022

Asked by: Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many men (1) under the age of 18, and (2) aged 18 and above, referred to the Prevent programme held misogynistic beliefs, in each of the last five years.

Answered by Baroness Williams of Trafford - Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms (HM Household) (Chief Whip, House of Lords)

We do not record misogynistic views routinely, and therefore we are unable to analyse Counter-Terrorism Policing referral and Home Office Channel data to draw this out

Involuntary celibate (Incel) ideologies, which are commonly linked with misogyny, make up a small fraction of Prevent referrals. Because there are so few referrals, they are subsumed into the 'Other' category in the annual Prevent statistics – which covers numerous other ideologies and represents 3% of referrals altogether.


Whilst the requested information is not available, some information on individuals referred to and supported through the Prevent programme, including age, gender, and type of concern, is available publicly, which can be found on the Gov.uk website. Data is released annually, and data for 2020/2021 can be found here:
Individuals referred to and supported through the Prevent Programme, England and Wales, April 2020 to March 2021 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)


Written Question
Insolvency
Monday 8th February 2021

Asked by: Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the cumulative impact on business (1) lending, and (2) cashflow, of the extension of secondary preferential creditor status to HMRC in the context of (a) the changes to the insolvency regime brought in by the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020, (b) the increase of the maximum value of the prescribed part to £800,000 on 6 April 2020, and (c) the value of taxes deferred under the VAT deferral scheme.

Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton

The recent reforms to HMRC’s creditor status for certain debts ensures that when a business enters insolvency, more of the taxes paid in good faith by its employees and customers, but held temporarily by the business, go to fund public services as intended, rather than be distributed to other creditors.

This measure is not expected to have a significant impact on the lending market or wider economy. The change is forecast to raise up to £255 million a year. To put this into perspective, bank lending to small and medium-sized businesses alone was £57 billion in 2019.

In 2020/21 this change is expected to raise an additional £40 million for the Exchequer. With regards to cash flow, the Government deferred an estimated £30 billion of VAT due during 2019/20 that can be paid off by instalments, interest-free, via the VAT New Payment Scheme as announced in the Winter Economy Plan.

At the same time, via changes to the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act, there has been a moratorium on winding-up petitions by creditors, including HMRC. The changes to the Insolvency Act to increase the cap on the prescribed part is an overdue reform to bring it in line with inflation and has no detrimental effect on any of the other measures mentioned here.

The numerous support measures taken by the Government were put in place to prevent the failure or closure of viable businesses. The scale of these support measures far outweighs the recoveries that the Government would receive via HMRC’s preferential claims in insolvency.


Written Question
Insolvency
Monday 8th February 2021

Asked by: Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to review the impact of the extension of secondary preferential creditor on levels of (1) business insolvencies, (2) job losses, and (3) the value of economic growth and taxes foregone, in 12 months’ time.

Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton

The Government undertook careful work to assess the impact of the measures ahead of announcement and implementation. As with all tax policy changes, the Government published this assessment in a tax information and impact note which can be found on GOV.UK.[1]

The policy will be monitored through continuing communications with affected taxpayer groups and insolvency practitioners.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/changes-to-protect-tax-in-insolvency-cases


Written Question
Youth Investment Fund
Monday 9th November 2020

Asked by: Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask Her Majesty's Government when they expect to announce the initial funding allocations to be made from the previously announced Youth Investment Fund.

Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

DCMS officials continue to assess how COVID-19 is impacting on young people and youth services. We will keep engaging with the youth sector as plans for the Youth Investment Fund develop, and expect to publish further details in due course.


Written Question
Primary Education: Sports
Tuesday 23rd June 2020

Asked by: Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government when they expect to announce a decision on the continuation of the Primary PE and Sport Premium for the next academic year.

Answered by Baroness Berridge

The government will confirm arrangements for the PE and Sport Premium in the 2020-21 academic year as soon as possible.


Written Question
Hospices: Children
Wednesday 3rd June 2020

Asked by: Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government when they plan to publish their standard operating procedure for children’s hospices and community-provided children’s palliative care during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Answered by Lord Bethell

Working with key stakeholders, NHS England and NHS improvement have developed a standard operating procedure (SOP), for palliative care for children and young people in community and hospice settings during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is due to be published shortly.

The SOP is aimed at supporting staff who are providing care or supporting children and young people, and their families, who have palliative and/or end of life care needs in the community, including home and hospice care. Palliative care will include some children and young people who have life-limiting long-term conditions and complex health needs. It encourages all providers of children’s palliative care (statutory and voluntary sector) to work collaboratively and flexibly across health settings to support this group of children and young people and keep them safe during the pandemic.


Written Question
DMRC Headley Court: Veterans
Monday 13th May 2019

Asked by: Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many veterans have been granted access to the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre through the Veterans Prosthetic Panel in the last 12 months.

Answered by Tobias Ellwood

Twelve veteran patients have been seen at the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre in the last calendar year.