Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will encourage departments, including the Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Development, to make freedom of religion or belief literacy training available for their staff; and whether they will produce strategies which show how they aim to promote freedom of religion or belief.
Answered by Lord Young of Cookham
The Civil Service Diversity & Inclusion Strategy makes clear our commitment to addressing issues of faith and belief as part of our wider approach to inclusion. The strategy also makes clear our commitment to working with all government departments to achieve this goal.
We have a Civil Service Faith and Belief Champion in place (Clare Moriarty, Permanent Secretary DEFRA), and Faith and Belief departmental Champions in 26 departments (across Whitehall and agencies - including the Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Development), tasked with promoting faith literacy and inclusion in their departments.
The Champions and networks across Government have agreed a narrative that will underpin our work towards greater faith literacy.
Faith and Belief training is currently being developed for use by line managers, Champions and networks to support more inclusive environments for faith and belief in the Civil Service.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what efforts they are making to ensure that their public procurement policies do not involve supply chains in which slave labour is used.
Answered by Lord Young of Cookham
The Government is committed to tackling modern slavery in both private and public sector supply chains. Since 1 October 2015, commercial organisations which have an annual turnover of £36 million or more have been required, under Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, to prepare a slavery and human trafficking statement for each financial year. The statement must set out the steps taken to ensure slavery and human trafficking is not taking place within its own business or supply chains.
The Government has published a Supplier Code of Conduct to make clear the standards and behaviours that are expected of our suppliers when they work with government and we will now develop proposals for the government’s biggest suppliers to publish data and provide action plans for how they plan to address key social issues, including the scourge of modern slavery.
In addition, the Government’s Standard Selection Questionnaire includes Mandatory Exclusion Grounds if an organisation or an associated individual has been convicted of child labour and other forms of trafficking in human beings, within the last 5 years.
The Home Office and the Crown Commercial Service will be developing further guidance to support contracting authorities to identify, and mitigate against, modern slavery risks in supply chains.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what structures are in place to ensure consistency of quality across departments in responding to Questions for Written Answer in line with constitutional norms, especially regarding the need to be "as open as possible" in answering (LJ (1996–97) 404).
Answered by Lord Young of Cookham
It is for individual Departments to ensure that written Parliamentary Questions (PQs) are answered in line with the Ministerial Code.
The Ministerial Code sets out that Ministers must give accurate and truthful information to Parliament. It also states that Ministers should be as open as possible with Parliament. The Cabinet Office produces guidance to officials on drafting answers to PQs. This is available on GOV.UK;
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/drafting-answers-to-parliamentary-questions-guidance. A Minister may refuse to answer a question on the grounds of unreasonable or disproportionate cost of researching an answer.
The Leader of the House of Lords’ Office oversees Departments’ performance and the quality of answers in response to Peers questions. Internal committees of both Houses conduct similar scrutiny of Departmental performance in responding to PQs.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what was the total number of deaths in the UK in each of the last ten years.
Answered by Lord Young of Cookham
The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply and I will place a copy of their letter in the Library of the House.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Statement by Lord Bridges of Headley on 8 February 2016 (HLWS502), whether the policy announced in relation to the lobbying operations of charities applies to tax monies paid to charities in return for commissioned services.
Answered by Lord Young of Cookham
The policy referred to in the written statement (HLWS502) was subsequently withdrawn and replaced through a wider policy to introduce a set of Minimum Standards for Government Grants, which were published on GOV.UK on 2 December 2016.
The Standard guidance states that departments are required to ensure details of eligible expenditure are included in all their grants agreements. They should also include items of expenditure that are expressly ineligible. The terms of these agreement must be sufficiently clear, to provide assurance that the grant is only used for the purposes for which it was awarded. The expectation is that paid for lobbying - unless a requirement of the grant - and attempting to exert undue influence using taxpayer funding, will always be precluded under those terms.
The Standards policy applies only to all general grants including those made either wholly or partly using Exchequer funding.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they regard cyber warfare as a Tier One threat to national security; whether they are considering the creation of a new international Bletchley Park to counter that threat; and whether they are providing resources to develop machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence to counter that threat.
Answered by Lord Young of Cookham
The 2015 National Security Strategy identifies cyber security as a tier one threat to the UK’s national security. To counter this threat the Government published the National Cyber Security Strategy 2016-2021 supported by £1.9billion of transformational investment. As part of the implementation of the strategy, a new National Cyber Security Centre was launched in 2016 to provide a central body for cyber security at a national level. In order to keep our cyber defences effective, the Government provides resources for research and development of technical and other measures, but it would not be appropriate to comment on specific technologies.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the Freedom of Information Act 2000 allows publicly funded bodies that are individually bound by that Act to form what is described as a private institution that is claimed to be exempt from that Act, and if so, in which clause or clauses.
Answered by Lord Bridges of Headley
Public authorities subject to the Act are listed in Schedule 1, and companies wholly owned by the public sector are automatically covered through section 6.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the provision in the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014 that only articles which can reasonably be regarded as promoting the electoral success of parties or candidates count as controlled expenditure applies to such online blogs promoting the electoral success of parties or candidates if it does not also apply to articles promoting the electoral success of parties or candidates which appear in publications with a print edition as well as an online presence.
Answered by Lord Wallace of Saltaire - Liberal Democrat Lords Spokesperson (Cabinet Office)
The Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 contains an exemption so that the publication of articles relating to the election in newspapers and periodicals (other than advertisements) do not count towards controlled expenditure and are therefore not subject to spending limits.
This Government considers that this exemption applies to online newspapers and periodicals, whether or not they have a print edition, in the same way as for printed newspapers or periodicals. This position was not changed by the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014.
As the independent regulator, it is the Electoral Commission’s role to determine how the exemption applies in practice.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government why the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014 applies spending limits to stand-alone blogs such as the Huffington Post but not blogs produced by newspapers.
Answered by Lord Wallace of Saltaire - Liberal Democrat Lords Spokesperson (Cabinet Office)
The Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 contains an exemption so that the publication of articles relating to the election in newspapers and periodicals (other than advertisements) do not count towards controlled expenditure and are therefore not subject to spending limits.
The Government considers that online journalistic activity of a similar nature would be treated as falling within this exemption. In addition, only articles which “can reasonably be regarded as promoting the electoral success of parties or candidates” count as controlled expenditure.
This position has not been altered by the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answers by Earl Howe on 17 November (HL2643) and by Lord Wallace of Saltaire on 21 November (HL2908), how it was possible to describe the annual incidence of linked infant deaths in answer to the previous question if such statistics were unavailable due to information on multiplicity not having been recorded at death registration; and what was the overall incidence of stillbirths for the past decade following foetal reduction in either the first trimester or early in the second trimester that affected (1) the remaining twin from the same twin pregnancy, (2) one of the remaining triplets from the same pregnancy, and (3) both of the remaining triplets from the same pregnancy.
Answered by Lord Wallace of Saltaire - Liberal Democrat Lords Spokesperson (Cabinet Office)
The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply.