Asked by: Lord Harrison (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what consultation or correspondence they had with companies offering employee share ownership schemes before announcing the withdrawal of HM Revenue and Custom’s valuation check service.
Answered by Lord O'Neill of Gatley
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has been consulting representative bodies through the Valuation Fiscal Forum over the last 18 months.
HMRC has not withdrawn valuation services that are most relevant to employee share ownership schemes.
These include:
Enterprise Management Incentives (EMI),
Company Share Option Plans (CSOP),
Save As You Earn share option schemes (SAYE),
Share Incentive Plans (SIP) and
Employee Shareholder Status (ESS).
HMRC has, however, announced a review of the valuation services for those schemes and is consulting interested parties.
HMRC has withdrawn valuation checks for income tax and PAYE that are not part of these recognised employee ownership schemes. Most people submitted acceptable valuations and therefore the valuation service offered was not seen as needed.
Asked by: Lord Harrison (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the HM Revenue and Custom’s commissioned research conducted by Oxera on the impact employee share ownership schemes had on the productivity levels of UK firms.
Answered by Lord O'Neill of Gatley
The report “Tax-advantaged employee share schemes: analysis of productivity effects” was prepared for HM Revenue and Customs by Oxera and published in August 2007.
The research represents a valuable addition to the evidence base on employee share schemes, but there are important limitations to its scope. While the research uses real measures of company productivity, it does not take into account potential complementary effects or assess the effects of share schemes on other performance measures, such as staff turnover, or in achieving wider objectives such as promoting share ownership.
Asked by: Lord Harrison (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many diabetes specialist nurses are currently employed by (1) each Clinical Commissioning Group area, and (2) each hospital trust, in England.
Answered by Lord Prior of Brampton
The Health and Social Care Information Centre provides information on the number of nursing, midwifery and health visiting staff employed in the National Health Service in England but it does not separately identify diabetes specialist nurses.
It is for local NHS organisations with their knowledge of the healthcare needs of their local population to invest in training for specialist skills and to deploy specialist nurses.
Asked by: Lord Harrison (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the current primary performance management mechanism through which NHS England hold Clinical Commissioning Groups to account for achieving progress in diabetes service improvement and quality of care.
Answered by Lord Prior of Brampton
NHS England and Monitor are working closely together to ensure that the payment system supports service developments in the vanguard sites (including those where integrated diabetes care is a focus) as well as monitoring local innovative approaches to supporting integrated care taken by some clinical commissioning groups (CCGs). This is to ensure that the payment system keeps abreast with the development of future service models and is not a barrier to the development of new models of care.
During 2016/17, NHS England will look at the current incentives and funding arrangements for diabetes to see how greater alignment could be achieved between the financial incentives for primary and secondary care.
Information on how much money the National Health Service invested in structured education for diabetes patients is not collected centrally.
Under the Health and Social Care Act (2012), NHS England has a statutory duty to conduct an annual assessment of every CCG. Since April 2013, CCGs have been assessed twice, for the period 2013/14 and for 2014/15.
For 2016/17, NHS England will introduce a new CCG Improvement and Assessment Framework (CCG IAF). This new framework will align with NHS England’s mandate and planning process, with the aim of driving improvements in a number of key areas including the management and care of people with diabetes.
NHS England has been working with Diabetes UK on including diabetes indicators in the CCG IAF. The proposed diabetes indicators are:
- the percentage of diabetes patients that have achieved all three of the National Institute for Heath and Care Excellence recommended treatment targets; and
- newly diagnosed diabetes patients referred to, or attending, a structured education course.
Under the proposals, diabetes will also be one of the six clinical priority areas in the CCG IAF that will be overseen by an independent group.
The CCG IAF proposals are subject to the outcome of an engagement process which closed for comments on February 26 2016. More information can be found at:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/ccg-improvmnt/
Asked by: Lord Harrison (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how much money the NHS invested in ensuring access to and provision of structured education for diabetes patients in (1) 2013, (2) 2014 and (3) 2015, and what percentage those figures represent of total NHS spend on diabetes during each year.
Answered by Lord Prior of Brampton
NHS England and Monitor are working closely together to ensure that the payment system supports service developments in the vanguard sites (including those where integrated diabetes care is a focus) as well as monitoring local innovative approaches to supporting integrated care taken by some clinical commissioning groups (CCGs). This is to ensure that the payment system keeps abreast with the development of future service models and is not a barrier to the development of new models of care.
During 2016/17, NHS England will look at the current incentives and funding arrangements for diabetes to see how greater alignment could be achieved between the financial incentives for primary and secondary care.
Information on how much money the National Health Service invested in structured education for diabetes patients is not collected centrally.
Under the Health and Social Care Act (2012), NHS England has a statutory duty to conduct an annual assessment of every CCG. Since April 2013, CCGs have been assessed twice, for the period 2013/14 and for 2014/15.
For 2016/17, NHS England will introduce a new CCG Improvement and Assessment Framework (CCG IAF). This new framework will align with NHS England’s mandate and planning process, with the aim of driving improvements in a number of key areas including the management and care of people with diabetes.
NHS England has been working with Diabetes UK on including diabetes indicators in the CCG IAF. The proposed diabetes indicators are:
- the percentage of diabetes patients that have achieved all three of the National Institute for Heath and Care Excellence recommended treatment targets; and
- newly diagnosed diabetes patients referred to, or attending, a structured education course.
Under the proposals, diabetes will also be one of the six clinical priority areas in the CCG IAF that will be overseen by an independent group.
The CCG IAF proposals are subject to the outcome of an engagement process which closed for comments on February 26 2016. More information can be found at:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/ccg-improvmnt/
Asked by: Lord Harrison (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what work NHS England and Monitor are undertaking to develop new payment and incentives mechanisms that drive integrated care for diabetes across primary and secondary care settings; and what is the time frame for any new proposals to be published.
Answered by Lord Prior of Brampton
NHS England and Monitor are working closely together to ensure that the payment system supports service developments in the vanguard sites (including those where integrated diabetes care is a focus) as well as monitoring local innovative approaches to supporting integrated care taken by some clinical commissioning groups (CCGs). This is to ensure that the payment system keeps abreast with the development of future service models and is not a barrier to the development of new models of care.
During 2016/17, NHS England will look at the current incentives and funding arrangements for diabetes to see how greater alignment could be achieved between the financial incentives for primary and secondary care.
Information on how much money the National Health Service invested in structured education for diabetes patients is not collected centrally.
Under the Health and Social Care Act (2012), NHS England has a statutory duty to conduct an annual assessment of every CCG. Since April 2013, CCGs have been assessed twice, for the period 2013/14 and for 2014/15.
For 2016/17, NHS England will introduce a new CCG Improvement and Assessment Framework (CCG IAF). This new framework will align with NHS England’s mandate and planning process, with the aim of driving improvements in a number of key areas including the management and care of people with diabetes.
NHS England has been working with Diabetes UK on including diabetes indicators in the CCG IAF. The proposed diabetes indicators are:
- the percentage of diabetes patients that have achieved all three of the National Institute for Heath and Care Excellence recommended treatment targets; and
- newly diagnosed diabetes patients referred to, or attending, a structured education course.
Under the proposals, diabetes will also be one of the six clinical priority areas in the CCG IAF that will be overseen by an independent group.
The CCG IAF proposals are subject to the outcome of an engagement process which closed for comments on February 26 2016. More information can be found at:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/ccg-improvmnt/
Asked by: Lord Harrison (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the European Commission's Recommendation in 2014 on a new approach to business failure and insolvency on the UK's insolvency regime.
Answered by Baroness Neville-Rolfe - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
The UK’s flexible and effective restructuring and insolvency regime is very much in keeping with the general themes of the EU Recommendation. Following the European Commission’s 2014 Recommendation, the Government conducted a call for evidence seeking the views of stakeholders and submitted a response to the Commission’s survey on how Member States comply with the Recommendation. The Government published the UK’s response in August 2015. This can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/european-commission-recommendation-on-business-failure-and-insolvency-call-for-evidence
Asked by: Lord Harrison (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of which of the provisions of the European Commission's 2014 Recommendation on a new approach to business failure and insolvency would (1) benefit, and (2) harm, the UK's insolvency regime if introduced.
Answered by Baroness Neville-Rolfe - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
The UK’s flexible and effective restructuring and insolvency regime is very much in keeping with the general themes of the EU Recommendation. Following the European Commission’s 2014 Recommendation, the Government conducted a call for evidence seeking the views of stakeholders and submitted a response to the Commission’s survey on how Member States comply with the Recommendation. The Government published the UK’s response in August 2015. This can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/european-commission-recommendation-on-business-failure-and-insolvency-call-for-evidence
Asked by: Lord Harrison (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the main criteria for judging whether an insolvency regime is successful.
Answered by Baroness Neville-Rolfe - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
It is not simple to compare different insolvency regimes. The World Bank methodology for ‘Resolving Insolvency’ uses principally an assessment of speed and amount of returns to creditors but also has introduced more subjective tests of the strength of the framework. In the World Bank’s 2016 Doing Business Report, the UK continues to be 7th in the world for returns to creditors, and is quicker and costs less than the US, Germany and France, but does somewhat less well on the subjective factors, which may understate the strengths of our regime. We keep the UK’s insolvency regime under review to ensure it remains at the forefront of best practice and that possible new features are properly considered.
Asked by: Lord Harrison (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the World Bank's methodology for producing its Resolving Insolvency rankings.
Answered by Baroness Neville-Rolfe - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
It is not simple to compare different insolvency regimes. The World Bank methodology for ‘Resolving Insolvency’ uses principally an assessment of speed and amount of returns to creditors but also has introduced more subjective tests of the strength of the framework. In the World Bank’s 2016 Doing Business Report, the UK continues to be 7th in the world for returns to creditors, and is quicker and costs less than the US, Germany and France, but does somewhat less well on the subjective factors, which may understate the strengths of our regime. We keep the UK’s insolvency regime under review to ensure it remains at the forefront of best practice and that possible new features are properly considered.