Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, how much funding his Department has provided to tackle anti-semitism since 2010.
Answered by Lee Rowley - Minister of State (Minister for Housing)
I refer the Hon Member to my answer to Questions UIN 2961 on 29 November 2023, Question UIN 201247 on 23 October 2023 and Question UIN 117512 on 16 January 2023. As set out previously, antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred have no place in our society and we will continue to fund programmes that help tackle all forms of religious hatred.
Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling up, Housing and Communities, how much funding his Department has provided to tackle islamophobia since 2010.
Answered by Lee Rowley - Minister of State (Minister for Housing)
I refer the Hon Member to my answer to Questions UIN 2961 on 29 November 2023, Question UIN 201247 on 23 October 2023 and Question UIN 117512 on 16 January 2023. As set out previously, antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred have no place in our society and we will continue to fund programmes that help tackle all forms of religious hatred.
Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of increases in costs on fire and rescue services across England.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Fire and rescue services have the resources they need to do their important work. Overall, fire and rescue authorities (FRAs) will receive around £2.6 billion in 2023/24. All standalone FRAs, which includes West Yorkshire, will see an increase in core spending power of 8.1 per cent in cash terms compared to 2022/23.
On 6 February 2023, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) published the final Local Government Financial Settlement setting out the referendum principles for Local Authorities in 2023/24. All standalone FRAs, including West Yorkshire, will be able to increase their Band D council tax by £5. This will raise c£67 million if all standalone FRAs choose to make full use of the flexibility.
The final settlement also confirmed that Revenue Support Grant and Baseline Funding Levels would increase in line with September 2022 CPI (10.1%). This will help FRAs to manage their inflationary pressures.
Ahead of the 2024/25 Provisional Local Government Financial Settlement, the Home Office worked closely with the National Fire Chiefs Council to review evidence of inflationary pressures facing fire and rescue services.
Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department plans to increase funding for West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Fire and rescue services have the resources they need to do their important work. Overall, fire and rescue authorities (FRAs) will receive around £2.6 billion in 2023/24. All standalone FRAs, which includes West Yorkshire, will see an increase in core spending power of 8.1 per cent in cash terms compared to 2022/23.
On 6 February 2023, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) published the final Local Government Financial Settlement setting out the referendum principles for Local Authorities in 2023/24. All standalone FRAs, including West Yorkshire, will be able to increase their Band D council tax by £5. This will raise c£67 million if all standalone FRAs choose to make full use of the flexibility.
The final settlement also confirmed that Revenue Support Grant and Baseline Funding Levels would increase in line with September 2022 CPI (10.1%). This will help FRAs to manage their inflationary pressures.
Ahead of the 2024/25 Provisional Local Government Financial Settlement, the Home Office worked closely with the National Fire Chiefs Council to review evidence of inflationary pressures facing fire and rescue services.
Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many secure schools for youth offenders have been opened since 2010.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
The first Secure School is due to open in Spring 2024.
Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many and what proportion street-based knife crime incidents (a) were and (b) were not the result of gang activity in each of the last five years.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office does not routinely collect information on whether offences involving knives or sharp instruments occurred on the street, or if they were related to gang activity.
Violent crime as measured by the Crime Survey for England and Wales has fallen by 41% between the year ending March 2010 and the year ending December 2022.
Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what resources her Department plans to allocate to support anti-knife crime initiatives during the school summer holidays.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Tackling serious violence, including knife crime, is a key priority for this government and we are doing everything we can to keep young people, families and communities safe.
We know that violence often increases over the summer months. The government is taking concerted action to try and mitigate any spike in violence and tackle its underlying causes, deploying a twin-track approach of tough enforcement to remove dangerous weapons from the streets with programmes that steer young people away from crime.
This financial year, the Government has made over £110m available to tackle serious violence. This includes continued investment in our Violence Reduction Units (VRUs), located in the twenty areas most affected by serious violence, which bring together local partners to tackle the drivers of violence in their area. VRUs continue to deliver preventative activity to young people at-risk of involvement in violence over the summer, providing early intervention programmes to divert young people away from a life of crime.
We are also continuing to invest in our ‘Grip’ hotspot policing programme, which operates in the same 20 areas as VRUs, and which will help to drive down serious violence this summer through using data to identify serious violence hotspots – often down to individual street level – and target operational activity in those areas. The combination of these two programmes have prevented an estimated 136,000 violent offences in their first three years of operation.
We are also supporting the police every step of the way in their efforts to crack down on knife crime. We have given them more powers and resources to go after criminals and take knives and other dangerous weapons off our streets, including through the recruitment of 20,000 additional officers and increasing police funding. New powers like Serious Violence Reduction Orders (SVROs) have been introduced to tackle repeated knife carrying, giving police the automatic right to search convicted offenders with an order.
Police recorded crime showed offences involving knives or sharp instruments decreased by 9% for the year ending December 2022, compared with the year ending March 2020.
The Crime Survey of England and Wales finds that violent offences have fallen by 41% and homicides by 11% since 2010.
Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will provide a list of projects funded by the £340 million allocated to tackle knife crime in last three years; and if her Department has allocated any additional funding (a) to tackle Serious Violent Crime, (b) to tackle Knife Crime and (c) for crime prevention activities in the last three years.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Since 2019 the Home Office has made available £340 million in the 20 police force areas of England and Wales (18 areas until 2022) most affected by serious violence, including knife crime, to support the work of local partners and the police in tackling these appalling crimes.
This includes £170m that we have made available for the Home Office Violence Reduction Unit Programme and £170m that we have made available for the Grip programme (previously known as Surge) hot spot policing programme. Violence Reduction Units bring together key partners including representatives of local authorities, health, education, and policing to identify the local drivers of violence and agree and deliver a programme of action in response to these. Through the Grip programme, we are funding additional, visible policing patrols and problem-solving activity in the streets and neighbourhoods most affected by violent crime. The police force areas in which Violence Reduction Unit and Grip projects are being delivered are: London, West Midlands, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Northumbria, Thames Valley, Lancashire, Essex, Avon & Somerset, Kent, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Bedfordshire, Sussex, Hampshire, South Wales, Cleveland, and Humberside. Violence Reduction Unit and Grip funding will continue in the 23/24 financial year.
In addition to this, there is other funding from the Home Office for crime prevention activities.
Information regarding all Government grants statistics can also be found on Gov.uk.
The Government’s Spending Review announcements can also be found on Gov.uk.
Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how much was received in VAT receipts from the hospitality sector in each quarter since the temporary reduced VAT rate which applied to tourism and hospitality ended on 31 March 2022.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
The ‘hospitality’ sector broadly equates to the Sector Industrial Classification of ‘Accommodation and Food Service Activities’ which is divided between two subsectors:
A sector and sub-sector breakdown of VAT declarations data is published in HMRC’s on the GOV.UK website here Value Added Tax (VAT) annual statistics, which reflects the net liabilities from VAT returns.
Currently, the available data covers the period up to and including the financial year 2021-2022. The VAT annual statistics are usually published in the Winter and covers the period up to the last complete financial year. A sector breakdown of VAT data for the 2022-2023 financial year will be included in the next publication. In line with the Code of Practice for Statistics, releases of these statistics are pre-announced on GOV.UK.
Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many times the Government's Crime and Justice Taskforce has met since January 2020; and on what dates those meetings occurred.
Answered by Jeremy Quin
I refer the Hon. Member to the list of current Cabinet Committees contained here https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-cabinet-committees-system-and-list-of-cabinet-committees, and would also like to refer the Hon. Member to the answer given to PQ107708. It is a long-established precedent that information about the discussions that have taken place in Cabinet and its Committees, and how often they have met, is not normally shared publicly.