Asked by: Alison Thewliss (Scottish National Party - Glasgow Central)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many full-time equivalent staff have been employed at Glasgow Theory Test Centre in each year since 2007.
Answered by Andrew Jones
The theory test service is contracted out to Pearson Professional Assessment Ltd and staff working in the test centres are employed by Pearson VUE. There have been no civil servants employed at theory test centres in Glasgow in each year since 2007.
Asked by: Alison Thewliss (Scottish National Party - Glasgow Central)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, from which landlord his Department leases the Driving Test Theory Centre in Glasgow.
Answered by Andrew Jones
The theory test service is contracted out to Pearson Professional Assessment Ltd and the lease for the Driving Theory Test Centre in Glasgow is held by the contractor.
Asked by: Alison Thewliss (Scottish National Party - Glasgow Central)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, on what dates leases for the Driving Test Theory Centre in Glasgow are due for renewal.
Answered by Andrew Jones
The theory test service is contracted out to Pearson Professional Assessment Ltd who has advised that the licence for the suite at Glasgow PPC (Pearson Professional Centre) is renewable annually at the end of September.
Asked by: Alison Thewliss (Scottish National Party - Glasgow Central)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what (a) facilities and (b) other support his Department provides for (i) visitors and (ii) staff for (A) lactating mothers and (B) the expressing of breast milk.
Answered by John Hayes
The Department for Transport and its agencies is supportive of all lactating mothers - staff and visitors.
The Department has identified a safe and healthy environment in which to nurse a baby or express milk should a mother require. In some office locations where there is no special/dedicated facilities for this - small private meeting rooms would be adopted for these purposes if required.
Sympathetic consideration is also given to the availability of refrigerators for subsequent storage of milk for both staff and visitors.
Staff at the Department will have in place a pregnancy/new mothers risk assessment that is reviewed regularly with their line manager. This risk assessment would identify suitable local arrangements that would be implemented. These would include suitable rest facilities, allowing some flexibility in the working arrangements of the mother, and arrangements for suitable locations for either nursing a baby or expressing and storing of the mother’s breast milk.
Visitors at the Department would be offered similar arrangements to staff, to enable them to nurse, express or store milk and wherever possible a private room would be provided.
Other support the Department provides is arrangements for temporary or more flexible working patterns to accommodate the needs of the individual, or additional advice would be given by HR in relation to maternity leave etc. All staff have access to new mother’s information and internal online information, guidance and checklists. The new mothers/nursing mothers risk assessment process and forms are available via this route.
The Department adheres to the appropriate legislation in relation to new mothers at work; Management of Health & Safety Regulations 1999; The Workplace (Health; Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 and The Employment Rights Act 1996 (as amended by Employment Relations Act 1999) for both staff and visitors.
Asked by: Alison Thewliss (Scottish National Party - Glasgow Central)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many full driving licences have been issued to people in (a) the UK, (b) Scotland and (c) the city of Glasgow in the last 10 years.
Answered by Andrew Jones
The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) only issues licences to drivers in Great Britain. Since July 2007, 68,096,270 full driving licences have been issued to people in GB. This is the number of driving licences produced and despatched by the DVLA and includes new licences, renewals, exchanges and replacements. The DVLA does not hold statistics on the number of licences issued before July 2007 as this is when the current method of producing licences began.
The DVLA only retains information about the number of full and provisional driving licences issued and does not record how many of these licences were issued by country or region.
However, it is possible to extract figures from the DVLA’s drivers’ database to show the number of people who hold full driving licences for countries and regions of GB. There are 38,571,679 full driving licence holders in Great Britain, 3,205,868 in Scotland and 651,045 in Glasgow.