Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much funding has his Department allocated to process compensation claims caused by Covid-19 vaccines; and how much of that budget has been spent as of 16 August 2023.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Department has identified contingent liabilities relating to the COVID-19 vaccines and reports on these to Parliament on a confidential basis due to commercial sensitivities. Any spend incurred against these liabilities will be reported in the usual way in the Department’s Annual Report and Accounts.
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, on how many occasions (a) ministers and (b) officials held meetings with Bill Gates in each year since 2010; and what the reasons were for those meetings; and who was present at each of those meetings.
Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
Details of Ministers’ and Permanent Secretaries' meetings with external individuals and organisations are published quarterly in arrears on GOV.UK. Published declarations include the purpose of the meeting and the names of any additional external organisations or individuals in attendance.
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, whether she has made an assessment of the reasons for which the the Gambling Commission contracted with the National Institute of Economic and Social Research to research the costs and benefits of gambling, with a focus on gambling-related harm; and what the cost of that contract was to the Gambling Commission.
Answered by Stuart Andrew - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
I apologise for the delay in responding to this question.
The Gambling Commission did not sign a contract with the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NiESR). In this case, NiESR was a recipient of £140,050 in regulatory settlement funding.
Regulatory settlements are a possible outcome of Gambling Commission enforcement action and may include a financial amount paid by the operator for socially responsible purposes which address gambling-related harms. The Commission does not take possession of regulatory settlement funds at any time and the money is paid directly from the operator(s) to the organisation delivering the approved project.
More information on this process and the destinations of regulatory settlement funding is available at the Commission’s website.
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of patients who were moved from hospitals to (a) care and (b) nursing homes subsequently died of (i) covid-19 and (ii) other causes within (A) 7, (B) 14, (C) 28, (D) 56 and (E) 112 days of being moved.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The information requested is not held centrally.
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many patients were moved from hospitals to (a) care and (b) nursing homes to create space for anticipated covid-19 patients in England and Wales in (i) March and (ii) April 2020.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The information requested is not held centrally.
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, , in what circumstances a death certificate will describe a suicide as being related to gambling.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The information recorded by the coroner in the Record of Inquest is dependent on the circumstances of the individual case and is at the coroner’s discretion as an independent judicial office holder in the exercise of their statutory functions. The register is completed by the Registrar using the coroner’s certificate after inquest, and will record the medical cause of death and the conclusion of the inquest. A death certificate contains the same information as the register entry.
The Government recognises that quality information on the circumstances leading to self-harm and suicide, including issues relating to gambling addiction, can support better interventions. However, whilst coroners may be made aware of information about the motivation or contributory factors in a suicide, it cannot be guaranteed that consistent and comprehensive information on a deceased person’s background will be made available to the coroner in every case.
In addition, expecting coroners to routinely assess the motivation for individual suicides would take the coronial role fundamentally beyond its legal parameters, which are to determine who died, and how, when and where they died.
However, in addition to the inquest conclusion, coroners have a statutory duty to make a Prevention of Future Deaths (PFD) report to a person where an investigation gives rise to a concern that future deaths will occur, and the coroner considers that action should be taken to reduce that risk. PFD reports are about learning and improvements to public health, welfare and safety and could, for example, raise concerns relating to gambling addiction where the circumstances of an individual case give rise to a concern. To promote learning, all PFD reports and the responses to them must be provided to the Chief Coroner, and most are published on the judiciary website.
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, in what circumstances a coroner will register a suicide as being related to gambling.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The information recorded by the coroner in the Record of Inquest is dependent on the circumstances of the individual case and is at the coroner’s discretion as an independent judicial office holder in the exercise of their statutory functions. The register is completed by the Registrar using the coroner’s certificate after inquest, and will record the medical cause of death and the conclusion of the inquest. A death certificate contains the same information as the register entry.
The Government recognises that quality information on the circumstances leading to self-harm and suicide, including issues relating to gambling addiction, can support better interventions. However, whilst coroners may be made aware of information about the motivation or contributory factors in a suicide, it cannot be guaranteed that consistent and comprehensive information on a deceased person’s background will be made available to the coroner in every case.
In addition, expecting coroners to routinely assess the motivation for individual suicides would take the coronial role fundamentally beyond its legal parameters, which are to determine who died, and how, when and where they died.
However, in addition to the inquest conclusion, coroners have a statutory duty to make a Prevention of Future Deaths (PFD) report to a person where an investigation gives rise to a concern that future deaths will occur, and the coroner considers that action should be taken to reduce that risk. PFD reports are about learning and improvements to public health, welfare and safety and could, for example, raise concerns relating to gambling addiction where the circumstances of an individual case give rise to a concern. To promote learning, all PFD reports and the responses to them must be provided to the Chief Coroner, and most are published on the judiciary website.
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, on how many occasions the Child Maintenance Service requested a death certificate for a paying parent where the cause of death was defined as suicide in each of the last four years; and how many deaths of paying parents were recorded in that period.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.
When notified of a customer death within Child Maintenance, there is a process to be followed to take the appropriate action on the case. This includes verifying the death of the customer. Requesting a copy of the death certificate is one such way of verifying a customer’s death, but if the death has been reported and verified elsewhere then the cross-government computer system called Customer Information System (CIS) will be updated, meaning further evidence is not required for Child Maintenance purposes. We cannot readily identify from data sources whether a copy of a death certificate is held on a case so providing accurate data would involve manually reviewing every case where a customer has died.
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many deaths by suicide there were in (a) North West Leicestershire constituency, (b) the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland NHS trust, (c) the East Midlands and (d) England and Wales in each month of each of the last five years.
Answered by Jeremy Quin
The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.
A response to the Hon. Member's Parliamentary Question of 6 March is attached.
Asked by: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, the number of legal claims that have been submitted against the Education and Skills Funding Agency by private providers since its formation.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Complaints made about the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman are published in the ESFA’s Annual Report and Accounts on GOV.UK, and can be found through the following links:
On the number of legal claims submitted against the ESFA by private providers, there is no central record of legal cases held by the department.