Asked by: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many LGBT young people aged 16-25 have been victims of a hate crime in the last 12 months.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office does not hold the information requested.
The Home Office publishes information on the number of hate crimes recorded by the police on an annual basis. This provides information on hate crimes, including sexual orientation and transgender identity hate crimes, but does not include the age of the victim for these strands. Information for 2021/22 can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hate-crime-england-and-wales-2021-to-2022/hate-crime-england-and-wales-2021-to-2022.
Asked by: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Question
To ask the Member for South West Bedfordshire, representing the Church Commissioners, whether the work started in phase one of the Independent Safeguarding Board will be completed following the disbanding of the Board.
Answered by Andrew Selous - Second Church Estates Commissioner
The Archbishops’ Council of the National Church Institutions is absolutely committed to developing fully independent scrutiny of safeguarding within the Church of England to ensure the Church of England is a safe place for everyone, to be transparent and accountable, and to hear the voices of victims and survivors. The actions of the Archbishops' Council and reasons for the decisions taken are set out here: Statement from Archbishops’ Council on the Independent Safeguarding Board | The Church of England
The work of independently reviewing cases will not stop, and the Archbishops’ Council has moved swiftly to put in place interim arrangements, which will be carried out as at present by external experts. The priority will now be to move to the next phase of setting up a fully independent Board, which will be fully separate from the Church. The Church of England will engage with victims and survivors and others to establish a process of working together to design a permanent independent oversight structure as soon as possible. It is not appointing further Board members at this stage.
The Archbishops' Council has been seeking to resolve the dispute in good faith. But because the two board members were reluctant to engage in those discussions, for example they had not met with the Acting Chair since March, with great regret the Archbishops’ Council felt this was the only way forward.
Asked by: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Question
To ask the Member for South West Bedfordshire, representing the Church Commissioners, what process the Church is using to appoint new members of the Independent Safeguarding Board.
Answered by Andrew Selous - Second Church Estates Commissioner
The Archbishops’ Council of the National Church Institutions is absolutely committed to developing fully independent scrutiny of safeguarding within the Church of England to ensure the Church of England is a safe place for everyone, to be transparent and accountable, and to hear the voices of victims and survivors. The actions of the Archbishops' Council and reasons for the decisions taken are set out here: Statement from Archbishops’ Council on the Independent Safeguarding Board | The Church of England
The work of independently reviewing cases will not stop, and the Archbishops’ Council has moved swiftly to put in place interim arrangements, which will be carried out as at present by external experts. The priority will now be to move to the next phase of setting up a fully independent Board, which will be fully separate from the Church. The Church of England will engage with victims and survivors and others to establish a process of working together to design a permanent independent oversight structure as soon as possible. It is not appointing further Board members at this stage.
The Archbishops' Council has been seeking to resolve the dispute in good faith. But because the two board members were reluctant to engage in those discussions, for example they had not met with the Acting Chair since March, with great regret the Archbishops’ Council felt this was the only way forward.
Asked by: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Question
To ask the Member for South West Bedfordshire, representing the Church Commissioners, how many parishes in the Diocese of Truro have a vacancy for (a) an incumbency and (b) a priest-in-charge; and how many (i) incumbent and (ii) priest-in-charge vacancies there have been in Truro Diocese in each of the last five years.
Answered by Andrew Selous - Second Church Estates Commissioner
Parish priest appointments are a matter for diocesan bishops. Data about the number of vacancies for incumbents and priests-in-charge per annum are not held centrally by the National Church Institutions.
Asked by: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Question
To ask the Member for South West Bedfordshire, representing the Church Commissioners, whether the Commissioners made an assessment of the potential implications of any obligation to provide an independent mediator to resolve the Independent Safeguarding Board dispute.
Answered by Andrew Selous - Second Church Estates Commissioner
The Archbishops’ Council of the National Church Institutions is absolutely committed to developing fully independent scrutiny of safeguarding within the Church of England to ensure the Church of England is a safe place for everyone, to be transparent and accountable, and to hear the voices of victims and survivors. The actions of the Archbishops' Council and reasons for the decisions taken are set out here: Statement from Archbishops’ Council on the Independent Safeguarding Board | The Church of England
The work of independently reviewing cases will not stop, and the Archbishops’ Council has moved swiftly to put in place interim arrangements, which will be carried out as at present by external experts. The priority will now be to move to the next phase of setting up a fully independent Board, which will be fully separate from the Church. The Church of England will engage with victims and survivors and others to establish a process of working together to design a permanent independent oversight structure as soon as possible. It is not appointing further Board members at this stage.
The Archbishops' Council has been seeking to resolve the dispute in good faith. But because the two board members were reluctant to engage in those discussions, for example they had not met with the Acting Chair since March, with great regret the Archbishops’ Council felt this was the only way forward.
Asked by: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Question
To ask the Member for South West Bedfordshire, representing the Church Commissioners, what steps the Church took to resolve the dispute with members of the Independent Safeguarding Board before the decision was made to give them notice.
Answered by Andrew Selous - Second Church Estates Commissioner
The Archbishops’ Council of the National Church Institutions is absolutely committed to developing fully independent scrutiny of safeguarding within the Church of England to ensure the Church of England is a safe place for everyone, to be transparent and accountable, and to hear the voices of victims and survivors. The actions of the Archbishops' Council and reasons for the decisions taken are set out here: Statement from Archbishops’ Council on the Independent Safeguarding Board | The Church of England
The work of independently reviewing cases will not stop, and the Archbishops’ Council has moved swiftly to put in place interim arrangements, which will be carried out as at present by external experts. The priority will now be to move to the next phase of setting up a fully independent Board, which will be fully separate from the Church. The Church of England will engage with victims and survivors and others to establish a process of working together to design a permanent independent oversight structure as soon as possible. It is not appointing further Board members at this stage.
The Archbishops' Council has been seeking to resolve the dispute in good faith. But because the two board members were reluctant to engage in those discussions, for example they had not met with the Acting Chair since March, with great regret the Archbishops’ Council felt this was the only way forward.
Asked by: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people serving in category (a) C and (b) D prisons have been in custody for 10 years or longer as of 21 June 2023.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
We are unable to provide data on the number of people serving in category C and D prisons who have been in custody for 10 years or longer as of 21 June 2023 at this time. This is because they are exempt from disclosure under statistics publication rules outlined in the Code of Practice for Statistics; as they will form a subset of future published statistics.
Data relating to 21 June would need to be extracted from information which will be used to form the next Offender Management Statistics Quarterly publication which is scheduled for release on 27 July 2023.
Asked by: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department has oversight of work on school buildings that is subcontracted by its contractors.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Departmental project managers oversee work on school building projects that are procured centrally by the Department. These projects are managed and monitored on a day to day basis by appointed Technical Advisors, who oversee project delivery including the performance of subcontractors. On site, the Technical Advisor’s Clerk of Works performs site based assurance over construction works, with oversight of work that is undertaken by sub-contractors.
Asked by: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what data her Department holds on the number of (a) nurseries, (b) primary schools, (c) secondary schools, (d) sixth form colleges and (e) all-through schools that have experienced construction delays that have postponed the planned opening date in each of the last five years.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department aims to minimise the time that any free school spends in pre-opening. Officials work closely with schools and trusts to ensure they receive the support they need, as projects progress.
If the Department is not confident that a free school will be viable, sustainable, and successful, it will not hesitate to defer or cancel a project at any point during the pre-opening phase.
The Department monitors opening dates across all free school projects but does not record whether changes to the original expected year of opening are due to site issues or other concerns around viability and readiness to open.
Asked by: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what data her Department holds on the number of school rebuilding programme projects that have experienced construction delays of more than one month in each of the last five years.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department is transforming buildings at 500 schools over the next decade as part of its School Rebuilding Programme. The construction programmes of building projects in all Department programmes is monitored by the Department through programme management and project delivery teams.
In the four school rebuilding projects which have been completed, three were delayed more than a month against initial forecasts. These initial programme forecasts were made ahead of the impact of significant events that could not have been reasonably predicted and that affected the global market.
The Department has continuously improved its approach to building schools since the Sebastian James’ review. This identified that the Building Schools for the Future programme, introduced under the last Government in 2004, was overly bureaucratic and not designed to target poor condition, did not support high and consistent quality, did not use standardised specifications that work for education, and did not deliver value for money and economies of scale from central procurement and delivery, which are all things that are now prioritised when building schools.
Under the Priority School Building Programme (PSBP) this Government launched in 2014, whole schools were built one third cheaper per square metre on average than schools built under the Building Schools for the Future Programme. The Department has further built on this success in its School Rebuilding Programme, which is exceeding delivery timescales compared to PSBP, while delivering schools that will be net zero in operation. The Infrastructure and Project Authority has highlighted that our progress is very good.