Asked by: Charles Walker (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, when (a) nail bars, (b) tanning salons, (c) beauticians and (d) tattoo parlours will re-open as covid-19 lockdown restrictions are eased; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Paul Scully
My Rt. Hon. Friend the Prime Minister made a statement to the House on 23 June where he announce that hairdressers and barbers in England will be able to reopen from 4 July, once they are following the COVID-secure guidelines.
Other close contact services, like tanning salons, beauticians, and tattoo parlours remain closed until further notice.
We are taking a phased, cautious approach to reopening our economy, working with businesses, trade associations and medical experts on the safest way to reopen close contact services like beauty salons, where there is often greater risk of transmission due to prolonged periods of face-to-face contact and close proximity between staff and customers.
We appreciate that this is difficult for some businesses, and we intend to allow close contact services, such as nail bars, to re-open as soon as it is safe to do so. Our approach is guided by the scientific and medical advice, and every step is weighed against the evidence.
Asked by: Charles Walker (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent discussions he has had with so-called umbrella employment companies about waiving the obligation to fund the additional 12 per cent entitlement to holiday pay, to enable contractors of those companies to access the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.
Answered by Paul Scully
The Department has talked to a number of different groups and organisations in relation to the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS), including representatives of umbrella companies.
Employment rights remain unchanged under the CJRS. Therefore, all workers’ right to holiday accrues to the extent and in the same way it did prior to being placed on to furlough under the CJRS, as provided by the individual’s statutory and contractual rights.
Employers are able to use the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme grant to cover wages paid to their workers, up to 80% of the worker’s usual pay. This includes payments made to a worker on annual leave, but where holiday pay owed exceeds the amount in the grant, the employer is required to make up the difference.
Further guidance to help employers manage holiday pay during Coronavirus is available on gov.uk.
Asked by: Charles Walker (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what proportion of new registrations with HM Land Registry were registered within the 25 day period in the last 12 months.
Answered by Andrew Griffiths
Since 1 April 2017, 16.5% of applications made to HM Land Registry to register a new title were completed within 25 days. HM Land Registry have been working to reduce the oldest cases in the system and the average age of all pending applications to register a new title is 26.5 days.
Asked by: Charles Walker (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department has taken to ensure that HM Land Registry completes new registrations within the 25 day turnaround period.
Answered by Andrew Griffiths
Government has approved HMLR’s business strategy for the next five years including a digital programme that will deliver enhancements to current system capability over the duration of HM Land Registry’s Business Strategy, and appointed a new and expanded Board to support the organisation to deliver its objectives.
HM Land Registry have plans in place to deliver and maintain improved capacity for new registrations and resilience. Since October 2017 366 new staff have joined the organisation and an additional 120 new recruits are expected to join in May 2018. Since 2014-15, 567 Apprentices have joined HMLR including 510 in the Operations directorate who directly contribute to processing applications for registration. This includes 138 Apprentices taken on by the Operations directorate in 2017-18. A number of measures are in place to improve HM Land Registry processes and productivity in order to increase output, including the use of overtime and system improvements.
Asked by: Charles Walker (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what the timetable is for the introduction of mandatory portable appliance testing for residential properties.
Answered by Margot James
The Government has no plans to introduce mandatory testing for portable appliances in residential properties.
The Electrical Equipment (Safety) Regulations 2016 require suppliers of electrical equipment to supply only safe products.
In addition, the legislation requires manufacturers of electrical products to monitor their products on the market. Should they identify unsafe equipment, they must take immediate corrective action to make the equipment safe, withdraw it or recall it. Enforcement authorities also have powers to require a manufacturer to take corrective action, including by requiring withdrawal or recall of unsafe products.
Asked by: Charles Walker (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what the recorded total rainfall was in (a) Kent, (b) Essex, (c) Hertfordshire, (d) Hampshire, (e) Bedfordshire, (f) Surrey, (g) East Sussex, (h) West Sussex, (i) Wiltshire, (j) Dorset and (k) Buckinghamshire for the period 1 July to 31 December 2016; what the 10-year average is for each of those counties; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Lord Johnson of Marylebone
The information requested has been provided from the Met Office UK climate series and is contained in the following table.
County | Total rainfall (mm) for the period 1 July to 31 December 2016 | 10-year mean (mm) for the period 1 July to 31 December |
Kent | 216.9 | 389.6 |
Essex | 182.2 | 325.1 |
Hertfordshire | 231.2 | 361.3 |
Hampshire | 283.8 | 466.0 |
Bedfordshire | 234.8 | 330.0 |
Surrey | 260.8 | 407.9 |
Sussex1 | 268.0 | 485.7 |
Wiltshire | 308.5 | 455.5 |
Dorset | 350.8 | 532.1 |
Buckinghamshire | 237.4 | 362.2 |
1 Regional statistics are not held for West and East Sussex, only for Sussex as a whole.
Asked by: Charles Walker (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what soil moisture levels were in each month from October 2016 in (a) Kent, (b) Essex, (c) Hertfordshire, (d) Hampshire, (e) Bedfordshire, (f) Surrey, (g) East Sussex, (h) West Sussex, (i) Wiltshire, (j) Dorset and (k) Buckinghamshire; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Lord Johnson of Marylebone
Calculations for the Soil Moisture Deficit (SMD) on the last day of each month from October 2016 are set out in the table below in millimetres:
County | 31 October 2016 | 30 November 2016 | 31 December 2016 |
(a) Kent | 96.4 | 31.0 | 26.2 |
(b) Essex | 96.8 | 42.1 | 38.2 |
(c) Hertfordshire | 97.8 | 30.1 | 23.2 |
(d) Hampshire | 98.9 | 33.2 | 23.9 |
(e) Bedfordshire | 93.3 | 27.6 | 13.7 |
(f) Surrey | 92.4 | 25.0 | 19.8 |
(g) East Sussex | 112.5 | 26.2 | 15.7 |
(h) West Sussex | 84.7 | 20.6 | 12.6 |
(i) Wiltshire | 70.2 | 11.4 | 6.3 |
(j) Dorset | 65.5 | 9.4 | 2.6 |
(k) Buckinghamshire | 100.7 | 29.3 | 18.7 |
The figures apply to real land use (e.g. proportions of urban, grass or crops) and for a soil with water holding capacity at the median level for the soils in each county. SMD is produced on 40km squares; for this purpose they have been weighted to produce a county average according to the percentage of each square that lies within each county. The data presented comes from the Met Office Rainfall and Evaporation Calculation System (MORECS). | |||
Asked by: Charles Walker (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what estimate her Department has made of the number of its senior civil servants who will potentially fall under the provisions of the fourth EU Money Laundering Directive, 2015/849; and what assessment she has made of which of her Department's agencies or other public bodies will potentially be classed as holding a prominent public function for the purposes of that directive.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Under the Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive, which will be transposed into national law by June 2017, a politically exposed person is one who has been entrusted with a prominent public function domestically or by a foreign country. The Government's view is that the Directive permits a risk-based approach to the identification of whether an individual is a politically exposed person and, when identified, the Directive enables the application of different degrees of enhanced measures to reflect the risks posed. We will be setting out this view in our consultation which will be published shortly.
This change should not prevent any individual in this category from gaining or maintaining access to financial services. We encourage financial institutions to take a proportionate risk-based approach when applying these measures.
Asked by: Charles Walker (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what estimate his Department has made of the number of its senior civil servants who will potentially fall under the provisions of the fourth EU Money Laundering Directive, 2015/849; and what assessment he has made of which of his Department's agencies or other public bodies will potentially be classed as holding a prominent public function for the purposes of that directive.
Answered by Anna Soubry
Under the Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive, which will be transposed into national law by June 2017, a ‘politically exposed person’ is one ‘who is or who has been entrusted with prominent public functions’. This could potentially include some senior civil servants in the Department and its agencies or other public bodies.
The Government's view is that the Directive permits a risk-based approach to the identification of whether an individual is a politically exposed person and, when identified, the application of different degrees of enhanced measures by banks and other financial institutions to reflect the risks posed. The Government will be setting out this view in a consultation, which will be published shortly.