Asked by: Graham P Jones (Labour - Hyndburn)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what discussions he has had with the leader of Lancashire County Council on the UK leaving the EU without a deal.
Answered by Luke Hall - Minister of State (Education)
We have stepped up our preparedness significantly and are speaking regularly to councils and partners, including through a delivery board and a network of nine regional lead chief executives. Every council has designated a Brexit Lead Officer to work with central government to intensify their local preparations and, in total, we have made £77 million available to help local areas get ready for Brexit.
Asked by: Graham P Jones (Labour - Hyndburn)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what plans he has to help ensure that more public charging points are provided for electronic vehicles.
Answered by George Freeman
We want to encourage private sector investment to build and operate a self-sustaining public network that is affordable, reliable and accessible.
Government funding and leadership, alongside private sector investment, has supported the installation of more than 21,000 public chargepoints, 2,100 of which are rapid – creating one of the largest networks in Europe. In August the Secretary of State announced that funding for this year’s on street residential charging scheme, which offers grants to local authorities to support investment at a local level, would be doubled from £2.5 to £5 million. Highways England has also committed £15m to ensure there are chargepoints (rapid where possible) every 20 miles on 95% of the Strategic Road Network by 2020.
This is in addition to the £400m Chargepoint Infrastructure Investment Fund announced at the Autumn budget in 2017.
Asked by: Graham P Jones (Labour - Hyndburn)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the additional funding for the NHS announced by the Prime Minister will be used to increase the number of nursing bursaries.
Answered by Chris Skidmore
The education funding reforms announced in the 2015 Spending Review started to take effect from August 2017 and pre-registration nursing students began to access student loans rather than receiving a National Health Service bursary.
In January 2019, the NHS published its Long Term Plan which sets out a 10 year vision for healthcare in England. The NHS Interim People Plan, published on 3 June, sets out the immediate actions needed to grow the nursing workforce across all settings by over 40,000 in the next five years.
We will work with the NHS and the Higher Education Institution sector to improve awareness of the financial support packages available to all undergraduate and postgraduate healthcare students and how they can be accessed.
Asked by: Graham P Jones (Labour - Hyndburn)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans his Department has to increase funding to schools in order to allow them to cover the one per cent shortfall in the planned 3.5 per cent increased pay award for teachers.
Answered by Nick Gibb
In July the Department announced that it was accepting the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) recommendation in full for a 2.75% uplift to the minima and maxima of all pay ranges and allowances.
In recognition of the difference between this award and the 2% the Department has assessed schools can afford on average nationally, it is providing an additional £105 million of funding for schools this year. This is on top of the £321 million the Department is already providing this year through the Teachers’ Pay Grant to cover the ongoing cost of the 2018 pay award.
Asked by: Graham P Jones (Labour - Hyndburn)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what plans he has to increase funding to the Charity Commission in order to investigate complaints against charities and build public trust in the charitable sector.
Answered by Simon Clarke
In January 2018 the Charity Commission was allocated an additional £5m per year from the Government to help it respond to significant increases in demand on its core regulatory functions. Any future funding will be decided as part of the upcoming Spending Round.
Asked by: Graham P Jones (Labour - Hyndburn)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what plans he has to meet representatives of the Lima Group to discuss the political and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela.
Answered by Christopher Pincher
On 4 February the former Minister for Europe and the Americas attended a Lima Group meeting in Ottawa at the invitation of the Canadian Foreign Minister. He addressed the meeting and spoke with several Lima Group colleagues including the Colombian, Brazilian and Chilean Foreign Ministers and the Peruvian Vice Foreign Minister. On 18 June, the former Foreign Secretary and the former Minister for Europe and the Americas met President Duque and Foreign Minister Holmes of Colombia, and discussed the situation in Venezuela and the impact on Colombia, the most impacted country in the region. On 5 August I spoke the Peruvian Foreign Minister, where they discussed the situation in Venezuela and its impact on the region. We continue to work closely with the Lima Group, the Organisation of American States, the United States and like-minded European and international partners to find a peaceful solution to the Venezuela crisis.
Asked by: Graham P Jones (Labour - Hyndburn)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he plans to take to ensure that 16 and 17 year olds in Lancashire classed as not known in respect of their education, training or employment status by Lancashire County Council's internal scrutiny committee are identified and helped into further education and apprenticeships.
Answered by Kemi Badenoch - President of the Board of Trade
Under the 2008 Education and Skills Act, local authorities have a statutory duty to identify and track participation of 16 and 17-year-olds in education or employment with training, to support those who are not participating to do so, and to make sure there is sufficient, suitable education and training provision to meet their needs. Local authorities also have a duty to work with schools to identify those young people who need targeted support or who are at risk of not participating post-16. Alongside this, they must lead the September Guarantee process which guarantees all young people a suitable place in further education at the end of years 11 and 12.
In line with these duties, where a young person is identified as ‘Not in Education, Employment and Training’ (NEET), the local authority has a responsibility to work with them. Similarly, where a young person’s destination is identified as ‘not known’, the local authority must continue to try to locate and contact the young person through various routes.
Local authorities may choose to organise their tracking of young people in a variety of ways; however, all local authorities have a duty to submit monthly data to the Department for Education’s ‘National Client Caseload Information System’ (NCCIS). This data is then published by the department, throughout the year in various publications, for transparency purposes.
The department publishes the NEET scorecard annually, which pulls together all of the NCCIS data published throughout the previous year and other relevant data. The scorecard ranks local authorities into 5 groups based on their performance on the percentage of 16 and 17-year-olds NEET and whose activity is not known. The department actively performance manages those local authorities in the bottom group. These actions can vary from engagement at official level, meetings and ministerial letters.
As this year’s scorecard has yet to be published, it will not be possible to confirm at this time exactly what action will be taken with individual local authorities. However, as local authority groups will be based on the NCCIS NEET and participation data, published on 20 June 2019[1], which shows that Lancashire County Council’s NEET and not known percentage is 10%, of which 8% were not known, which is above the North West average of 3.2% and the England average of 2.9%, it is likely that performance management action will be taken in relation to Lancashire local authority.
The department’s performance management approach has worked well in the past, with the majority of the local authorities contacted achieving improvements in their submitted data. Where improvements are not achieved, in a reasonable timeframe, the department follows up at official level with formal meetings to agree action plans and deadlines for improvement.
[1] NEET and Participation Local Authority Figures: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/neet-and-participation-local-authority-figures.
Asked by: Graham P Jones (Labour - Hyndburn)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what plans he has to work with Transport for the North to expand the M65 to Bradford and Leeds.
Answered by George Freeman
The Department announced in March 2019 that Highways England would work with Transport for the North on a study looking at options for improving road links between the M65 and north and west Yorkshire. The output of this study will inform consideration of the case for future investment.
Asked by: Graham P Jones (Labour - Hyndburn)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans he has to provide additional funding to local authorities who record an increase in the number of pupils with special educational needs.
Answered by Kemi Badenoch - President of the Board of Trade
Our ambitions for children and young people with complex special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are exactly the same as for every other child and young person. As part of this, we are pleased to announce that we will be providing an additional £700 million, 10% in high needs funding next year alone, which will help local authorities to ensure that they can continue to offer the right support for children and young people with the most complex SEND.
Asked by: Graham P Jones (Labour - Hyndburn)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what plans he has to meet his Yemeni counterpart to discuss how aid can reach people in need without being intercepted and captured by Houthi rebels.
Answered by Andrew Murrison - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence)
The UK remains extremely concerned by constraints on humanitarian access within Yemen. We regularly raise obstructions to humanitarian access and aid distributions with all parties at the highest levels and call for compliance with the UN Security Council Resolution 2451.
The Foreign Secretary discussed the issue of humanitarian access across Yemen with his Government of Yemen counterparts earlier this year, and on 17 July UK officials raised the issue with the Government of Yemen’s Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed in Riyadh. I discussed it during my visit in the Gulf region last week. The UK will continue to press this issue with senior Yemeni counterparts.