Greg Mulholland

An interim impact evaluation of the Growth Accelerator programme was published in November 2014. This was followed by a formative evaluation in January 2015, which looked at the delivery of the programme and informed the design of the Business Growth Service. A policy response to the formative evaluation was published in March 2015, in line with a commitment to the National Audit Office

A review of the Manufacturing Advisory Service was completed in December 2010 and published the following year. An Impact Analysis Methodology study of the Manufacturing Advisory Service is being published in early 2016.

A full economic evaluation of the Business Growth Service will continue beyond the closure of the service in March. All documents will continue to be available on www.gov.uk.

An interim impact evaluation of the Growth Accelerator programme was published in November 2014. This was followed by a formative evaluation in January 2015, which looked at the delivery of the programme and informed the design of the Business Growth Service. A policy response to the formative evaluation was published in March 2015, in line with a commitment to the National Audit Office

A review of the Manufacturing Advisory Service was completed in December 2010 and published the following year. An Impact Analysis Methodology study of the Manufacturing Advisory Service is being published in early 2016.

A full economic evaluation of the Business Growth Service will continue beyond the closure of the service in March. All documents will continue to be available on www.gov.uk.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills did not consult specifically on the decision to close the Manufacturing Advisory Service as this was a commercially sensitive decision. However, through our ongoing discussions with manufacturers and their representatives, there has been wide recognition that the best way for Government to support manufacturers is by getting the fundamentals of the economy right. We are creating a highly competitive business environment to make the UK an attractive location for manufacturing investment, supporting export success, boosting skills and protecting spending on innovation and the cutting edge smart digital manufacturing technologies which will drive the strong UK productivity growth in the future.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills did not consult specifically on the decision to close the Manufacturing Advisory Service as this was a commercially sensitive decision. However, through our ongoing discussions with manufacturers and their representatives, there has been wide recognition that the best way for Government to support manufacturers is by getting the fundamentals of the economy right. We are creating a highly competitive business environment to make the UK an attractive location for manufacturing investment, supporting export success, boosting skills and protecting spending on innovation and the cutting edge smart digital manufacturing technologies which will drive the strong UK productivity growth in the future.

To date I have received no official representations from business groups on the closure of the Business Growth Service.

We do not expect closure of the Business Growth Service to have an impact on small businesses and entrepreneurs.

The Department has not made such an assessment.

In 2012, the Government published a review of the available evidence concerning the likely effects of moving to single double summer time in the UK. This is available on the Government website at the following link. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/34587/12-1036-review-evidence-putting-clocks-forward.pdf

We are constantly reviewing consumer energy bills, however an assessment on the effect of using daylight saving time all year could have on consumer energy bills has not been carried out.

A copy of the letter to Lord Mendelsohn, dated 27 November, referred to during the debate on the Enterprise Bill on 30 November 2015, has been placed in the Libraries of the House. A previous letter to Lord Mendelsohn, dated 19 November, also on the subject of UK Government Investments, has also been placed in the Libraries of the House.

The ONS will publish estimates of the number of people directly employed in the low carbon economy in December 2015. Notwithstanding this, the Government’s commitment to low carbon infrastructure helps support many thousands of highly skilled jobs across the economy. For example, the proposed new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point C is estimated to support around 25,000 jobs, of which 7,000 are local. Similarly, the two Siemens offshore wind facilities in Hull announced in 2014 are estimated to support 1,000 direct jobs and 300 construction jobs. Internationally, low carbon strategies and potential jobs that arise from them will be guided by countries’ delivery of their intended contributions to a global climate change agreement. The UKis committed to supporting the world’s poorest to become more resilient to the effects of a changing climate and to take the clean energy path to growth and prosperity. Its international climate finance has helped support the creation of 39,000 jobs in developing countries up to April this year in relation to low carbon climate resilience.

Protecting forests delivers substantial climate, development, biodiversity and ecosystem outcomes. Stopping deforestation offers the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on a globally significant scale, while protecting the vital services, such as regulating rainfall patterns, on which the world economy depends for agricultural productivity and sustainable economic growth.

Addressing deforestation and supporting the sustainable management of forests is a priority for the UK’s £3.87 billion International Climate Fund (ICF), and the Prime Minister announced in September that this will rise to £5.8bn over the next Spending review period. To date, over £700m has been programmed, including initiatives that: incentivise action to reduce deforestation and forest degradation; support forest management, governance and market reforms; curb illegal and unsustainable use of forest resources; and promote investments in sustainable forestry, agriculture and land management.

The UK also plays an active leadership role in international fora, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Convention on Biodiversity, and the United Nations Forum on Forests. Last year, we played a key role in the negotiation of the New York Declaration on Forests, which set ambitious targets for halving (by 2020) and halting (by 2030) the loss of natural forests, eliminating deforestation from the production of key agricultural commodities by 2020, and accelerating restoration efforts.

The Government supports the view that the Paris Agreement should set out a long term direction for all countries and the international community on adaptation, which should encourage all countries to reduce vulnerability to the impacts of climate change and strengthen resilience, in order to enable climate resilient sustainable development.

The Government is committed to securing an ambitious, legally binding, global deal on climate change at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of the Parties (COP) 21 in Paris, in December.

My Right Hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Climate and Energy, is taking every opportunity to press for an agreement that secures ambitious mitigation commitments from all Parties that together keep the goal of limiting global warming to below 2 degrees within reach. We also want an agreement that includes a regular review of targets to increase ambition over time, a global long term goal and a robust, legally binding framework to ensure transparency and accountability of commitments to help the world track progress.

Our consultation on the feed-in tariff review reflects the need to balance sector support whilst keeping bills down for consumers. We strongly welcomed evidence from the sector during this review consultation, which ended on 23 October, and will respond in due course.

In 2014, renewables provided nearly one fifth of the UK’s electricity needs[1] and we are on track to reach our aim of delivering 30 per cent by 2020. Generation from onshore wind, offshore wind and solar PV is making a significant contribution to achieving this aim due to the support these technologies receive through the Renewables Obligation (RO). The deployment of substantial amounts of solar PV and wind capacity has also been supported through the small-scale Feed-in Tariff (FITs) scheme.

In addition to the support provided through the RO and FITs, fifteen onshore wind, two offshore wind and three solar PV projects, with a combined installed capacity of nearly 2 gigawatts, signed a Contract for Difference (CfD) earlier this year following the first CfD allocation round. These projects are expected to commission between 2016/17 and 2018/19.

Onshore wind and solar PV have now reached the point where there is enough capacity in the pipeline to help the UK meet its 2020 renewables commitments. We are therefore proposing changes to RO and FITs support which are intended to ensure that deployment from these technologies remains affordable under the Levy Control Framework. The changes proposed to RO support for onshore wind through the Energy Bill will also deliver our election commitment to end subsides for new onshore wind.

[1] Energy Trends

The Pubs Code and Adjudicator consultation will be published imminently.

The Government has announced a package worth up to £80m to support people who have lost their jobs as a result of SSI’s liquidation, and mitigate the impacts on the local economy. The funding will include support for workers to retrain and help for local firms to grow and create jobs. In addition, we have established a locally led task force which has submitted proposals on how it will use this funding which the Department is looking at closely. The task force has quickly mobilised local partners and delivered a successful jobs fair last week which attracted 1817 people and 53 local employers with another one planned for next week.

The Government recognises the current difficulties that are unique to the steel sector. While we cannot fix the price of steel, halt global overproduction or fix currency rates, the government has taken a number of measures to help our steel industry.

We have taken action on unfair trade, recently voting in support of anti-dumping measures on wire rod and steel tubing imports, as well as lobbying successfully for an investigation into cheap imports of Reinforcing Steel Bar.

The Government will be exempting eligible Energy Intensive Industries, including steel, from the indirect costs of the Renewables Obligation (RO) and Small Feed-in-Tariff (FiT). This will we can keep their bills down, keep them competitive, keep them here and also give certainty for future investment decisions. The steel industry’s request for flexibility over Industrial Emissions Directive exemptions has also been secured. This will save the industry millions of pounds of unnecessary expenditure at a time of crisis by offering steel companies more time to comply with this European legislation.

Finally, we are taking action to drive up the number of public contracts won by UK steel manufacturers and their partners through fair and open competition. The Government published on 30 October new guidelines for departments to apply on major projects when sourcing and buying steel. The new instructions will help steel suppliers compete on a level playing field with international suppliers for major government projects.

The table below shows the proportion of energy used in the UK from renewable sources, in each of the last five years, as measured under the 2009 EU Renewable Energy Directive.

Source:

Table DUKES 6.7, Digest of UK Energy Statistics, 2015 available at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/renewable-sources-of-energy-chapter-6-digest-of-united-kingdom-energy-statistics-dukes

The Government has ongoing discussions on the inclusion of investor-state dispute settlement provisions in the Free Trade Agreement currently being negotiated between the EU and US, also known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. These discussions have included other EU member states, the European Commission, civil society groups, and other stakeholders. We want investment protection provisions that guarantee the right of governments to legislate in the public interest while ensuring access to justice for investors who are discriminated against or treated unfairly.

The UK has Bilateral Investment Treaties in force with 94 countries and has never faced a serious investor state dispute claim.

The Government has ongoing discussions on the inclusion of investor-state dispute settlement provisions in the Free Trade Agreement currently being negotiated between the EU and US, also known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. These discussions have included other EU member states, the European Commission, civil society groups, and other stakeholders. We want investment protection provisions that guarantee the right of governments to legislate in the public interest while ensuring access to justice for investors who are discriminated against or treated unfairly.

The UK has Bilateral Investment Treaties in force with 94 countries and has never faced a serious investor state dispute claim.

The UK has protected the NHS and public services in all trade agreements and will continue to do so in this deal. We have made clear to our international partners that this is non-negotiable and sought assurances from them.

In response, in January, the European Commissioner for Trade, Cecilia Malmström, wrote an open letter to the then Minister of State for Trade and Investment, clarifying that EU countries will be free to decide how they run their public services and stating explicitly that the NHS is not at risk from this free trade agreement.

In March, she and the US Trade Representative, Mike Froman issued a joint public statement reiterating this.

I am not aware of this department having received any representations of this nature.

The UK has protected the NHS and public services in all trade agreements and will continue to do so in this deal. This is non-negotiable.

As Commissioner Malmström and US Trade Representative Froman have said “No EU or US trade agreement requires governments to privatise any service, or prevents governments from expanding the range of services they supply to the public. Moreover, these agreements do not prevent governments from providing public services previously supplied by private service suppliers; contracting a public service to private providers does not mean that it becomes irreversibly part of the commercial sector.”

My Right Honourable Friend has had frequent discussions with all relevant Secretaries of State, including the Secretary of State for Transport, on the options for reducing the UK’s carbon emissions. This is in advance of the Government outlining our plan, over the course of next year, for how we will meet our carbon targets.

We are currently consulting on options for freezing the £21,000 post-2012 repayment threshold. The consultation is open until 14 October.

To be eligible for higher education funding in England, students are required to be settled in the UK, be ordinarily resident in England and have been ordinarily resident in the UK and Islands for three years prior to the first day of the first academic year of the course.

As higher education is a devolved matter in the UK different rules may apply for students ordinarily resident in other parts of the UK.

Ministers and officials engage widely with partners across government, academia, faith groups and communities as part of the process of policy development and delivery. This includes in the development of the new counter-extremism measures I announced in my speech of 20 July, and our comprehensive new counter-extremism strategy that will launch later this year.

Ministers and officials engage widely with partners across government, academia, faith groups and communities as part of the process of policy development and delivery. This includes in the development of the new counter-extremism measures I announced in my speech of 20 July, and our comprehensive new counter-extremism strategy that will launch later this year.

The amount of funding available to any student is affected by whether they have studied previously. Eligible students who return to England and enter higher education in the UK will therefore have any years of previous study taken into account when an assessment is made for a full-time tuition fee loan for a new course.

One additional year of tuition fee loan may be available if the student was forced to withdraw from a previous course for compelling personal reasons. Students may ask that the conflict in their initial country of study be taken into account when they apply to Student Finance England for funding.

My Rt hon Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills replied to the hon. Member on 16 July.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills consulted on Support for Postgraduate Study in spring 2015, proposing a loan system to overcome financial barriers to accessing postgraduate taught Master’s, and to review support for postgraduate research. The consultation response is currently being analysed and the Department will respond in the autumn.

Statistics showing the number of English domiciled applicants awarded Maintenance Grants for study at UK providers are published annually by the Student Loans Company (SLC) in the Statistical First Release ‘Student Support for Higher Education in England’.

http://www.slc.co.uk/official-statistics/financial-support-awarded/england-higher-education.aspx

The number of Maintenance Grants awarded to English domiciled applicants at each publicly-funded Higher Education Institution (HEI) in the academic year 2013/14 has been provided in the attached table.

In addition to the 488,700 applicants awarded Maintenance Grants at publicly funded HEIs, there was also 37,500 awarded applicants at Further Education Colleges and 40,800 at Alternative Providers of Higher Education in the academic year 2013/14.

Statistics showing the number of English applicants awarded Maintenance Grants for study at UK providers are published annually by the Student Loans Company (SLC) in the Statistical First Release ‘Student Support for Higher Education in England’.

http://www.slc.co.uk/official-statistics/financial-support-awarded/england-higher-education.aspx

Complete data for the academic year 2014/15 will be published by the SLC in November 2015 along with provisional data for 2015/16.

Start Up Loans and business support are provided directly by a network of delivery partners. Not all information regarding expressions of interest or applications is passed through centrally to the Start Up Loans Company. Therefore we cannot provide an accurate picture of the total number of applicants. However, in total more than 30,000 Start Up Loans have been issued to budding entrepreneurs across the country since the scheme launched in June 2012. A breakdown by region and local authority area is attached.

The Student Loans Company publishes performance data on customer satisfaction and timeliness in responding to complaints within its Annual Report and Accounts, which is publicly available on SLC’s website. There are no immediate plans to publish specific data on satisfaction levels of students who complain to Student Finance England.

The Student Loans Company (SLC) only hold separate data on the number of complaints lodged against Student Finance England (SFE) from 2013. The number of people who lodged complaints against SFE in 2013 and 2014 is detailed below. For information I have also provided the total number of complaints lodged against SLC in those years and the number of complaints expressed as a percentage of SLC’s customers:

The Skills Funding Agency does not allocate funding to specific geographical areas. The Agency allocates funding to colleges and training providers, some of whom operate on very local geographic footprints, whilst others provide training and skills services to learners and employers across the country. College and training providers are required to work with Local Enterprise Partnerships and local stakeholders to ensure that what they deliver locally is responding to local needs.

I refer the hon. Member to the speech I gave on 18 June 2015, a transcript of which can be found on the gov.uk, in which I say that “if you’re a troubled boy who is angry at the world, or a girl looking for an identity, for something to believe in and there’s something that is quietly condoned online, or perhaps even in parts of your local community, then it’s less of a leap to go from a British teenager to an ISIL fighter or an ISIL wife, than it would be for someone who hasn’t been exposed to these things”.

Data on the total value of exports are not available below the UK level. Data for the value of goods exports are published at regional level only by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in Regional Trade Statistics. Data on the value of service exports by region are not available.

Of the areas for which data have been requested only London has data available as this is reported as a region. The London region consists of the City of London and the 32 London Boroughs. The value of goods exports from the London region in the past five years is shown below.

The Department has not made projections for the value of exports in the next five years.

The Prompt Payment Code is a voluntary code for public, private and third sector organisations. Recent changes introduced a 30 day payment terms as a target which all signatories should work towards, and a maximum 60 day term. Whilst all signatories are actively encouraged to start complying with this early, it will come into force next year.

The Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 provides the power to introduce a reporting requirement for all large companies to report on their payment practices and performance. This requirement will be used to monitor the payment performance of large company signatories to the Code.

A company which is registered in the UK will be subject to the new reporting requirements, regardless of where its payment department is located.

I refer the hon. Member to information on the number and value of export licences we have granted. This data is available to view at: https://www.exportcontroldb.bis.gov.uk/sdb/fox/sdb/SDBHOME.

UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) does collect information from private sector companies on what contracts defence companies win. This data is provided on a confidential basis and only published in aggregated format. The 2013 figures published in July 2014 can be viewed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/2013-defence-and-security-exports-figures-released.

Annual performance targets are in place to monitor the effectiveness of Student Finance England's processes for approving student finance applications and transferring of payments to approved applicants. The Student Loan Company’s performance against these targets is monitored on an ongoing basis by the SLC Board and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills meet the Chair and Chief Executive regularly to review the Company’s overall performance.

Annual targets are set for the Student Loans Company on both the length of time taken to approve student finance applications and the transfer of funds after approval. These targets are contained within the Annual Performance and Resource Agreement letter, the latest of which dated 24 April 2014 is publically available on the Student Loans Company website.

Student Finance England maintains two processes to provide interim financial support in cases where further information is required from applicants or their sponsors before means tested applications can be finalised. These processes run automatically each evening and allow Student Finance England to release the minimum non means tested support to students who have satisfied their personal eligibility requirements (e.g. Identity, Residency, Higher Education Institution and Course). Any additional means tested support will then follow on receipt of the appropriate information.