Helen Goodman

Individuals applying to register to vote must provide their National Insurance number (NINO) or a reason why they are unable to supply it.

This requirement is clear on both the online and paper application forms, and an online application cannot be submitted without either the NINO or a reason why they can’t supply it. If a paper application is submitted without this information, the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) will contact the applicant to make them aware of the need to provide it. If a person has a NINO but does not know where to find it, the ERO will provide advice on how to locate it.

Where a NINO has not been provided and a reason for this has been given, the ERO may use local data sources, such as council tax or housing benefit, to verify the identity of the applicant. If the applicant is not verified through local data sources, the ERO will contact the applicant explaining that they will need to provide documentary evidence, such as a passport or the photo card part of a current driving licence, to verify their identity.

An individual’s National Insurance number can be located on official paperwork, such as their National Insurance card, payslips, or letters from the Department of Work and Pensions or HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC).

It can also be found via the HMRC enquiry service, which is available online, over the telephone and via post in both English and Welsh.

Information on where to locate your National Insurance number is available on-screen during the relevant points of the online voter registration process.

This advice, along with more detailed information, is available on the Electoral Commission’s website, as part of the resources aimed at local authorities, for Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) to use in response to public queries.

Failure to provide a National Insurance number does not result in an application being declared invalid.

Electoral Registration Officers have alternative methods of verifying an application including requesting documentary evidence of identity if personal identifiers, such as the National Insurance number or date of birth, are absent.

On the 15^th December the total number of Government Equalities Office staff employed was 52. All these were employed in the department's headquarters.

As of 30 November 2014 there were 1,441 civil servants working the Department of Energy & Climate Change headquarter buildings in London. There were also 102 civil servants working in its Aberdeen building.

As at 30 November 2014, 3100 staff were employed in the core-Department’s buildings throughout the UK. Of these 2555 were core-BIS staff and 545 were UKTI staff.

The main building for the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) is 1 Victoria Street, London. This is a building which the Department leases and as such leases the workstations within together with partner organisations. BIS Core occupy a total of 2,601 workstations within this building at a cost of £6067.89 per FTE.

Any space within the building is sub-let via a Memorandum of Terms of Occupation agreement and is charged per square metre, not per workstation.

The Department’s main building at 3 Whitehall Place / 55 Whitehall has a total of 1206 desks. All of these desks are owned by the Department and none are leased.

We do not hold data on actual arms sales, only on export licences that have been granted, which are available at: https://www.exportcontroldb.gov.uk/sdb/fox/sdb/SDBHOME.

All export licence applications are rigorously assessed on a case-by-case basis against the Consolidated EU and National Arms Export Licensing Criteria, taking into account all prevailing circumstances at the time of application.

Foreign Office posts overseas have a standing requirement to keep an eye on developments in human rights in their respective countries and to report back if there are any concerns that might affect licensing policy.

The national Community Learning (CL) objectives focus strongly on tackling disadvantage, including digital exclusion. Data for 2012/13 show that 9.4 per cent of all CL enrolments were in ICT subjects, with 97,310 learners participating.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) separately funds the Tinder Foundation to deliver a wide range of digital inclusion projects. Many BIS-funded learning providers - mainly Local Authority adult education services - work closely with the Tinder Foundation and UK online centres on a range of digital inclusion projects.

In addition BIS has run a series of basic digital skills training programmes with Tinder in recent years. These have helped 1.25m people gain the skills they need to become confident and safe internet users.

BIS contributes £210m pa to support community learning (CL) via the Community Learning budget, which is managed by the Skills Funding Agency. Funding is allocated via a grant arrangement with 315 learning providers, including Local Authority adult education services, Further Education colleges, and voluntary sector organisations. Many learning providers work with local sub-contractors.

The CL budget helps to support an on-going adult education offer in every area, rather than short term projects. Community Learning courses:

· meet a variety of learning needs, from personal development to pre-employment skills, health and wellbeing, parenting skills, crafts and languages

· are free - or nearly free - for people who are disadvantaged, with more affluent learners paying according to their means

· use flexible teaching and learning approaches and take place in accessible local venues in order to engage a wide range of people, including those who are very disadvantaged

· have varied outcomes, including improved confidence, better mental/physical health, confident parenting and progression to formal training and/or employment.

The Church Commissioners are operating an open and transparent marketing and bidding process for the property for sale near Bishop Auckland.

The Church Commissioners’ bidding process leaves no room for undue influence by any interested party. The Church Commissioners have not set criteria that would exclude any party from submitting offers, and all offers will be considered without prejudice or preference.

As a registered charity the Church Commissioners are under a legal duty to demonstrate that they have maximised the proceeds of sale of their assets to fund the wider mission and ministry of the Church of England, particularly in areas of need.

The Church Commissioners own areas of land across England, including four rural estates in the North East. As with other land and property owners, we review these holdings from time to time, based on a variety of commercial and other factors. Following a review, the Commissioners took the decision to offer a number of farms in the Bishop Auckland area on the open market. They continue to own other land and estates in County Durham.

The estate is being offered as a whole or in 10 separate lots. Lot 5 is a working farm and part of the farm includes largely unexcavated parts of the Binchester Roman Fort. The excavated part of the Fort, and the other unexcavated area, form part of Lot 6. The lotting takes account of a number of factors including practical boundaries and issues on the ground. For instance, if all of the unexcavated areas had been included in Lot 6, Binchester Hall Farmhouse and yard would be severed from the rest of the farm holding.

The Binchester Roman Fort is a scheduled ancient monument. It is a criminal offence to disturb a scheduled ancient monument by carrying out works without Scheduled Monument Consent, or causing reckless or deliberate damage to the monument. To offer best protection, public access to the excavated parts of the Fort is managed and controlled in accordance with a Deed of Guardianship with Durham County Council. This means that, as Guardians, Durham County Council must allow access to the site, but are able to do so in such a way as protects and preserves the site for the future. The property will be sold subject to this Deed of Guardianship.

The £1 million Woman and Broadband Challenge Fund is additional to the Super Connected Cities programme. It will support local activity to help women take advantage of the Government's investment in superfast broadband to set-up or grow their business. The 40 broadband projects in England already delivering the Superfast Broadband Programme are invited to submit bids to the Fund.

I speak to Ministers and discuss the Government’s priorities on appointment. Copies of the exchange of letters between Baroness Neville-Jones and me on her resignation from Government are available on the gov.uk website.

The records held by the Crown Prosecution Service do not specify the type of material which is the subject of a charge under Section 2 of the Obscene Publications Act 1959 (publishing or having an obscene article for gain). To obtain details of individual cases would require a manual review, which could only be undertaken at disproportionate cost.

The records held by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS)indicate the number of offences charged, in which a prosecution commenced at magistrates' courts under Section 2 of the Obscene Publications Act 1959 (publishing or having an obscene article for publication for gain), rather than identifying the number of people prosecuted.

Section 2 of the Obscene Publications Act 1959 creates the offence of publishing or having an obscene article for publication for gain.

The table below shows, in each of the last 8 years, for which figures are available, the number of offences, charged by way of Section 2 of the OPA 1959, and which reached a first hearing at magistrates' courts, in England and Wales.

The Cabinet Office is responsible for both the Conflict Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) and Prosperity Fund overall.

CSSF and Prosperity Fund ODA programme spend is also detailed on Devtracker and year end ODA spend is detailed by project level via the Statistics on International Development, which is published annually in November for the previous year.

The Prosperity Fund Annual Report provides details of the total spend by programme for the previous financial year. The Annual Report for 2018/19 will be published later this year. Information on Prosperity Fund ODA eligible programme spend is published regularly on gov.uk https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/official-development-assistance-oda-fco-prosperity-fund-spend

The CSSF has published programme summaries, which outline the programme’s funding allocation (split by Official Development Assistance (ODA)/non-ODA), objectives and project level activities for 2018/19 - https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/conflict-stability-and-security-fund-programme-summaries#programme-summaries-2018-to-2019

The CSSF Annual Report provides details of the CSSF’s total spend and breaks down by region and thematic area. The Annual Report for 2018/19 will be published later this year.

The Cabinet Office Accounting Officer has not sought a Ministerial Direction for expenditure on contingency planning for the UK leaving the EU without a deal.

The Conflict, Stability and Security Fund takes its responsibility to manage human rights risk very seriously and has robust processes in place to do so. All projects must comply with the UK’s domestic and international human rights obligations. Measures to mitigate risks are embedded in the way our programme teams work. Teams are required to identify a range of risks, including human rights, ahead of starting a programme and must continue to monitor those, and any emerging risks, throughout implementation.

In addition as part of an additional risk management process all security and justice programmes must have an Overseas Security and Justice Assessment (OSJA) which has been approved at the appropriate level, if necessary by Ministers. The CSSF confirms OSJAs are in place for all security and justice programmes as part of the annual review process. The CSSF does not hold a central record of all OSJAs.

On appointment to each new office, Ministers provide a list of all relevant interests to their Permanent Secretary, which are considered by the Cabinet Office, and the Prime Minister’s Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests. The next list of Ministers' relevant interests will be published in due course.

The Foreign Secretary had not agreed to support this event and knew nothing of his inclusion in the auction. The offer was not authorised and will not take place.

The government announced yesterday that John Penrose MP will be the Prime Minister's new Anti-Corruption Champion.

Information about any civil servant's outside employment is not held centrally and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost.

The Cabinet Office does not hold this information centrally. The Cabinet Office complies with the Civil Service Recruitment Principles and the Civil Service Management Code with regard to recruitment practice and the rules around political activities for civil servants.

The government does not comment on ongoing litigation.

The government does not comment on ongoing litigation.

Departments publish details of Ministers meetings' with external organisations routinely on www.Gov.uk.

Details of meetings held during the period October – December 2015 will be published in due course.

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply.

As part of the Transparency Agenda, all Government Departments, their agencies and public bodies now publish monthly statistics on their workforce. For the Cabinet Office, this is published on the Cabinet Office website at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/payroll-costs-and-non-consolidated-pay-data and on data.gov.uk at http://data.gov.uk/dataset/workforce-management-information-cabinet-office .

Information about the Cabinet Office workforce is also published in the Cabinet Office Annual Report and Accounts which are available at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/cabinet-office-annual-reports-and-accounts