Asked by: James Frith (Labour - Bury North)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many and what proportion of businesses delivering public procurement projects in England are SMEs.
Answered by Oliver Dowden
This information is not centrally held, as each department is responsible for its own procurement.
Since January 2011, details of central government contracts above the value of £10,000 are published on Contracts Finder. Contracts published prior to 26 February 2015 can be viewed at: https://data.gov.uk/data/contracts-finder-archive. Those published after 26 February 2015 can be viewed at: https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Search
As of the end of May there are 40,797 individual users from 26,242 organisations registered on Contracts Finder, 17,727 of these (68%) are SMEs.
Asked by: James Frith (Labour - Bury North)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, whether his Department has made an assessment of the effect of the provisions of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 which impose a 30-day payment term duty on public bodies on improving payment behaviours in the construction industry.
Answered by Oliver Dowden
Through the Public Contract Regulations 2015, public sector buyers must include 30-day payment terms in new public sector contracts; and require that this payment term be passed down the supply chain. Public sector buyers must also publish annually on their payment performance on GOV.UK.
We strongly encourage businesses to report poor payment practice and instances of late payment, including late payment through the supply chain, in public sector contracts to our Mystery Shopper service to investigate.
We are also working with public sector construction procurers to drive the use of Project Banks Accounts (PBAs) to facilitate faster, more transparent and certain payments in the construction supply chain. This eases cash flow through the system and supports closer working within the supply chain.
Asked by: James Frith (Labour - Bury North)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what the annual birth rate has been since 2003.
Answered by Chloe Smith
The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply.
Asked by: James Frith (Labour - Bury North)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many complaints from sub-contractors in respect of slow and poor payment practices have been (a) received since the Mystery Shopper service was established by year and (b) followed up by visits by year; and whether any such complaints were received from a company linked by contract to Carillion.
Answered by Oliver Dowden
The Mystery Shopper Service publishes results of the investigations into the cases received on a quarterly basis:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/mystery-shopper-results
Asked by: James Frith (Labour - Bury North)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Prime Minister, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of creating at Cabinet level a Minister for older citizens .
Answered by Baroness May of Maidenhead
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the right hon. Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt), are responsible for a wide range of issues affecting older people.
Asked by: James Frith (Labour - Bury North)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what recent estimate he has made of the number of people eligible for enrollment on the electoral register who are not on the register in (a) Bury North (b) Bury and (c) Greater Manchester.
Answered by Chloe Smith
The Cabinet Office does not hold information on the numbers of eligible electors. Local authority registration statistics are accessible from the Office for National Statistics website (www.ons.gov.uk).
The Electoral Commission occasionally publishes estimates of the number of eligible people not included on electoral registers, but not at sub-regional level. The latest report on register completeness and accuracy was produced by the Electoral Commission in 2016 and is available online (www.electoralcommission.org.uk ).
Asked by: James Frith (Labour - Bury North)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what recent assessment he has made of the potential merits of reducing the voting age to sixteen.
Answered by Chris Skidmore
The Government has no plans to lower the voting age, but welcomes the ongoing discussions about this issue. This House has repeatedly debated and then voted against lowering the voting age. Only a handful of countries worldwide allow 16 year olds to vote.