Asked by: James Morris (Conservative - Halesowen and Rowley Regis)
Question to the Home Office:
What steps he is taking to ensure that illegal migrants cannot profit from working in the UK.
Answered by Caroline Nokes
In the Immigration Act 2016, we made illegal working a criminal offence so that wages can be seized as proceeds of crime and introduced tougher sanctions on rogue employers. We have also recently introduced additional safeguards to protect legal migrants seeking employment who do not have the necessary documentation to establish their lawful immigration status.
Asked by: James Morris (Conservative - Halesowen and Rowley Regis)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department plans to take with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence to support the adoption and implementation of the new NICE Quality Standard on Spondyloarthritis, QS170.
Answered by Steve Brine
The Department is not involved in the direct promotion of quality standards. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) promotes Quality Standards (QS) and other guidance via its website, newsletters and other media.
On 28 June 2018, NICE published a new QS on spondyloarthritis. The QS includes four quality statements identified as the markers of high quality spondyloarthritis care. QS are important in setting out to patients, the public, commissioners and providers what a high quality service should look like in a particular area of care. Whilst providers and commissioners must have regard to NICE QS in planning and delivering services, they do not provide a comprehensive service specification and are not mandatory.
Asked by: James Morris (Conservative - Halesowen and Rowley Regis)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps his Department is taking better to protect horse riders on public highways; and if he will take steps to strengthen provisions within the Highway Code relating to how motorists should drive in the vicinity of horses.
Answered by Jesse Norman
The Department, through the THINK! Branded Road Safety Campaign, worked with the British Horse Society (BHS) to support its “Dead Slow” campaign to encourage car drivers to pass horses safely, and the ‘Horse Rider’ section on the THINK! Website has been updated to reflect the partnership with the BHS.
On 4 July, there was a Westminster Hall Debate on: ‘the Safety of Riders and Horses on Rural Roads’, in which these issues were more fully debated.
The driving theory test contains questions about how drivers should interact with vulnerable road users, including horse riders; and the hazard perception test includes a number of clips where horse riders are the hazard, either directly or indirectly.
The Highway Code provides advice to motorists about vulnerable road users such as horse riders and Rule 215 provides advice specifically on passing horse riders safely.
When the Department next reviews The Highway Code, any proposed changes will be subject to public consultation.
Asked by: James Morris (Conservative - Halesowen and Rowley Regis)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what progress has been made on proposed changes in the guidance on public rights of way; and from when the revised version of that guidance will be effective.
Answered by Thérèse Coffey
I am not in a position to update the Honourable Member on timings.
Asked by: James Morris (Conservative - Halesowen and Rowley Regis)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what progress has been made on the proposed changes in guidance for public rights of way; and from when she expects the updated version of that guidance will be effective.
Answered by Thérèse Coffey
Good progress has been made on drafting the various required statutory instruments and guidance, working with the Stakeholder Working Group who developed the recommendations for reform. The group produced a finely balanced package of recommendations and we want to present our work in one go because this is very much a package of recommendations. We hope to bring it forward but I am not in a position to say precisely when.
Asked by: James Morris (Conservative - Halesowen and Rowley Regis)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans the Government has to support the most vulnerable children and families.
Answered by Edward Timpson
It is a fundamental priority for this Government to keep children safe from harm and improve their life chances. We are reforming children’s social care, putting practice excellence and achieving more for children at its heart. We have made significant progress, reducing bureaucracy and recently announced a further £200m to support innovative new ways of working that focus on the needs of children and families.
Asked by: James Morris (Conservative - Halesowen and Rowley Regis)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to promote mental health education in schools.
Answered by Sam Gyimah
Children and young people’s mental health is a high priority for the department, and that is why my Rt Hon friend the Secretary of State appointed me as the first DfE minister with specific responsibility for this important area.
Over the last 9 months, we have funded guidance for schools on counselling and lesson plans to support age-appropriate teaching about mental health. Today the Government is launching a new campaign to tackle stigma and discrimination which aims to involve schools, children and young people.
We are also contributing £1.5m to a joint pilot for training single points of contact in schools and specialist mental health services; and providing funding worth £4.9m this year, through a dedicated mental health strand within our VCS programme, to support 17 projects delivering a wide range of support across the country to children and young people with mental health issues. These include projects to promote positive mental health in schools with organisations such as MIND and Place2Be, and new resources for parents on MindEd.
Asked by: James Morris (Conservative - Halesowen and Rowley Regis)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what his policy is on prioritising the development of Enterprise Zones on existing brownfield sites.
Answered by Lord Wharton of Yarm
Local Enterprise Partnerships rather than the Government decide which sites should be prioritised for development. A new bidding round for Enterprise Zones was announced by my rt. hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer (George Osborne), in his Budget statement on 8 July. Applications involving the development of brownfield sites will be considered alongside other proposals based on their strategic, economic and financial benefits.
Asked by: James Morris (Conservative - Halesowen and Rowley Regis)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what her Department is doing to ensure children's services rated as inadequate can be improved and begin to achieve their targets.
Answered by Edward Timpson
The Department for Education takes any failure to deliver services at the required level extremely seriously. The department is currently considering all the available evidence in order to act in a way which provides sustainable improvements for the children of Sandwell, ensuring that the services received by children, young people and their families improve to the required level.
The department believes that Sandwell has had sufficient time to make the necessary improvements. Sandwell was originally rated as ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted in January 2010. During the five years in which Sandwell has been subject to intervention arrangements, a large number of local authorities have managed to improve their services to meet the required standard.
The department currently intervenes in 20 local authorities in which children’s social care services have been identified by Ofsted as failing children and young people. The interventions include a range of strategies, from enhanced oversight by department officials, independent advisors or commissioners, through to more extreme cases which have required the department to remove services from the local authority’s control. The level of support provided will depend on the scale of the issues identified by Ofsted and the capacity of the authority to address them.
Asked by: James Morris (Conservative - Halesowen and Rowley Regis)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps the Government is taking in response to children's services in Sandwell being declared inadequate; and what steps the Government is taking to ensure children's services can perform to a good standard.
Answered by Edward Timpson
The Department for Education takes any failure to deliver services at the required level extremely seriously. The department is currently considering all the available evidence in order to act in a way which provides sustainable improvements for the children of Sandwell, ensuring that the services received by children, young people and their families improve to the required level.
The department believes that Sandwell has had sufficient time to make the necessary improvements. Sandwell was originally rated as ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted in January 2010. During the five years in which Sandwell has been subject to intervention arrangements, a large number of local authorities have managed to improve their services to meet the required standard.
The department currently intervenes in 20 local authorities in which children’s social care services have been identified by Ofsted as failing children and young people. The interventions include a range of strategies, from enhanced oversight by department officials, independent advisors or commissioners, through to more extreme cases which have required the department to remove services from the local authority’s control. The level of support provided will depend on the scale of the issues identified by Ofsted and the capacity of the authority to address them.