Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for International Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, with reference to the Channel 4 Dispatches programme of 28 October 2019, if she will publish the expenses incurred by her Department in relation to the meeting between officials in her Department and US pharmaceutical firms.
Answered by Conor Burns
Departmental officials and Ministers regularly meet with businesses and stakeholders across a range of sectors in both the US and UK.
The government has been clear that the NHS is not, and never will be, for sale to the private sector, whether overseas or domestic. The government will continue to ensure that patients have access to the medicines they need, and that decisions on how to run public services are made by the UK government and the Devolved Administrations, not our trade partners.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for International Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, which public appointments she is responsible for.
Answered by Conor Burns
Export Credits Guarantee Department (UK Export Finance)
Export Guarantee Advisory Council
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for International Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, how much time off in lieu has been taken by staff in his Department in each of the last five years.
Answered by George Hollingbery
The Department for International Trade (DIT) has a Flexi-time policy, available for the use of all delegated grades and accessible on the Digital Workspace. This policy and the Department are compliant with the requirements of the Working Time Regulations 1998 in respect of civil servants’ working hours.
This policy allows DIT staff to take time off in lieu where they have worked extra hours. This is managed locally between employees and their line managers, whose responsibility it is to ensure that their staff are not working excessive hours.
Data on time off in lieu is not held centrally.
DIT is committed to supporting the wellbeing of all its members of staff and has appropriate policies in place to support this, alongside a departmental Health and Wellbeing Plan.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for International Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, what estimate he has made of the amount of unpaid overtime worked by staff in his Department in the last 24 months.
Answered by George Hollingbery
This information is not centrally held.
Line managers have a responsibility for ensuring that staff are not working excessive hours, and the department is compliant with the requirements of the Working Time Regulations 1998 in respect of civil servants' working hours.
DIT is committed to supporting the wellbeing of all its members of staff and has appropriate policies to support this alongside a Departmental Health and Wellbeing Plan implemented in January 2019, which includes activity to train senior leaders in Wellbeing Confidence.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for International Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, what the value of contracts held by his Department with (a) Deloitte, (b) Slaughter and May and (c) Mott MacDonald is in the last two years.
Answered by George Hollingbery
Details of central government contracts above the value of £10,000 are
published on Contracts Finder. Contracts published after 26 February 2015
can be viewed at: https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Search. The Department has awarded four contracts to Deloitte in the last two years with a total value of £3,481,009. No contracts have been awarded to either Slaughter and May or Mott MacDonald.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for International Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, how many redundancies there have been from his Department's trade promotion offices since April 2018.
Answered by Graham Stuart
There have been no UK civil servants from DIT or UKEF who have been made redundant since April 2018, as per the provisions of the Civil Service Compensation Scheme, a statutory scheme made under the Superannuation Act 1972.
This does not include locally engaged staff employed by the FCO overseas who work on DIT's objectives.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for International Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, pursuant to the corrected Answer of 22 January 2019 to Question 206251, how many civil servants in his Department were working part or full-time on projects in the Government Major Projects Portfolio in (a) June 2016 and (b) December 2018.
Answered by George Hollingbery
No Departmental projects have been included within the Government Major Projects Portfolio (GMPP) since it was founded on 14 July 2016. As such, no civil servants were working on GMPP projects on the dates referred to.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for International Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, how much his Department has spent on consultancy fees relating to the UK leaving the EU since July 2016.
Answered by George Hollingbery
The Department for International Trade (DIT) was created in July 2016 following the result of the EU referendum and was specifically established as part of the government's EU exit strategy. Given the Department's objectives it is not possible to identify which elements of these are specifically related to EU Exit.
The amount spent on consultancy, which relates to the provision of objective advice to the Department relating to strategy, structure, management or operations in pursuit of its purposes and objectives is published in DIT's annual report and accounts and can be accessed using the following link.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/department-for-international-trade-annual-report-and-accounts-2017-to-2018
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for International Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, on how many occasions his Department has been unable to notify Parliament of the particulars of a liability and thus fulfil the required 14 days’ notice prior to that liability going live in the last 12 months.
Answered by George Hollingbery
There have been no contingent liabilities in the Department for International Trade that were less than 14 days’ notice to Parliament.
Asked by: Jon Trickett (Labour - Hemsworth)
Question to the Department for International Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, how many meetings Crawford Falconer, Chief Trade Negotiation Adviser and Second Permanent Secretary for the Department for International Trade, has had with the policy adviser Shanker Singham since July 2017.
Answered by Graham Stuart
I refer the Hon. Member for Hemsworth to the answer I gave him on 31 May 2017, UIN 146742 & 146743.