Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps his Department is taking to develop innovative defence technology.
Answered by Alex Chalk - Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
The Ministry of Defence works closely with UK industry and academia, including Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SME), to identify and invest in innovative technologies that address our most pressing capability challenges as well as publishing our future priorities to incentivise investment.
The Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) finds and funds exploitable ideas to support UK Defence and Security quickly and effectively. In the last financial year, DASA allocated over £30 million across more than 150 projects, of which 64% were with SMEs.
Through the Defence Innovation Fund we have invested over £200 million of our commitment to spend around £800 million over a ten-year period.
Over the four years of this Spending Review, Defence will invest over £6.6 billion in Research and Development, supporting the development of battle-winning defence technology as a response to the accelerating pace of technological change.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps his Department is taking to support British shipbuilding.
Answered by Alex Chalk - Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice
I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave to him on 14 December 2022 to Question 104345.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the conclusions of the report by Oxford Economics entitled Assessing the impact of tax-free shopping in the UK, published in November 2022.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
Following the initial withdrawal of VAT-free shopping in November 2020, the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) published their assessment of the withdrawal of the schemes. Their assessment showed that withdrawing the scheme would raise a significant amount of revenue and have a limited behavioural effect on decisions to visit, or spend, in the UK
The Treasury has reviewed the Oxford Economics report and remains confident in the OBR’s analysis
In particular, the findings of the Oxford Economics report are underpinned by an assumption that introducing VAT-free shopping will generate an additional 1.6 million visitors to the UK.
We do not recognise these figures. The OBR, using a higher than usual price elasticity of demand to account for VAT-free shopping being targeted at luxury goods, put this figure at 20,000-30,000 for non-EU visitors, which would imply a figure of 60,000-80,000 of total visitors (EU and non-EU). That is about 5% of the report’s 1.6 million estimate. Reflecting this difference in estimates of additional visitors could lead to their report overstating the potential extra revenue by around £1 billion.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress her Department has made with Cabinet colleagues on rolling out the Family Hubs programme.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
On 9 February 2023, the government announced a number of updates which demonstrate positive progress in delivering the manifesto commitment to champion family hubs and their continued commitment to ensure every baby has the best start in life. The announcement included:
An additional £28 million has also been made available to the 75 local authorities to improve children's home learning environments, helping them to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. Further information can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/thousands-of-families-to-benefit-from-local-support-in-rollout-of-family-hubs.
Thousands of parents and carers across England will be able to access local, co-ordinated support and advice in raising a family, through the 75 upper tier local authorities that have received investment from the Family Hubs and Start for Life programme.
The 75 upper tier local authorities who are eligible for this Family Hubs and Start for Life funding were announced on 2 April 2022. The Programme Guide and sign up process was launched in August 2022 and all 75 local authorities have now signed up to the programme. We are now working with local authorities on their delivery plans.
Local authorities will be expected to open family hubs in the first half of 2023 and meet programme expectations by the end of March 2025.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to improve education outcomes for care leavers.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
This government is committed to ensuring that all care leavers are supported to succeed in education and achieve positive outcomes.
On 2 February, the department published ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’, our strategy for the reform of children’s social care. The strategy sets out the department’s plans to improve the education, employment, and training outcomes of children in care and care leavers. This includes, from 2027, a year-on-year narrowing of the gap in care leaver higher education participation rates compared to the general population.
The department will do this by increasing the support available in both higher and further education including the expansion of the Virtual School Head role to include care leavers up to 25 years old, the introduction of a gold standard accreditation scheme for higher education and further education institutions supporting care leavers, and further £24 million in pupil premium plus style between 2023 and 2025.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he is taking with his Cabinet colleagues to support businesses with energy prices.
Answered by Graham Stuart
The Government recognises the challenges that businesses are facing and is committed to helping ensure they are able to thrive. The Energy Bill Relief Scheme provides a discount on the wholesale element of gas and electricity bills to ensure that all eligible businesses that receive their energy from licensed suppliers, are protected from high energy costs over the winter period. The new Energy Bill Discount Scheme, will run from April until March 2024, and continue to provide a discount to eligible businesses.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many people applied for undergraduate pre-registration midwifery courses in each year since 2015.
Answered by Will Quince
The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) publish data on the number of applicants to midwifery courses in England. The number of applicants between 2018-19 and 2021-22 are shown in the table below.
| 2018-19 | 2019-20 | 2020-21 | 2021-22 |
Applicants | 8,140 | 8,750 | 11,040 | 10,340 |
|
|
|
|
|
Source: UCAS end of cycle 2022, published at the following link:
Published UCAS data only covers the period from 2018-19 onwards.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of the Government’s business rates policy in supporting small and medium-sized businesses.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
Small Business Rate Relief (SBRR) is available to businesses with a single property with a rateable value below £15,000. Properties under £12,000 receive 100 per cent relief, and there is tapered support available to properties valued up to £15,000.
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities publishes statistics annually (https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-non-domestic-rates-collected-by-councils) which show that over a third of properties in England (700,000) already pay no business rates at all as a result of 100 per cent SBRR, with an additional 51,000 in the taper.
The eligibility criteria for SBRR ensures that it effectively targets the smallest businesses where help is needed most and provides good balance between support and cost to the Exchequer.
At Autumn Statement 2022, the Government announced a package of changes and tax cuts worth £13.6 billion over the next five years. This includes new measures to reduce the burden of business rates on firms, including a freeze in the multiplier for 2023-24, extended relief for high street businesses in the retail, hospitality and leisure sector, an exchequer funded transitional relief scheme, and targeted support for small businesses.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he is taking to help support households with their energy bills.
Answered by Graham Stuart
In order to support households with energy bills, the Government has set up the Energy Bills Support Scheme which is delivering a £400 non-repayable government discount this winter.
The Energy Price Guarantee reduces the amount a household is charged per unit of gas or electricity, to an annual equivalent of around £2,500 for a typical household in Great Britain from 1 October 2022 to end of March 2023.
For households that use alternative fuels such as biomass, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) or heating oil, the Alternative Fuel Payment scheme will deliver an additional £200.
Asked by: Kieran Mullan (Conservative - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps his Department is taking to improve the UK’s financial services sector regulatory framework.
Answered by Andrew Griffith - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Chancellor provided a detailed written statement to the House in December 2022 on the government’s Edinburgh Reforms to improve the regulatory framework for financial services (HCWS425).
This builds on the Future Regulatory Framework (FRF) Review, which was established by the government to determine how the financial services regulatory framework should adapt to the UK’s new position outside of the European Union (EU), and to ensure the framework is fit for the future.
The outcomes of the FRF Review are now being delivered through the Financial Services and Markets Bill, a key piece of legislation that allows us to seize the opportunities of EU Exit and secure the UK’s position as a global financial hub.
The Government has also published an ambitious plan to enact the repeal of retained EU law in financial services and build a smarter financial services regulatory framework as part of the Edinburgh Reforms.
Amongst other areas, the document set out that the Government will split areas of regulation into tranches, prioritising those areas including those with the biggest potential to deliver improvements to UK economic growth. The government aims to make significant progress on tranches one and two of the programme by the end of 2023 and will ensure that there are opportunities for the full range of stakeholders to engage and to feed in views as the programme is delivered. More detail can be found online at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/building-a-smarter-financial-services-framework-for-the-uk