Asked by: Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party - Aberdeen North)
Question to the Northern Ireland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, how many posts there are for (a) press, (b) media and (c) other communications staff in his Department; and what the salary band is for each post.
Answered by Hilary Benn - Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
In the central Northern Ireland Office communications team, there are a total of ten full-time equivalent Government Communication Service professionals.
Of this total, six work in the media team which covers press and media responsibilities.
This is the latest available data from June 2024.
Asked by: Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party - Aberdeen North)
Question to the Northern Ireland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, how many and what proportion of the (a) primary and (b) secondary legislation sponsored by (i) their Department or (ii) their predecessor Department has undergone a post legislative review in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Conor Burns
The Northern Ireland Office has not undertaken any post legislative reviews on primary and secondary legislation within the last ten years.
This information is only held for internal administrative reasons and may not be exhaustive, for example, due to machinery of government changes to departmental structure in the past decade.
Asked by: Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party - Aberdeen North)
Question to the Northern Ireland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, how many post legislative reviews (a) their Department or (b) their predecessor Department has undertaken on (i) primary and (ii) secondary legislation in each of the last five years.
Answered by Conor Burns
The Northern Ireland Office has not undertaken any post legislative reviews on primary and secondary legislation within the last ten years.
This information is only held for internal administrative reasons and may not be exhaustive, for example, due to machinery of government changes to departmental structure in the past decade.
Asked by: Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party - Aberdeen North)
Question to the Northern Ireland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, how many pieces of (a) primary and (b) secondary legislation their Department has sponsored in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Conor Burns
The number of pieces of both primary and secondary legislation sponsored by Government Departments could be calculated using publicly available information. This information is not held within the Department.
Asked by: Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party - Aberdeen North)
Question to the Northern Ireland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, what steps he is taking to restore the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Answered by Julian Smith
Restoring the Executive and the Assembly remains my absolute priority. It is my firm view that the people of Northern Ireland need their elected representatives back in Government to take important decisions on the issues that matter most to them.
The parties remain engaged and are demonstrating a willingness to find solutions to the remaining critical issues; a renewed determination to find agreement will be needed if the process is to conclude in the coming weeks. I continue to encourage the parties to come together to work towards restoring devolved government.
Asked by: Kirsty Blackman (Scottish National Party - Aberdeen North)
Question to the Northern Ireland Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, how many hours her Department spent on processing freedom of information requests in each of the last 24 months.
Answered by Ben Wallace
The Northern Ireland Office (NIO) has provided a Shared FOI Service along with the Wales Office since September 2014. The FOI Team consists of one full-time member of NIO staff and three part-time members of Wales Office staff, who together contribute 0.4 FTE (full-time equivalent). Man hours spent on this area of work are not measured on a monthly basis; the Departments have allocated 1.4 staff who are responsible for this area of work.