Asked by: Maria Miller (Conservative - Basingstoke)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
What assessment he has made of the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on employers' attitudes towards flexible working.
Answered by Paul Scully
During the pandemic, up to 47% of the workforce have worked from home. While this is not the only form of flexible working, we hope this will have a positive impact on attitudes towards greater flexibility in when and where work is done. We will build on this as we look to make flexible working the default.
Asked by: Maria Miller (Conservative - Basingstoke)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, pursuant to the Answer of 25 June 2018 to Question 155213 on conditions of employment: pregnancy, when the Government plans to publish a review of employment protections for women who are pregnant or returning from maternity leave.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
The review is underway, and we plan to publish a consultation in due course.
Asked by: Maria Miller (Conservative - Basingstoke)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how many people have been (a) prosecuted and (b) convicted for offences relating to filing false information with Companies House under section 1112 of the Companies Act 2006 in each of the last 5 years.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
Since January 2013, criminal proceedings have been instituted by the Department against one person for two offences under s1112 Companies Act 2006. A guilty plea was entered to one offence and the second was withdrawn.
Asked by: Maria Miller (Conservative - Basingstoke)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what estimate the Government has made of the number of women who could be experiencing discrimination at work whilst (a) pregnant, (b) on maternity leave and (c) returning from maternity leave; and what plans the Government has to regularly update those figures.
Answered by Andrew Griffiths
In 2016 EHRC published the findings of a substantial research programme (commissioned jointly with the then Department for Business Innovation and Skills) based on interviews with 3,034 employers and 3,254 mothers. This found that around one in nine mothers reported that they were either dismissed; made compulsorily redundant, where others in their workplace were not; or treated so poorly they felt they had to leave their job.
The next estimate will be in 2020 to allow time for the current package of interventions to take effect. ln the interim Government will monitor others’ findings (such as the recent EHRC poll on employer attitudes) for any signs that the interventions are starting to have an impact or of changes in employers’ practices.
Asked by: Maria Miller (Conservative - Basingstoke)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with reference to page eight of the the Government response to Women and Equality Select Committee Report on Pregnancy and Maternity Discrimination, published in January 2017, what progress is being made to consider and bring forward proposals to ensure that employment protections are sufficient for those who are pregnant or returning from maternity leave.
Answered by Andrew Griffiths
The Government was responding to a recommendation about protection from redundancy. In the response to the Matthew Taylor Review of modern working practices, the Government committed to review the legislation relating to redundancy protection and consider whether this is sufficient. This work is underway.
Asked by: Maria Miller (Conservative - Basingstoke)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what estimate he has made of the number of cases of maternity discrimination that have been taken to Employment Tribunals in each of the past five years.
Answered by Andrew Griffiths
The number of cases of maternity discrimination taken to employment tribunals can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/tribunals-statistics. The data for the last five years is as follows:
Number of receipts (claims):
Financial Year Suffer a detriment/unfair dismissal maternity
Number of disposals (cases closed):
Financial Year Suffer a detriment/unfair dismissal maternity
Asked by: Maria Miller (Conservative - Basingstoke)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what estimate he has made of the number of Employment Tribunal cases that have successfully been brought beyond the three-month court time limit.
Answered by Andrew Griffiths
Government has figures available for the first quarter. Over that period, 21 cases were received out of time citing pregnancy/maternity as the reason. All of these cases were accepted.
Asked by: Maria Miller (Conservative - Basingstoke)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what estimate the Government has made of the number of women who could be experiencing discrimination at work whilst (a) pregnant, (b) on maternity leave and (c) returning from maternity leave; and what plans the Government has to regularly update those figures.
Answered by Andrew Griffiths
In 2016 EHRC published the findings of a substantial research programme (commissioned jointly with the then Department for Business Innovation and Skills) based on interviews with 3,034 employers and 3,254 mothers. This found that around one in nine mothers reported that they were either dismissed; made compulsorily redundant, where others in their workplace were not; or treated so poorly they felt they had to leave their job.
The next estimate will be in 2020 to allow time for the current package of interventions to take effect. ln the interim Government will monitor others’ findings (such as the recent EHRC poll on employer attitudes) for any signs that the interventions are starting to have an impact or of changes in employers’ practices.
Asked by: Maria Miller (Conservative - Basingstoke)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what process her Department has for deciding whether (a) additional electricity generation is needed in a local area and (b) that generation should be centralised or decentralised
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government does not determine where new generation should connect to the network; this is a commercial decision for individual developers. The Department has, however, introduced the Capacity Market, which is designed to incentivise both new generation investment and maximise the use of existing assets to ensure that Great Britain as a whole has a secure, affordable and clean energy supply. On 6 May, Government announced that it would buy more capacity, earlier, and bring forward the start of the Capacity Market delivery period by a year to 2017/18.
The network charging regimes (through the locational price zones at the high-voltage transmission network or connection charging regime at the lower voltage distribution network) provide price signals that encourage developers to connect where it is economically efficient to do so, helping to limit costs passed through to consumers. The charging regimes are designed by the network industry in line with the requirement to be cost-reflective, and are approved by Ofgem.
New generation connecting above 132kv will connect to the transmission network, whereas at that level and below, it will connect to the local distribution network. In Scotland, 132kv also forms part of the transmission network.