Asked by: Mark Williams (Liberal Democrat - Ceredigion)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when she intends to submit any new police funding formula for England and Wales to a public consultation.
Answered by Brandon Lewis
Reforming the police funding formula remains a key priority for this Government and we are engaging with the sector to look at the options for taking this forward. We will not take further decisions until we have considered the conclusions of this process. Any new arrangements would be subject to public consultation before implementation.
Asked by: Mark Williams (Liberal Democrat - Ceredigion)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what consideration her Department gives to (a) tourism and (b) mental health statistics in assessing funding for policing.
Answered by Brandon Lewis
Reforming the police funding formula remains a key priority for this Government and we are engaging with the sector to look at the options for taking this forward. We will not take further decisions until we have considered the conclusions of this process. Any new arrangements would be subject to public consultation before implementation.
Asked by: Mark Williams (Liberal Democrat - Ceredigion)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent progress has been made towards a review of the Police Core Grant Distribution Formula for England and Wales.
Answered by Brandon Lewis
Reforming the police funding formula remains a key priority for this Government and we are engaging with the sector to look at the options for taking this forward. We will not take further decisions until we have considered the conclusions of this process. Any new arrangements would be subject to public consultation before implementation.
Asked by: Mark Williams (Liberal Democrat - Ceredigion)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what measures of rural deprivation are used by her Department when calculating police funding formulas.
Answered by Brandon Lewis
Reforming the police funding formula remains a key priority for this Government and we are engaging with the sector to look at the options for taking this forward. We will not take further decisions until we have considered the conclusions of this process. Any new arrangements would be subject to public consultation before implementation.
Asked by: Mark Williams (Liberal Democrat - Ceredigion)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment she has made of the value of using alternative measures of the policing needs of the night-time economy rather than the volume and density of bars.
Answered by Brandon Lewis
Reforming the police funding formula remains a key priority for this Government and we are engaging with the sector to look at the options for taking this forward. We will not take further decisions until we have considered the conclusions of this process. Any new arrangements would be subject to public consultation before implementation.
Asked by: Mark Williams (Liberal Democrat - Ceredigion)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of recent changes to immigration rules on retention and recruitment of nurses.
Answered by James Brokenshire
Following advice from the independent Migration Advisory Committee, the Government introduced an annual limit on Tier 2, the skilled work route, in 2011. In 2012 the Government announced that from 6 April 2016 Tier 2 migrants who apply for settlement in the UK will be required to meet a minimum annual salary requirement of £35,000.
The Home Office published full impact assessments on these changes when the rules were laid before Parliament. The impact assessments are available on the gov.uk website as follows:
Annual limit: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/migration-permanent-limit-tier-1-and-tier-2-impact-assessment
Settlement: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/changes-affecting-employment-related-settlement-tier-5-and-overseas-domestic-workers
Under the annual limit, NHS trusts have been given more than 1,400 Tier 2 certificates of sponsorship for nurses since April this year but over 600 of the places allocated to them in April and May this year have been returned unused.
Asked by: Mark Williams (Liberal Democrat - Ceredigion)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the effect of recent changes to immigration rules on nurse staffing levels in the independent and private sectors.
Answered by James Brokenshire
Following advice from the independent Migration Advisory Committee, the Government introduced an annual limit on Tier 2, the skilled work route, in 2011. In 2012 the Government announced that from 6 April 2016 Tier 2 migrants who apply for settlement in the UK will be required to meet a minimum annual salary requirement of £35,000.
The Home Office published full impact assessments on these changes when the rules were laid before Parliament. The impact assessments are available on the gov.uk website as follows:
Annual limit: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/migration-permanent-limit-tier-1-and-tier-2-impact-assessment
Settlement: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/changes-affecting-employment-related-settlement-tier-5-and-overseas-domestic-workers
Under the annual limit, NHS trusts have been given more than 1,400 Tier 2 certificates of sponsorship for nurses since April this year but over 600 of the places allocated to them in April and May this year have been returned unused.
Asked by: Mark Williams (Liberal Democrat - Ceredigion)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent assessment she has made of the need to provide access to her Department's services in Welsh.
Answered by James Brokenshire
This Government is fully committed to the Welsh language and to providing Government services in the Welsh language where there is demand for them.
Since September 2009, the Home Office has adopted a Welsh language scheme which applies to Home Office headquarters and the Home Office’s non-departmental bodies that do not have their own schemes. The Home Office produces an annual report detailing progress against the targets outlined in the Welsh language scheme, which is then submitted to the Welsh Language Commissioner (WLC) for comment.
The Commissioner’s response to the monitoring reports can be found on the WLC website www.comisiynyddygymraeg.org