First elected: 7th June 2001
Left House: 30th March 2015 (Retired)
Speeches made during Parliamentary debates are recorded in Hansard. For ease of browsing we have grouped debates into individual, departmental and legislative categories.
e-Petitions are administered by Parliament and allow members of the public to express support for a particular issue.
If an e-petition reaches 10,000 signatures the Government will issue a written response.
If an e-petition reaches 100,000 signatures the petition becomes eligible for a Parliamentary debate (usually Monday 4.30pm in Westminster Hall).
These initiatives were driven by Meg Munn, and are more likely to reflect personal policy preferences.
MPs who are act as Ministers or Shadow Ministers are generally restricted from performing Commons initiatives other than Urgent Questions.
Meg Munn has not been granted any Urgent Questions
Meg Munn has not been granted any Adjournment Debates
The Bill failed to complete its passage through Parliament before the end of the session. This means the Bill will make no further progress. A Bill to enable schools to register as Industrial Provident Societies; to amend the Education Act 2006 to enable nursery schools to be established as school trusts; and for connected purposes.
Meg Munn has not co-sponsored any Bills in the current parliamentary sitting
Data for the number of people applying for or receiving assistance under the Warm Home Discount scheme are not available on a regional or constituency basis. Ofgem publishes an annual report on the scheme’s operation each year. The most recent report, for 2013/14, is available here:
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications-and-updates/warm-home-discount-annual-report-scheme-year-3.
I have decided to support two of the three applications that we received under the women in engineering call under the Employer Ownership Fund. The two companies will receive a total of £104k, £12k of which is planned to be drawn down by one of the companies in the current Financial Year. The Women in Engineering call is now closed. There are, however, further opportunities to support women engineers in the two Employer Ownership Fund calls that are currently open: supporting companies in the automotive supply chain and supporting engineering careers in smaller companies.
The offer for support for women in engineering under the Employer Ownership Fund was closed for applications on 5 December 2014. The applications are being assessed and I hope to be able to announce any successful applications shortly.
As part of this Government's long-term economic plan to pay down the deficit and help the country live within its means, we have reduced the size of the Civil Service. It has shrunk by 16% since the 2010 General Election, or 21% once adjusted for Machinery of Government changes that moved staff into the Civil Service since the last General Election. This represents a significant increase in efficiency and productivity, and has helped save taxpayers £2.4bn last year alone, compared to spending in the year before the 2010 General Election.
In response to the Ofsted thematic review ‘The sexual exploitation of children: it couldn't happen here, could it?’[1] the Department for Education will revise and re-issue the 2009 ‘Safeguarding children and young people from sexual exploitation’ guidance to reflect recent research, good practice and findings from child sexual exploitation reviews and criminal investigations. As it is statutory guidance, the department will consult and discuss with other government departments on the scope of the document.
On 3 March 2015, a summit was held where the government launched new measures to tackle child sexual exploitation: ‘Tackling Child Sexual Exploitation’.[2]
[2] www.gov.uk/government/publications/tackling-child-sexual-exploitation--2
The Department for Education wants to see more science graduates in teaching, both at primary and secondary level. There are currently around 26,100 primary teachers in state schools with science-related degrees (11.5%). We promote primary teaching to science graduates through our “Get into Teaching” campaign as well as supporting 500 primary places to Teach First which recruits top graduates into teaching.
In addition to initial teacher training, we are supporting a number of initiatives to improve the science knowledge of existing primary teachers. There are 266 Specialist Leaders of Education in science who are boosting other teachers’ knowledge across the country. We are also collaborating with the Wellcome Trust who are developing a programme for primary science teachers to strengthen further their expertise. In this way, they will be able to train non-specialist teachers to excel in science, providing further capacity in this important area.
A robust assessment of the needs of a child and their family and how these needs will be met through on-going support from the local authority is crucial if children are to return home safely and successfully from care. The Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010 are clear that the child’s care plan must provide details of the advice, assistance and support that the responsible authority intends to provide after the child has returned home. Page 19 of Working Together to Safeguard Children 2013 sets out the principles and parameters of a good assessment. The guidance is published online at:
www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-together-to-safeguard-children
Improving practice when children return home from care is a priority for the Government. In 2013 we consulted on a range of proposals to improve permanence for looked-after children. Department for Education officials have convened a meeting of the relevant Expert Group on 9 September to discuss these issues and the Government’s formal response will be published later this year.
Responses to the consultation on further delegation of children's social care functions are currently being considered.
Responses to the consultation on further delegation of children's social care functions are currently being considered. Local authorities will be able to apply to the Children's Social Care Innovation Programme for support to make use of any new freedoms introduced, and the impact of activities funded through the programme will be robustly evaluated.
Part 1 of the Children and Young Person's Act 2008 currently allows local authorities to delegate social care functions relating to children in care and care leavers. The legislation precludes delegation of independent reviewing officer functions, and of adoption functions, unless the other party to the arrangement is a registered adoption society.
The Government's proposals would not alter those exemptions, but seek to enable local authorities to delegate a wider range of social services functions (if they so wish), to broaden the range of approaches available to secure the best outcomes for children in their area. The recent consultation on the proposals closed on Friday 30 May and responses are being considered.
The Government is considering the outcome of its consultation on proposals to enable local authorities to delegate children's social care functions to third parties, to help broaden the range of approaches available to secure the best outcomes for children in their area. The proposals place no obligations on local authorities and do not remove their responsibility for ensuring their statutory obligations on child protection and children's social care are met.
Information on DFID’s provisions to the British Overseas Territories is published in our Operational Plan: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dfid-overseas-territories-department-operational-plan-2014.
DFID provides funds to the Pitcairn Islands in the form of budget aid. In 2013/14 the breakdown of how this was allocated was:
Shipping service £1,330,000
Child safeguarding £500, 000
The remaining £980,000 was spent on maintaining the island’s basic services as well as the costs associated with the running of Pitcairn Islands Office (PIO) in Auckland, New Zealand.
I refer the Hon. Member to the Oral answer given to her by the Secretary of State for International Development, my Rt. Hon Friend the member for Putney (Justine Greening) on 5 March 2014 (Official Report, column 871).
DFID holds a legal obligation to meet the reasonable needs of Pitcairn Island. In 2013/14 DFID provided a total of £2,809,462 to Pitcairn Island to ensure the maintenance of a range of basic public services (e.g. electricity, telecommunications), to ensure continued child safeguarding is in place for the remaining children on Pitcairn, and to support the shipping service that provides the only freight and passenger services to and from the island.
DFID may give aid indirectly to countries in the Pacific region if multilateral organisations in receipt of DFID core contributions give aid to countries there. It is not possible to directly track this funding to individual countries. To provide an indication of the destination of aid, the overall proportions of aid reported by the relevant multilateral agencies are used to impute a DFID contribution. The DFID imputed multilateral shares for the Pacific region in 2011/12 are set out in the table below. Figures for 2013/14 will not be available until autumn 2015.
Pacific Island Countries | £ (thousand) |
Cook Islands | 88 |
Fiji | 0 |
Kiribati | 3,537 |
Marshall Islands | 4 |
Micronesia, Fed. States | 10 |
Nauru | 69 |
Niue | 0 |
Palau | 1 |
Papua New Guinea | 0 |
Pitcairn Islands | 0 |
Samoa | 1,444 |
Solomon Islands | 570 |
Tokelau | 2 |
Tonga | 4,393 |
Tuvalu | 1,399 |
Vanuatu | 264 |
Wallis & Fortuna | 0 |
South Pacific Regional | 0 |
Oceania, regional | 275 |
Total Pacific | 12,055 |
The number of fatal road accidents in which a driver of Heavy Goods Vehicles (over 3.5 tonnes) had “Fatigue” as contributory factor together with the number of fatalities resulting from those accidents is given below:
Year | Number of fatal accidents |
| Number of fatalities |
2011 | 9 |
| 10 |
2012 | 8 |
| 9 |
2013 | 10 |
| 11 |
The Department does not collect information specifically on drivers falling asleep at the wheel. However, the Department does hold information on the number of accidents where the attending police officer judged that driver fatigue contributed to the cause of the accident. The table below provides the number of fatal road traffic accidents that were reported to the police in which at least one driver was allocated the contributory factor of fatigue for 2011 to 2013.
Year | Number of fatal accidents |
2011 | 80 |
2012 | 59 |
2013 | 68 |
We do not disclose details of meetings between Ministers and Officials.
We do not disclose details of meetings between Ministers and Officials.
We do not disclose details of meetings between Ministers and Officials.
The Minister for Welfare Reform and Minister for Disabled People meet with HSE officials on a regular basis. Other Ministers also meet with HSE officials on specific issues.
No. However, the Logistics Strategy Forum’s predecessor, the Road Distribution Action Group, which represented trade associations, trades unions and other stakeholders, expressed concerns about fatigue and sleep disorders among drivers. Their work was taken up by the Department for Transport, which leads on driver health-related issues such as driver hours, medical fitness to drive and rest facilities at the roadside.
My Rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health has not had discussions with Minsters in the Department for Education (DfE). However, I have been fully engaged with my counterpart at DfE in relation to the provisions in the Care Act 2014 which affect young carers, and the inter-relation with the provisions of the Children and Families Act 2014.
The Care Act falls within the responsibility of the Department of Health and we issued statutory guidance under the Act last October. The DfE was closely involved in the development of the guidance in relation to issues affecting young carers.
The Government recognises that transition into adulthood is an important time when young people and their families are thinking about their goals and aspirations for the future and to ensure that they are not left without care and support. The Care Act, for the first time, places a legal duty on local authorities to assess the needs of young carers as they approach adulthood and that transition assessment and planning must consider how to support young carers to prepare for adulthood and how to raise and fulfil their aspirations.
The Care and Support (Assessment) Regulations 2014 require local authorities when looking at the needs of an individual, to consider the impact of those needs on any young carer involved in the situation and identify whether the tasks they are performing are inappropriate.
We have also published guidance for local authorities on a ‘whole family approach’ to assessments, which will identify any children who are involved in providing care. Identification of a young carer in the family should result in an offer of a needs assessment for an adult requiring care and support and where it appears that they may have a need for support.
My Rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health has not had discussions with Minsters in the Department for Education (DfE). However, I have been fully engaged with my counterpart at DfE in relation to the provisions in the Care Act 2014 which affect young carers, and the inter-relation with the provisions of the Children and Families Act 2014.
The Care Act falls within the responsibility of the Department of Health and we issued statutory guidance under the Act last October. The DfE was closely involved in the development of the guidance in relation to issues affecting young carers.
The Government recognises that transition into adulthood is an important time when young people and their families are thinking about their goals and aspirations for the future and to ensure that they are not left without care and support. The Care Act, for the first time, places a legal duty on local authorities to assess the needs of young carers as they approach adulthood and that transition assessment and planning must consider how to support young carers to prepare for adulthood and how to raise and fulfil their aspirations.
The Care and Support (Assessment) Regulations 2014 require local authorities when looking at the needs of an individual, to consider the impact of those needs on any young carer involved in the situation and identify whether the tasks they are performing are inappropriate.
We have also published guidance for local authorities on a ‘whole family approach’ to assessments, which will identify any children who are involved in providing care. Identification of a young carer in the family should result in an offer of a needs assessment for an adult requiring care and support and where it appears that they may have a need for support.
Following consultation over last summer, we issued statutory guidance under the Care Act 2014 in October 2014, which is available at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/care-act-2014-statutory-guidance-for-implementation
The guidance covers the purpose of an assessment and outlines what local authorities must do when conducting carers’ assessments and in providing support for their eligible needs.
We have also published guidance for local authorities on a ‘whole family approach’ to assessments, which will identify any children who provide care for a member of their family and put in place appropriate support for the carer, including for a young carer. The guidance is available at:
NHS England is the lead commissioner for clinical guideline and quality standard for healthcare topics from the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE). NICE has advised that it has received a formal referral for a clinical guideline and quality standard on sleep disordered breathing from NHS England.
NICE’s clinical guideline work programme is prioritised with NHS England on an annual basis. Sleep disordered breathing has not been included in the initial list of topics to start development in 2015-16 but will be included in future rounds of prioritisation. Once it has been scheduled, the guideline will then take approximately two years to develop and the development of the quality standard will follow on from this.
Local clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) are responsible for assessing the needs of their local populations and for commissioning services to meet those needs. For patients with obstructive sleep apnoea, NHS England expects CCGs to take into account the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines when deciding what services should be made available.
NICE has published technology appraisal guidance which recommends the use of continuous positive airway pressure as a treatment option for adults with moderate or severe symptomatic obstructive sleep apnoea/hypopnoea syndrome, where certain criteria are met.
NICE has been commissioned to develop a quality standard on sleep disordered breathing and will in due course consider which conditions will be covered under the scope of the quality standard and the need for associated clinical guidance.
There are currently no special provisions for people with sleep apnoea who drive for a living, but this will be considered as part of the guideline.
Individuals diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnoea and who are waiting for continuous positive airways pressure therapy are prioritised according to clinical need.
We do not collect information centrally on the time people wait between diagnosis and treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea. The Referral to Treatment operational standards state that 90% admitted and 95% of non-admitted patients should start consultant-led treatment within 18 weeks of referral. In order to sustain delivery of these standards, 92% of patients who have not yet started treatment should have been waiting no more than 18 weeks. Whilst individual National Health Service organisations are monitored on their performance in this area, obstructive sleep apnoea is not separately identified.
Local clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) are responsible for assessing the needs of their local populations and for commissioning services to meet those needs. For patients with obstructive sleep apnoea, NHS England expects CCGs to take into account the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines when deciding what services should be made available.
NICE has published technology appraisal guidance which recommends the use of continuous positive airway pressure as a treatment option for adults with moderate or severe symptomatic obstructive sleep apnoea/hypopnoea syndrome, where certain criteria are met.
NICE has been commissioned to develop a quality standard on sleep disordered breathing and will in due course consider which conditions will be covered under the scope of the quality standard and the need for associated clinical guidance.
There are currently no special provisions for people with sleep apnoea who drive for a living, but this will be considered as part of the guideline.
Individuals diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnoea and who are waiting for continuous positive airways pressure therapy are prioritised according to clinical need.
We do not collect information centrally on the time people wait between diagnosis and treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea. The Referral to Treatment operational standards state that 90% admitted and 95% of non-admitted patients should start consultant-led treatment within 18 weeks of referral. In order to sustain delivery of these standards, 92% of patients who have not yet started treatment should have been waiting no more than 18 weeks. Whilst individual National Health Service organisations are monitored on their performance in this area, obstructive sleep apnoea is not separately identified.
The Better Care Fund has been set up to ensure considerable local discretion. Each plan is developed by local authorities and clinical commissioning groups before being approved by the local health and wellbeing board, to ensure that it is line with local priorities as articulated in joint health and wellbeing strategies. Local areas also have the discretion to put more money than the minimum allocation into the joint fund if this is in the best interest of the community they serve.
This is the biggest ever investment in integrated care and it is important that investing in new community-based services does not destabilise existing health and care provision in the short term. The Government has put in place some national conditions – for example protection of social care services, seven day services to support discharge, an accountable lead professional to coordinate care for those at high risk of hospital admissions - as well as a payment for performance element that links payments to achieving good outcomes for local people while sharing financial risk across health and social care commissioners.
Local commissioners, with their partners, are best placed to make decisions about how best to make integrated care a reality in their area. These national conditions are proportionate and allow local discretion whilst ensuring best use of public money to support integrated care for improved outcomes.
The populations for each of the UK Overseas Territories are:
Anguilla: 16,318 (2010)
Bermuda: 61,777 (2014)
British Antarctic Territory: no permanent settled population
British Indian Ocean Territory: no permanent settled population.
Cayman Islands: 56,700 (2012)
Falkland Islands: 2,932 (2012)
Gibraltar: 29,441 (2010)
Montserrat: 4,922 (2011)
Pitcairn, Henderson Ducie and Oeno (Commonly known as the Pitcairn Islands): 36 (2014)
South Georgia & the South Sandwich Islands: no permanent settled population.
Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia: 9,700 (2011) Cypriot nationals and 5,800 temporary based UK Defence personnel and families.
St Helena: 4000 (2009/2010)
Ascension Island: No indigenous population and no right of abode
Tristan da Cunha: 267 (2014)
Virgin Islands (Commonly known as the British Virgin Islands): 28,054 (2010)
The third independent Pitcairn Child Safety Review (CSR) provided a further assessment of child safety and safeguarding measures with 21 recommendations put forward. A summary of the recommendations was placed in the House of Commons Library last year. The majority of the recommendations have been implemented with a small number on going. A further CSR is under discussion.
Her Majesty's Government (HMG) has upgraded its presence on the island with a newly arrived Administrator. Officials visited the island in 2013 and had detailed discussions on child safeguarding with the Council. Child Matters Trust, a New Zealand based Non Governmental Organisation, visited the island in 2014 to deliver training. The new Governor based in New Zealand has re-iterated the importance of child safeguarding during his first visit in November.
There is a stronger partnership between HMG and the Pitcairn Island Council on child safeguarding. We work closely with the Council to implement all the recommendations. Our commitment to strengthen the protection of children, young people and their families on Pitcairn remains a top priority. Established policies and procedures are in place for handling child protection concerns. This includes the retention of a restrictive applications process for visits to Pitcairn by minors. There is a community of professionals on Pitcairn, including a police officer, a trained social worker, a teacher and a doctor, who all play an important role in child safety. Until such time as a future report shows no risk to children on the island, the very robust safeguarding measures will remain in place.
Although we have committed to develop and publish the UK’s first Implementation Plan by the end of 2014, we in fact hope to publish the document before then.
The Implementation Plan will include indicators and baseline data and will build on the National Action Plan (NAP) on Women, Peace and Security. It will be used to assess the impact of UK efforts on Women, Peace and Security throughout the life of this NAP. The Implementation Plan will focus on Afghanistan, Burma, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, Somalia and Syria; all countries facing very different situations but where more can be done to protect women; to involve them in building long-term security; and where the UK can make a real difference.
[Holding Reply: Tuesday 15 July 2014]
I refer the hon. Member to the answer given on 14 July 2014, Official Report, Column 530-531W.
Experimental statistics on Employment Tribunal (ET) fees data taken from the administrative IT system built to process fee receipts and remission applications, were published for the first time on 12 March 2015, as an Annex to the Tribunal and Gender Recognition Statistics Quarterly, October to December 2014 publication. It is our intention to publish them on a quarterly basis from this point forward subject to further data quality work.
Due to the experimental nature of the statistics, the publication stated that additional analyses will be carried out to assess their quality and that of the administrative system the data are extracted from. Information on protected characteristics is collected by this employment tribunal fee and remission IT system. Subject to the results of data cleansing and quality assurance work to assess its coverage, robustness and usefulness, figures on protected characteristics will be included in future publications in due course.
HM Courts & Tribunals Service collects information on the protected characteristics of those making a claim to the employment tribunals via the Diversity Monitoring section of the application form ET1. The form and questions can be found at http://hmctsformfinder.justice.gov.uk/courtfinder/forms/et001-eng.pdf.
The current fee remission scheme was introduced in October 2013, which established a single fee remissions scheme across all courts and tribunals of HMCTS (including the Employment Tribunals but excluding proceedings in the Immigration and Asylum Tribunal) and the UK Supreme Court.
The gross monthly income test, which was introduced following a consultation exercise, is designed to ensure that fee remissions are targeted to those who need them most. Those on qualifying benefits, including Income-related Employment and Support Allowance, Income Support, Income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance and Pension Credit Guarantee credit are automatically entitled to a full fee remission, provided they also meet the disposable capital test.
The table below outlines the employee success rate at employment tribunals for the 12 month period a) before and b) after the introduction of fees on 29 July 2013.
The table shows the four quarters wholly before fees were introduced from July 2012 to June 2013, and the four quarters wholly after fees were introduced from October 2013 to September 2014.
Employment tribunal cases can be brought under a number of jurisdictions called complaints. Each jurisdictional complaint is decided separately within a case. The information provided is the number of jurisdictional complaints that were decided by an employment tribunal. Individual cases can have a number of outcomes for different jurisdictional complaints.
Employment tribunal outcomes are published quarterly at: www.gov.uk/government/collections/tribunals-statistics
Jurisdictional Complaints disposed pre and post fees | ||
|
|
|
July 2012 to June 2013 | Total | % of total |
Claimant Successful1 | 34,998 | 42% |
Claimant Unsuccessful2 | 48,257 | 58% |
Total Jurisdictional complaints disposed | 235,811 |
|
|
|
|
October 2013 to September 2014 | Total | % of total |
Claimant Successful1 | 23,034 | 37% |
Claimant Unsuccessful2 | 38,476 | 63% |
Total Jurisdictional complaints disposed | 218,615 |
|
1 Claimant Successful includes Successful at Hearing and where a Default Judgment is made.
2 Claimant Unsuccessful includes Unsuccessful at Hearing, Default Judgment Claimant Unsuccessful, Dismissed at Preliminary Hearing and case Struck Out
Small businesses can be hamstrung by unfounded employment tribunal claims and taxpayers should not have to pick up the £74 million bill for running the service.
We have made sure fee waivers are available for those who cannot afford to pay, as well as diverting people away from potentially acrimonious hearings, where possible, through a new early conciliation scheme which has already been used by 37,000 people in its first six months.
The Government has committed to review Employment Tribunal fees but believes this is better determined by the new Administration following the Election.
My answer given on 15 October 2014, which can be viewed at
http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-question/Commons/2014-07-15/206019, records the number of fee remission awards in each month from July 2013 to June 2014.
Official statistics are due to be published on 12 March 2015 which will include the number of remission applications made and awarded for the employment tribunals on a quarterly basis from July 2013 to September 2014.
Employment tribunal cases can vary in nature and complexity and some can last over more than one year, particularly where collective disputes are involved. Claims in employment tribunals can be classified into either single or multiple claims. Multiple claims are where two or more people bring proceedings arising out of the same facts, usually against a common employer. Where claims are grouped as multiples, they are processed administratively and managed judicially together. We call these groups of claims ‘multiple claims cases’. One multiple claim case would therefore involve two or more claims. Claims can be disposed of in a variety of ways, including being rejected either because they are out of time, or have no reasonable chance of success. A minority of cases are disposed of at a full hearing.
There are therefore many ways the term an employment tribunal case can be interpreted. The costs directly attributable to each claim / case are not collected, as current systems do not allow us to link staff, judicial and other costs to claims / cases. As a result, it is not possible to provide average costs per case over the last three years on a comparable basis.