First elected: 18th June 1970
Left House: 21st October 2015 (Death)
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 Michael Meacher, 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.
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 require disclosure of various financial information by large companies; to provide for disclosure of beneficial ownership; to require banks to disclose to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs the identity of certain companies holding bank accounts; to require the publication of the tax returns of individuals with an income of more than a certain level and the largest two hundred and fifty UK companies; and for connected purposes.
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 introduce a principle that any financial arrangements made by a company or individual should not have as their primary purpose the avoidance of tax; to establish a statutory rule to apply in the assessment of such arrangements; and for connected purposes.
Michael Meacher has not co-sponsored any Bills in the current parliamentary sitting
The Department does not hold this information. However, we recently published an Energy Investment Report which showed significant levels of investment since 2010.
· January 2010 and 2013 mobilised over £45 billion in low carbon energy infrastructure,1 which will also support up to 250,000 jobs in the low-carbon energy generation sector by 2020.
· In 2013 DECC estimates that over £14bn was invested in electricity generation and networks.
· Nearly £8 billion invested across a range of renewable technologies in 2013 alone – a record year.2
· UK is the most attractive market in the world for investment in offshore wind and marine renewables.
[1] DECC estimates based on EMR Delivery Plan modelling
[2] Bloomberg New Energy Finance, nominal, converted to pounds sterling.
The savings announced by the Chancellor will come from a variety of measures including expected departmental underspends in demand-led budgets, efficiencies and some small budgetary reductions.
The allocations for the education of 16- to 19-year-olds in the 2015/16 academic year that were announced in March remain in place and we are not planning to change them.
All academies must be set up as charitable trusts, which ensures that any income must be spent on their charitable aims. The government has no plans to change these arrangements.
We are not expecting commercial GM planting here for a few years at least. There are no types of GM crop seed in the current pipeline for EU approval that are likely to be marketed and grown in the UK.
(a) The information requested for the number of JSA sanctions by Parliamentary constituency is published and available at:
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/
Guidance on how to extract the information required can be found at:
https://sw.stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Stat-Xplore_User_Guide.htm
(b) The latest published information on hardship awards covers the 12 month period from April 2011 to March 2012 can be found at
Figures on the number of hardship payments are currently being compiled and will require quality assurance ahead of publication.
Peer Reviews can be requested for any complex case where it is beneficial for it to be analysed with objective scrutiny to ensure all issues have been fully addressed. Peer reviews aim to identify process improvements and contain sensitive information and disclosing the content of these reviews, even in anonymised and summarised form, may still allow individuals to be identified.
Claimants placed in the Support Group have no obligation to attend Work Focused Interviews. We therefore do not hold information on those claimants invited for Work Focused Interviews.
The Department intends to publish figures on the number of hardship applications and awards in May 2015.
The Department has conducted 49 peer reviews relating to the death of a claimant. Peer reviews are conducted to assure the Department’s processes.
The information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.
The Department does monitor requests we receive for new statistics and consider whether we can produce and release analysis that will helpfully inform public debate. The Department is therefore looking at this issue with a view to seeing what statistics could be produced on a regular basis.
We deploy a comprehensive monitoring regime to check that sanctions are applied appropriately across our network. Where any site is making significantly more or fewer referrals than we would typically expect, we review their activity to ensure sanctions are being applied appropriately.
The information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.
We have interpreted the question to be for the number of Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA) claimants who were sanctioned and this information is published and can be found at:
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/
Guidance for users is available at:
https://sw.stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Stat-Xplore_User_Guide.htm
The information requested on how many JSA claimants continued to sign on during the period for which they were sanctioned is not readily available and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.
The information requested is not readily available and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.
The information requested is not readily available and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.
Decisions on clinical commissioning group (CCG) allocations are taken independently by NHS England, which agreed its approach to allocations for 2015-16 at its board meeting on 17 December 2014. The details of NHS England’s proposals may be found at:
http://www.england.nhs.uk/2014/12/12/board-meet-17-dec14/.
Every CCG in England continues to benefit from stable above-inflation increases in funding for 2015-16. NHS England’s policy has been to maximise funding growth for those CCGs furthest below target, with the aim that no CCG should be more than 5% below target allocation from the beginning of 2017-18.
For comparison, NHS Oldham CCG (which is currently 0.49% below target) received an increase in funding of 2.79% for 2015-16, whilst Greater Manchester CCGs, as a whole, received a 4.14% increase in funding. NHS Isle of Wight CCG, NHS West London CCG and NHS Westminster CCG all received 1.94% increases in funding which is the minimum level of funding increase agreed by NHS England for 2015-16. The number of CCGs more than 5% below target has been halved from 34 to 17 in 2015-16.
The First Secretary of State and Chancellor of the Exchequer attended the 2015 Bilderberg conference in a private capacity.
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC)’s compliance performance is measured using internal management information systems. This data is constructed from information derived from individual compliance cases or activities within HMRC.
All items are additional tax revenues raised from compliance activities, hence the term additional.
The additional tax revenues collected from compliance activities by HM Revenue and Customs for each year since May 2010 is as follows.
(£bn) | 2010/11* | 2011/12 | 2012/13 | 2013/14 | 2014/15 |
Outturns | 13.9 | 18.6 | 20.7 | 23.9 | |
Target | 26 |
*Note: the methodology for calculating additional tax revenues from compliance activity changed between 2010/11 and 2011/12, and so the figure of £13.9bn is not directly comparable to later years.
The proportion of total income accounted for by the top 10, 5 and 1 per cent of UK taxpayers by income can be found in table 2.4 'Share of total income (before and after tax) and income tax for percentile groups', available at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/income-tax-statistics-and-distributions
The number and average income of taxpayers in each group can be determined from the above together with table 2.5 'Income Tax liabilities, by income range', with reference to the total number of taxpayers and their income stated on this table.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer attended the Bilderberg conference in Copenhagen. All travel undertaken by Treasury ministers is carried out in line with the Ministerial and Civil Service Management Codes. Details of all ministerial overseas travel are published quarterly:
Under the Immigration and Asylum act 1999, asylum seekers who need accommodation are housed in communities across the UK according to an agreed ratio, based on various regional factors. This is reviewed regularly. Within each region, UKVI has established working arrangements with local authorities in order to consider dispersal patterns and numbers. This includes consulting key corporate partners in the local area in order to assess regularly the impact of dispersal policy on a particular community.
The COMPASS contract requires providers to liaise and consult with local authorities to ensure that accommodation provided to asylum seekers does not adversely affect local authority developments or community plans. Providers must also take into account the cultural compatibility of the environment; capacity of local health, education and other support services; concentration of accommodation of service users within particular areas; and the assessment of social tension risks.
Following the expansion of the Government's vulnerable person resettlement scheme, we have established a cross-Government committee to oversee the resettlement of vulnerable refugees. The Local Government Association attended the first meeting of that committee on 11 September, and we are working closely with them and local authorities about future resettlement.
Statistics on additional affordable housing built or acquired in England since 1991-92, including those delivered by local authorities, are published in the Department’s live tables 1000 and 1009, which are available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-affordable-housing-supply
Statistics are not available prior to 1991-92. Affordable housing statistics include housing delivered by local authorities (councils) and Private Registered Providers (housing associations).