Asked by: Mike Crockart (Liberal Democrat - Edinburgh West)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what the Government's position is in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations on the import from the US of chemically-treated poultry.
Answered by George Eustice
All food imported from the US must adhere to EU rules and TTIP will not change that. Any changes to food safety measures in the European Union must be subject to a robust scientific risk assessment and agreed by EU Member States and the European Parliament.
Asked by: Mike Crockart (Liberal Democrat - Edinburgh West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what external agencies are carrying out character enquiries on behalf of UK Visas and Immigration as part of the application process for British Citizenship; and what the (a) mean, (b) median and (c) longest time taken to complete such enquiries by each such agency was in the last year for which information is available.
Answered by James Brokenshire
No external agencies currently carry out specific character enquiries on behalf of UK Visas and Immigration as part of the application process. UK Visas and Immigration routinely completes robust checks itself to inform its assessment
of character, accessing information collated by other Government departments and agencies for their own purposes. No information is aggregated in national reporting systems to enable reporting on the time taken for these checks to be
returned.
Asked by: Mike Crockart (Liberal Democrat - Edinburgh West)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many Scottish pensioners in each local authority area were entitled to receive the basic state pension in (a) 2013-14 and (b) 2014-15; and how many such people are expected to receive basic state pension in 2015-16.
Answered by Steve Webb
Statistics for numbers in receipt of State Pension are available from 100% data and are published on the Department’s website at:
http://tabulation-tool.dwp.gov.uk/100pc/sp/tabtool_sp.html
Guidance for users is available at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dwp-tabulation-tool-guidance
Information is not available on the number of people entitled but who have not claimed their State Pension or how many people in each local authority area are expected to receive it in 2015-16.
Asked by: Mike Crockart (Liberal Democrat - Edinburgh West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, on what basis the Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme rebate allocation has been calculated for Scotland.
Answered by George Freeman
Companies pay all Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme payments to the Department of Health in England. The total United Kingdom payments will be allocated to each of the four UK countries in a fair way and the estimated payments for England have been included within the NHS England budget. The method for apportioning 2014-15 payments will be based on primary care data for spend on licensed branded medicines, as the most consistent data set available across the UK. Income will be apportioned using prescribing data for the same period as the income relates, on a quarterly basis.
Asked by: Mike Crockart (Liberal Democrat - Edinburgh West)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, how much was paid in compensation to local authority staff as a result of a dog-related injury at work in 2013.
Answered by Kris Hopkins
This information is not held centrally.
Asked by: Mike Crockart (Liberal Democrat - Edinburgh West)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, how much additional tax HM Revenue and Customs expects to gather by March 2015 as a result of investigations into unpaid tax; and how much tax it has so gathered since May 2010.
Answered by David Gauke
HMRCs compliance performance is measured using internal management information systems. This data is constructed from information derived from individual cases or activities within HMRC. These systems can be split into type of tax, but not into behaviour and customer group, as this is not a standard HMRC performance reporting metric.
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.
Asked by: Mike Crockart (Liberal Democrat - Edinburgh West)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, how much additional tax has been collected by HM Revenue and Customs from individuals through its anti-avoidance and evasion activities since 2012.
Answered by David Gauke
HMRCs compliance performance is measured using internal management information systems. This data is constructed from information derived from individual cases or activities within HMRC. These systems can be split into type of tax, but not into behaviour and customer group, as this is not a standard HMRC performance reporting metric.
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.
Asked by: Mike Crockart (Liberal Democrat - Edinburgh West)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what change there has been on the level of income tax paid by basic rate taxpayers in each year since 2011.
Answered by David Gauke
Estimates of the amounts of income tax paid by taxpayers at the basic rate and other rates of tax in the years 2011-12 to 2014-15 are published in HM Revenue and Customs’s (HMRC’s) National Statistics table 2.5 which is available at the following internet address;
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/306857/Table_2.5.pdf
These estimates are based on the Survey of Personal Incomes (SPI) outturn data up to 2011-12, and then projected to 2014-15 in line with the Office for Budget Responsibility's March 2014 economic and fiscal outlook.
Asked by: Mike Crockart (Liberal Democrat - Edinburgh West)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, how much additional tax has been collected by HM Revenue and Customs from large companies through its anti-avoidance and evasion activities since 2012.
Answered by David Gauke
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is active in assessing and tackling the risks of evasion, avoidance and error amongst large businesses. HMRC’s approach has enabled it to recover over £16billion in additional compliance revenues from large businesses between April 2012 and March 2014.
Asked by: Mike Crockart (Liberal Democrat - Edinburgh West)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what proportion of local authorities have an on-call dog warden service available out-of-hours and at weekends.
Answered by George Eustice
No central records are held of the details of dog warden services provided by local authorities.