Asked by: Nick de Bois (Conservative - Enfield North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, for what purposes is Action on Smoking and Health permitted to spend the grant it has been given under section 64 of the Health Services and Public Health Act 1968.
Answered by Jane Ellison
Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) receives a Grant from the Department annually for work to contribute to the achievement of the national ambitions in the Tobacco Control Plan Healthy Lives, Healthy People: A Tobacco Control Plan for England 2011.
The Department holds regular meetings with ASH to monitor delivery according to the terms of the grant awarded under Section 64 of the Health and Social Care Act.
A copy of the award letter for 2014-15 is attached.
Asked by: Nick de Bois (Conservative - Enfield North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he has taken to monitor the use by Action on Smoking and Health of its funding under section 64 of the Health Services and Public Health Act 1968.
Answered by Jane Ellison
Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) receives a Grant from the Department annually for work to contribute to the achievement of the national ambitions in the Tobacco Control Plan Healthy Lives, Healthy People: A Tobacco Control Plan for England 2011.
The Department holds regular meetings with ASH to monitor delivery according to the terms of the grant awarded under Section 64 of the Health and Social Care Act.
A copy of the award letter for 2014-15 is attached.
Asked by: Nick de Bois (Conservative - Enfield North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will publish the (a) business plan and (b) grant agreement to provide funding for the organisation Action on Smoking and Health under section 64 of the Health Services and Public Health Act 1968.
Answered by Jane Ellison
Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) receives a Grant from the Department annually for work to contribute to the achievement of the national ambitions in the Tobacco Control Plan Healthy Lives, Healthy People: A Tobacco Control Plan for England 2011.
The Department holds regular meetings with ASH to monitor delivery according to the terms of the grant awarded under Section 64 of the Health and Social Care Act.
A copy of the award letter for 2014-15 is attached.
Asked by: Nick de Bois (Conservative - Enfield North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to strengthen police action against business fraud.
Answered by Karen Bradley
Action Fraud is the national reporting point for fraud and cyber crime. It takes reports of crimes from members of the public and businesses online or via its dedicated helpline. These reports are then analysed by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB), which looks for links between separate victims of the same scams, and matches information in Action Fraud reports with other data it holds. The NFIB then prepares intelligence packages and sends these to the police force best placed to consider enforcement action. It also carries out work to disrupt the enablers of this criminality, such as having websites used by criminals taken down.
Both Action Fraud and the NFIB are part of the City of London Police, which is the national lead force for fraud. The Government brought Action Fraud into the City of London Police in April 2014 to strengthen the end-to-end process for reporting and analysis of these crimes. Action Fraud also has two dedicated single points of contact for business, and continues to host open days for industry and attend business events to ensure understanding, share protective advice and foster close relationships. Action Fraud also circulates real-time information on the latest fraud threats via its website, social media channels and though police forces and businesses.
The Government is also working closely with law enforcement agencies, industry and third sector partners to support individuals and businesses to be better protected. This includes national and local level action to increase their awareness of the risks and adopting safe online behaviours. The Cyber Streetwise awareness campaign, funded by the National Cyber Security Programme, helps individuals and businesses understand how to stay safe online. The second phase of the campaign, including a refreshed website and online materials, launched in October last year. The Government’s Cyber Information Sharing Partnership, within CERT-UK, is also enabling industry to share
information on online threats including fraud, helping to reduce their vulnerability and the impact of online fraud on UK businesses.
The Home Office has introduced the Commercial Victimisation Survey to better understand and monitor crime against businesses, including fraud and online crime. Findings from the 2012 and 2013 surveys have been published at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/crime-against-businesses
Findings from the 2014 survey will be published on 23rd April 2015.
Asked by: Nick de Bois (Conservative - Enfield North)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, if he will bring forward proposals to prevent businesses from being evicted by office-to-home conversions in (a) mixed business and residential areas and (b) areas not deemed as requiring regeneration.
Answered by Brandon Lewis
Permitted development rights that allow the change of offices to residential use were introduced in May 2013. These rights are contributing to a more efficient use of our existing building stock, and are providing badly needed new homes such as studios and one-bedroom flats for young people, using brownfield land. This market-led approach reflects that business patterns are changing with new technology: as a whole, while there is increasing demand for new housing due to a growing population, modern firms need less physical office space than they used to.
My Department is considering responses to the technical consultation on planning that was published on 31 July. We will publish the Government’s response in due course.
Asked by: Nick de Bois (Conservative - Enfield North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the performance of the London Ambulance Service in the year to 1 November 2014 in relation to Category A response time targets in (a) London and (b) Enfield; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Jane Ellison
The NHS Trust Development Authority advise that London Ambulance Service has seen increases in demand, including in Enfield, and that this has put pressure on services. To address this, the Trust is already taking forward a number of measures.
We are giving a record £700 million package of support for the National Health Service in winter, including £15 million to the London Ambulance Service.
Official ambulance data are routinely published at:
http://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/ambulance-quality-indicators/ .
Asked by: Nick de Bois (Conservative - Enfield North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the performance of the London Ambulance Service between 1 September and 30 November 2014 in relation to Category A response time targets in (a) London and (b) Enfield.
Answered by Jane Ellison
The NHS Trust Development Authority advise that London Ambulance Service has seen increases in demand, including in Enfield, and that this has put pressure on services. To address this, the Trust is already taking forward a number of measures.
We are giving a record £700 million package of support for the National Health Service in winter, including £15 million to the London Ambulance Service.
Official ambulance data are routinely published at:
http://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/ambulance-quality-indicators/ .
Asked by: Nick de Bois (Conservative - Enfield North)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he has taken to reduce the number of cautions issued since 2010.
Answered by Mike Penning
The use of cautions is at its lowest point for 30 years and nearly half the level seen in 2007. The total number of cautions has decreased by 11% in the year ending June 2014 as compared to the previous 12 months. However, the Government is not complacent and wants to ensure that serious offences are always brought to court.
The Ministry of Justice carried out a review of simple cautions in early 2013, to examine the way in which simple cautions were being used and consider the need for any changes to policy or practice.
Following this review, the Ministry of Justice issued updated guidance in November 2013 on the process to be followed by the police when administering simple cautions for adult offenders. This placed limits on the circumstances in which a simple caution should be issued, particularly for serious offences. We have banned the use of simple cautions for possession of any offensive weapon (including a knife), supplying Class A drugs and a range of sexual offences against children, including child prostitution and pornography.
The Government is legislating in the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill to place further restrictions on the use of cautions for certain serious offences which will be set out in secondary legislation, as well as stopping their use for indictable only offences and repeat offenders (unless there are exceptional circumstances).
In 2013 we consulted on whether there is a need for more radical change in the out of court disposal framework, which includes simple cautions. After this, the Government announced plans to simplify the current range of disposals into two tiers: a suspended prosecution (based around the conditional caution) and a new statutory community resolution.
This new framework would remove the option of a simple caution and move away from a system of warnings and reprimands. It would give the police the power to tackle offending behaviour in a more effective way. Offenders would be required to take action to comply with the new disposals and face meaningful consequences if they failed to do so.
The proposed framework is being piloted in three police forces before a decision is taken on whether to roll them out across England and Wales.
Asked by: Nick de Bois (Conservative - Enfield North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of trends in frontline London Ambulance Service staff turnover figures in each of the last five years; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Jane Ellison
This is a matter for London Ambulance Service (LAS) NHS Trust. The NHS Trust Development Authority (NTDA) advises that LAS has seen increases in demand and that this has had some impact on staff retention. However, to address this issue of recruitment and retention the Trust is already taking forward a number of measures.
Asked by: Nick de Bois (Conservative - Enfield North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the number of London Ambulance Service front-line staff in (a) London and (b) Enfield; and how many front-line staff there were in (i) each of the last five years and (ii) 2014 to date.
Answered by Jane Ellison
The information is not available in the format requested. London ambulance service (LAS) does not operate on a borough by borough geographical basis and patients in Enfield are clinically assessed and attended by the ambulance crew that can reach them most quickly.
Numbers of frontline staff* in post in the Edmonton Complex (which includes Chase Farm, Ponders End, Edmonton, Tottenham and Bounds Green ambulance stations) in the most recent years for which figures are available are shown in the following table. Numbers of frontline staff in post across London in each of the most recent five years are also shown in the following table.
Edmonton (WTE) | 2010/11 | 2011/12 | 2012/13 | 2013/14 | 2014/15 |
IN POST | n/a | n/a | 138 | 145 | 190 |
BUDGET | n/a | n/a | 132 | 152 | 189 |
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Total LAS (WTE) | 2010/11 | 2011/12 | 2012/13 | 2013/14 | 2014/15 |
IN POST | 2,956 | 2,893 | 2,753 | 2,652 | 2,647 |
BUDGET | 3,030 | 2,972 | 2,872 | 3,012 | 3,056 |
*’frontline staff’ includes all paramedic and non-paramedic grades that work on frontline crews.
WTE= whole time equivalent