Asked by: Nigel Evans (Conservative - Ribble Valley)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what the cost of legal advice has been sought by the Office of the Pubs Code Adjudicator since July 2016.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
According to the Pubs Code Adjudicator, the total costs for external legal services for completed and audited financial years (2016/17 and 2017/18) is £101,844.68.
Asked by: Nigel Evans (Conservative - Ribble Valley)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment he has made of the value of investment into UK pubs provided by the six companies covered by the Pubs Code.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
The Government has not made such an assessment.
Asked by: Nigel Evans (Conservative - Ribble Valley)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how many enquiries to the Pubs Code Adjudicator have been made by (a) telephone, (b) email and (c) post in each month since July 2016; and what the average response time was of the Pub’s Code Adjudicator to those enquiries.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
Enquiries to the Pubs Code Adjudicator (PCA) can be made by telephone, website or through an email to the enquiries email address. The PCA expects to make contact within one working day. The PCA has calculated that on average enquiries are closed within 6 days of being made. Since July 2016 the PCA has had the following enquiries:
Month | Received via phone | Received via email | Received via website | Not categorised | Total |
July 2016 | 80 | 1 | 24 | 0 | 105 |
August 2016 | 86 | 0 | 28 | 0 | 114 |
September 2016 | 56 | 3 | 19 | 2 | 80 |
October 2016 | 36 | 1 | 11 | 1 | 49 |
November 2016 | 26 | 0 | 11 | 0 | 37 |
December 2016 | 17 | 1 | 10 | 0 | 28 |
January 2017 | 18 | 2 | 12 | 0 | 32 |
February 2017 | 11 | 0 | 10 | 0 | 21 |
March 2017 | 15 | 0 | 9 | 0 | 24 |
April 2017 | 10 | 2 | 3 | 0 | 15 |
May 2017 | 21 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 24 |
June 2017 | 16 | 0 | 8 | 0 | 24 |
July 2017 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 5 |
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August 2017 | 15 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 18 |
September 2017 | 13 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 14 |
October 2017 | 14 | 3 | 6 | 1 | 24 |
November 2017 | 22 | 4 | 5 | 0 | 31 |
December 2017 | 9 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 12 |
January 2018 | 11 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 11 |
February 2018 | 13 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 15 |
March 2018 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 9 |
April 2018 | 7 | 1 | 3 | 6 | 17 |
May 2018 | 6 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 14 |
June 2018 | 6 | 7 | 0 | 4 | 17 |
July 2018 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 11 |
August 2018 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 13 | 19 |
September 2018 | 8 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 10 |
October 2018 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 8 |
November 2018 | 5 | 2 | 0 | 5 | 12 |
December 2018 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
January 2019 | 5 | 2 | 4 | 0 | 11 |
February 2019 | 3 | 2 | 4 | 0 | 9 |
March 2019 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 0 | 8 |
April 2019 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 5 |
Total | 545 | 43 | 195 | 53 | 836 |
Asked by: Nigel Evans (Conservative - Ribble Valley)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what diplomatic means the UK has within the Commonwealth to help countries tackle climate change.
Answered by Mark Field
Climate change has long been of concern to the Commonwealth. This concern has been reflected in Commonwealth statements as early as the Langkawi Declaration on the Environment in 1989. Under UK chairmanship at the 2018 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, leaders reaffirmed their commitments under the Paris Agreement. The Government is now using it's diplomatic network to support mitigation and adaptation across the Commonwealth. For example:
· In Asia, Malaysia has confirmed its interest in partnering with the UK to develop an emissions calculator. The calculator is an open source energy and emissions tool developed by the UK to allow countries to explore and develop strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
· In Africa, the UK has provided £500,000 to support the Commonwealth’s Climate Finance Access Hub based in Mauritius. The Hub will help small and vulnerable countries access international sources of finance to support adaptation and mitigation.
· In the Caribbean, the UK is helping four countries – Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, and St Lucia – to prepare detailed disaster risk profiles to aid efforts to increase their resilience to natural disaster. This work builds on existing support from the World Bank and is expected to be extended across the region over the next year.
· In the Pacific, the UK has pledged £1.2 million to support the establishment in Fiji of a Regional Nationally Determined Contribution Hub. The centre has been established in partnership with Australia, Germany and New Zealand, to help Pacific Island Countries implement national climate change policies and frameworks in response to the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Asked by: Nigel Evans (Conservative - Ribble Valley)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what the Government's priorities are for the UN Secretary-General’s 2019 Climate Change summit.
Answered by Harriett Baldwin
The UN Climate Action Summit will be a critical moment for accelerating global climate ambition – cutting emissions, building resilience and mobilising finance – and the Government is fully committed to ensuring its success.
The UK is leading on resilience and adaptation with Egypt, and our ambition for the Summit is to send a clear political signal that we urgently need to act on climate risk. We aim to drive systemic change in the way the world plans and invests to secure food and water and reduce the impact of disaster. The international community needs to step up efforts to support vulnerable people and the planet to better prepare for and withstand climate shocks and stresses.
Asked by: Nigel Evans (Conservative - Ribble Valley)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, how much Official Development Assistance has been allocated to humanitarian aid projects as a result of extreme weather events since 2015.
Answered by Harriett Baldwin
DFID’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) spend, including on humanitarian aid, is published in our Statistics on International Development annual reports and can be found on the GOV.UK website: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-international-development/about/statistics.
The figures are not disaggregated into spend specifically on extreme weather events given the interrelated factors driving humanitarian need in many contexts, including climatic conditions, instability, insecurity and vulnerability.
Asked by: Nigel Evans (Conservative - Ribble Valley)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to secure international action on tackling climate change.
Answered by Harriett Baldwin
The UK played a pivotal role in securing the Paris Agreement in 2015 and we continue to take a leading role internationally in forging agreements and leading by example. The UK pledged to provide at least £5.8bn of International Climate Finance (ICF) between 2016 and 2020, aiming for an even split between mitigation and adaptation – and placing us amongst the world’s lead providers of climate finance. The United Nations Climate Action Summit later this year will be an important moment in increasing global climate ambition and action. The UK is co-leading on the climate resilience and adaptation theme with Egypt, in partnership with Malawi, Bangladesh and the Netherlands. This is a crucial opportunity to propel an unprecedented shift in enabling government, businesses and people to adapt to and cope with climate shocks and stresses. We have also offered to host the international climate change negotiations in 2020, which will be critical for agreeing more urgent and ambitious action on climate change.
Asked by: Nigel Evans (Conservative - Ribble Valley)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department (a) has taken and (b) plans to take to support partner Governments in Africa to implement the conditions of the Kampala Convention; and what steps she is taking to encourage those countries who have not yet signed up to that convention to do so.
Answered by Harriett Baldwin
The UK supports the Kampala Convention, which provides a foundation to better protect and consider the needs of internally displaced persons. We are supporting the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to work with African States to adopt the Kampala Convention through our core funding of £63m per year. The UK is the second largest donor to the ICRC.
Asked by: Nigel Evans (Conservative - Ribble Valley)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what plans her Department has to create a national strategy on migration and forced displacement.
Answered by Harriett Baldwin
The Government takes an integrated approach to migration and forced displacement. On migration, the UK’s coordinated approach is set out in the Illegal Migration Strategy, which aims to improve asylum and returns processes and combat organised immigration crime and modern slavery, as well as to promote safe and regular migration in line with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The government’s strategy on forced displacement is to address the drivers of conflict, instability and lack of economic opportunities in key source countries.
In addition, DFID is leading UK government efforts to secure more coordinated global management of migration & displacement through the separate Global Compacts on Migration and Refugees.
Asked by: Nigel Evans (Conservative - Ribble Valley)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what the Government's rationale was for the policy of introducing an income threshold on eligibility for tax-free childcare.
Answered by Elizabeth Truss
Tax-Free Childcare is limited to families where parents earn under £100,000 per year. The £100,000 per parent cap on Tax-Free Childcare ensures that support is targeted at the working families who require the most support in order to return to work or work more.
The £100,000 limit was announced at Autumn Statement 2015 and legislated for in 2016 because it is simple for parents to understand their eligibility, and because it aligns to an existing boundary in the tax system. The government published its final impact assessment of the introduction of Tax-Free Childcare, including the setting of an upper income limit at £100,000 per parent, in March 2017 (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/652939/Tax-free_childcare_Impact_Assessment-March_2017.pdf).