Asked by: Paul Holmes (Conservative - Eastleigh)
Question to the HM Treasury:
What fiscal steps his Department is taking to help small and medium-sized businesses recover from the covid-19 pandemic.
Answered by John Glen - Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office
Throughout the pandemic, the Government has sought to protect people’s jobs and livelihoods while also supporting businesses of all sizes across the UK. We put in place an economic support package totaling £352 billion through the furlough and self-employed income support schemes, as well as support for businesses of all sizes through grants and loans, business rates and VAT relief, and a commercial rents moratorium.
We want to help small businesses across the UK to scale and grow as they recover from the pandemic. At Budget, we announced Help to Grow: Digital and Management. Help to Grow: Digital provides a new online platform and voucher to support SMEs to adopt software which could help them save time and money and grow faster. Help to Grow: Management offers a new, world-leading management skills training programme to upskill 30,000 small businesses across the UK over three years, to help boost their business’s performance, resilience, and long-term growth through practical leadership and management training.
Asked by: Paul Holmes (Conservative - Eastleigh)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of expanding the range of milks covered by the Nursery Milk Scheme to include plant-based and other non-dairy milks.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
At present the legislation governing the Nursery Milk Scheme allows for the reimbursement of the cost of cow’s milk and infant formula based on cow’s milk. The Department is currently considering this position.
Asked by: Paul Holmes (Conservative - Eastleigh)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Tobacco and Related Products Regulations 2016, for what reason Public Health England has suspended its investigation into the selling of cigarette products which contain menthol flavourings; and for what reason those products have not been removed from the market.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The investigation is currently going through the process in accordance with the European Union Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2016/779. The Government has made a commitment to comply with the EU’s Tobacco Products Directive until the end of the transition period. We await the outcome of this and will then assess if there are further steps for the UK to take regarding this matter.
This Government is committed to addressing the harms from smoking and has set an ambition to make England Smokefree by 2030 with plans to achieve this to be set out next year.
Asked by: Paul Holmes (Conservative - Eastleigh)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
(FAO Amelia) To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when his Department plans to Answer Question 97046, tabled by the hon Member for Eastleigh on 29 September 2020.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
We take parliamentary scrutiny incredibly seriously and it is fundamentally important that hon. Members are provided with accurate and timely information to enable them to hold the Government to account. We are working rapidly to provide all Members with accurate answers to their questions, as well as supporting the Government’s response to the unprecedented challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The hon. Member’s question will be answered as soon as possible.
Asked by: Paul Holmes (Conservative - Eastleigh)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what the (a) capital and (b) revenue funding allocations are for the £500m Youth Investment Fund for each year for the next four years.
Answered by John Whittingdale
DCMS officials continue to assess how COVID-19 is impacting on young people and youth services. We will keep engaging with the youth sector as plans for the Youth Investment Fund develop, and expect to publish further details in due course.
Asked by: Paul Holmes (Conservative - Eastleigh)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment he has made of trends in the number of passengers using Hedge End train station in each of the last ten years for which figures are available.
Answered by Chris Heaton-Harris - Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
The Office of Road and Rail (ORR) publish annual estimates of the number of entries/exits and interchanges for Hedge End, and all other stations in Great Britain.
This information is openly available on the ORR data portal https://dataportal.orr.gov.uk/statistics/usage/estimates-of-station-usage.
Asked by: Paul Holmes (Conservative - Eastleigh)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what preparations his Department has made for the COP26 climate summit.
Answered by Kwasi Kwarteng
The Department is working closely with the COP26 unit in Cabinet Office and other government departments to bring the world together and commit to urgent action on climate change, supporting in particular work on energy transition, zero emissions vehicles, finance, innovation and nature.
Asked by: Paul Holmes (Conservative - Eastleigh)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what support his Department is providing to new projects for wind-based renewable energy generation.
Answered by Kwasi Kwarteng
Wind-based renewable energy is a key part of the government strategy for the decarbonisation of the UK energy sector. Latest figures indicate we now have 14.2GW installed onshore wind (ONW) capacity and we are already a world leader with the largest Offshore Wind (OFW) capacity of 10.1GW (which will rise to 19.5GW by mid 2020s).
In the Clean Growth Strategy published in October 2017, the Government confirmed that we would be making up to £557m of annual support available for further Contracts for Difference (CfD) - the government’s main scheme for supporting renewable energy projects.
In the last CfD allocation round (AR3) result in September 2019, 10 out of the 12 contracts awarded were wind based renewable energy projects. The next CfD allocation round (AR4) is planned for 2021 and both onshore and offshore wind projects will be able to bid for contracts.
The OFW Sector Deal published in March 2019 set out a strategic approach to deliver increased capacity of OFW and in partnership with the Sector to increase supply chain competitiveness, develop new technologies and boost the UK export potential.
Asked by: Paul Holmes (Conservative - Eastleigh)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
What steps his Department has taken to ensure that courts can continue to operate effectively during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Justice system has operated throughout the pandemic.
o Jury trials, the part of the system we did have to suspend, restarted in May
o By Monday 14 September 2020, jury trials will have resumed in 72 Crown Courts
Our buildings are ‘Covid secure’ and social distancing measures are in place
o By rolling out plexiglass and other measures, we are on track to open 250 Crown courtrooms by the end of October.
o 110 jury trial rooms are currently in use.
We have swiftly expanded our use of technology so that we can hold more video and audio hearings across all jurisdictions, subject to judicial discretion.
We are rolling out Nightingale Courts across the country, undertaking Saturday sittings, and piloting Covid operating hours in further efforts to support access to justice.
The progress made to introduce online access to services through reform has made a substantial difference in maintaining the operation of the courts and tribunals, enabling more work to continue where reform is more advanced, and underlining the wider value of reform in supporting a more resilient and adaptable service.
Those services which have already been reformed, notably divorce, probate, SSCS, IAC, and jurisdictions using CE-File have proved more resilient to the impact of the pandemic and still been able to process thousands of applications.
Asked by: Paul Holmes (Conservative - Eastleigh)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of adopting a trauma-informed approach within the probation service.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) understands that experiences of violence, abuse and trauma are common in the lives of offenders and that this can impact on reoffending and rehabilitation. Recognising there is a greater prevalence of trauma amongst women, staff working with female offenders across Prison and Probation services have adopted trauma-informed approaches following the rollout of briefing materials and toolkits, and consideration will be given to wider rollout following the evaluation of such approaches.