Asked by: Royston Smith (Conservative - Southampton, Itchen)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that the UK meets its renewed target of zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government believes we will need to take the step of enshrining the global goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions in the second half of the century, agreed in Paris, into UK law. The question is not whether but how we do it.
The Government also remains committed to its existing Climate Change Act target of an at least 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 on 1990 levels. Our working assumption is that we will publish our Emissions Reduction Plan by the end of 2016, which will set out our proposals for meeting our Climate Change Act targets.
Asked by: Royston Smith (Conservative - Southampton, Itchen)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, if he will estimate the proportion of the working population in Southampton which was working in small retail outlets over the last three years.
Answered by Anna Soubry
Official statistics are not sufficiently detailed to answer this question directly. However a rough estimate may be possible by combining sources.
The ONS Business Registers and Employment Survey shows that the retail sector accounted for 10 – 11% of employment in Southampton in each year between 2012 and 2014.
Furthermore BIS Business Population Estimates suggest that across the UK as a whole small firms (those below 50 employees) account for around 29% of employment in the retail sector.
Applying this assumption we could estimate that small retailers accounted for around 3% of employment in Southampton in 2012-2014.
Asked by: Royston Smith (Conservative - Southampton, Itchen)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, if he will estimate the proportion of weekend retail transactions which have been conducted on a Sunday over the last three years.
Answered by Anna Soubry
On 9 March the Government published an impact assessment on Sunday trading which is available in the libraries of both Houses.
Asked by: Royston Smith (Conservative - Southampton, Itchen)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, if he will make an assessment of the effect Sunday trading will have on small enterprises.
Answered by Anna Soubry
In view of the will of the House, we are no longer proposing to give local authorities the ability to extend the Sunday trading hours of large shops.
Asked by: Royston Smith (Conservative - Southampton, Itchen)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what steps he is taking to ensure that students from low income households are encouraged to study (a) medicine, (b) law and (c) banking.
Answered by Lord Johnson of Marylebone
We are taking significant steps to widen participation in higher education and ensure greater focus by institutions on employability.
From the 2015/16 academic year, we have removed the cap on student numbers, enabling more people than ever before to benefit from higher education our recent Green Paper Fulfilling our Potential: Teaching Excellence, Social Mobility and Student Choice, CM 9141 sets out additional steps the Government plans to take to increase the proportion of students from disadvantaged background entering higher education. In particular, the new Teaching Excellence Framework will encourage a stronger focus on employability in higher education institutions.
Since 2010 we have established a stronger framework with increased responsibility placed on higher education institutions to widen participation for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Director of Fair Access has agreed 183 Access Agreements for 2016/17 containing an estimated £745m to support students from disadvantaged backgrounds – up from £404m in 2009/10. In our recent guidance to the Director of Fair Access, published on February 11th 2016, we said that we wanted the Director to encourage institutions to undertake work to improve access to the professions for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Director has reflected this steer in his own guidance to institutions about their access agreements for 2017/18.
In the field of medicine, the Medical Schools Council initiated the “Selecting for Excellence” project, supported by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, to look at widening participation issues. A report was launched in December 2014 which set out a range of recommendations for the sector to take forward aimed at supporting access to medical schools.
The Key Information Set provides comparable course level information (including information on employment outcomes and student satisfaction ratings) and so helps young people choose the right course for them. As a result of the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015, information on the labour market outcomes of graduates will be further improved when HMRC employment and earnings data are made available following development and testing.
Asked by: Royston Smith (Conservative - Southampton, Itchen)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, if he will estimate the cost to small and medium-sized enterprises of implementing the national living wage.
Answered by Nick Boles
The Government’s Impact Assessment for the introduction of the National Living Wage estimates the cost of the initial £7.20 rate will be just under £530 million in total for small, micro and medium sized businesses.
Asked by: Royston Smith (Conservative - Southampton, Itchen)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what additional training provision and schemes his Department plans to put in place to support job losses arising as a consequence of the national living wage.
Answered by Nick Boles
The 2015 spending review made provision for a major expansion of adult further education, to increase employment and productivity levels.
The Government has maintained funding for the core adult skills participation budgets in cash terms at £1.5bn and is also increasing opportunities in technical and professional education by doubling the level of spending on apprenticeships by 2019-20 in 2010-11 cash terms, including income from the new apprenticeship levy. It will be almost £900 million higher in 2019-20 than in 2015-16. By 2019-20, spending on apprenticeships in England will be £2.5 billion.
The combination of the levy, the protection of the AEB, the extension of advanced learner loans, and the introduction of the youth obligation means that by the end of the Parliament, the cash value of core adult FE funding to support participation will be at its highest ever. The total spending power of the FE sector to support participation will be £3.41bn by 2019-20, which is a cash terms increase of 40% compared with 2015-16 (real terms 30%).
Asked by: Royston Smith (Conservative - Southampton, Itchen)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what estimate he has made of the cost to (a) private and (b) public sector organisations of implementing the National Living Wage in each of the next three years.
Answered by Nick Boles
The Government’s Impact Assessment for the introduction of the National Living Wage estimates that the cost of increasing pay to the £7.20 rate on private sector and public sector employers will be approximately £800m and £36m respectively in 2016/17. The Government has not produced an estimate for each of the next three years.
Asked by: Royston Smith (Conservative - Southampton, Itchen)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what infrastructure the UK has in place to ensure that households and businesses do not face energy shortages in the next (a) five and (b) 10 years.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
In addition to the generation capacity within the market, National Grid has already procured 3.6GW of reserve capacity for next winter and, in January, the Capacity Market Transitional Arrangements auction bought 800MW of demand side response capacity for winter 16/17 which will also help secure the system.
In the medium to long term, the capacity market will ensure we have the electricity infrastructure to prevent energy shortages. On 1 March 2016, DECC announced that we are consulting on changes to the CM, to buy more capacity and earlier; tighten the sanctions on those who fail to deliver on their obligations; and bolster energy security in the short–term, by holding a new auction bringing forward the first Capacity Market delivery year to 2017/18.
We are confident that the Capacity Market is the right mechanism to bring forward the necessary new capacity as older, less efficient plants close.
Furthermore, Hinkley will be the first new nuclear power plant built in the UK for 20 years. Once up and running in 2025, it will provide 3.2 Giga Watts of secure, base-load and low carbon electricity for around 60 years, meeting 7% of the UK’s energy needs.
GB also has 4GW of electricity interconnection infrastructure across 4 interconnectors to France, the Netherlands, Ireland and Northern Ireland. Around 7GW of projects are currently proceeding through Ofgem’s cap and floor regulatory regime, with a further 1GW progressing under the “merchant-exempt” route, more than doubling our capacity in the early 2020s. Ofgem will open a further cap and floor application window at the end of March.
As for gas, GB has a total gas infrastructure deliverability of around 700 mcm/d compared to average winter demand of 290 mcm/d (record demand 465 mcm/d, Dec 2010) giving a surplus capacity against average winter demand of 410 mcm/d.
Asked by: Royston Smith (Conservative - Southampton, Itchen)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that the UK's energy capacity can keep up with demand.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Capacity Market secures electricity capacity, mainly power plant and Demand Side Response, through competitive auctions. Targets for the auction are set to ensure there is enough capacity available to meet peak electricity demand.
On 1 March 2016, DECC announced that we are consulting on changes to the CM, to buy more capacity and earlier; tighten the sanctions on those who fail to deliver on their obligations; and bolster energy security in the short–term, by holding a new auction bringing forward the first Capacity Market delivery year to 2017/18.
We are confident that the Capacity Market is the right mechanism to bring forward the necessary new capacity as older, less efficient plants close.