Asked by: Sally-Ann Hart (Conservative - Hastings and Rye)
Question
What steps her Department is taking to tackle geographic inequality of opportunity.
Answered by Kemi Badenoch - President of the Board of Trade
Tackling geographic inequality and Levelling Up across the whole country is a key ambition of this government.
To support this, in December the Minister for Women and Equalities announced the Equality Data Programme, to ensure that geographic and socio-economic inequality is taken into account, alongside other factors, when identifying barriers to opportunity.
Sponsorship of the Social Mobility Commission has now moved across to the Equality Hub and will play a crucial role in tackling regional inequalities.
Additionally, as part of our commitment to spreading opportunity the Cabinet Office will relocate to Glasgow and York as part of the Places for Growth programme.
Asked by: Sally-Ann Hart (Conservative - Hastings and Rye)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of whether the recruitment of more legal advisers will assist the covid-19 recovery in the courts system; and what steps he is taking to ensure that a career as a legal adviser is as attractive as a career in the CPS by correlating pay grades.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Legal advisers are an important component of Covid-19 recovery in the courts system, and the recruitment of legal advisers continues to be a priority for HMCTS. Last year 145 trainee legal advisers were recruited following a national campaign, and a further campaign is underway to recruit a minimum of 100 trainee legal advisers by October 2021. Legal adviser pay and grading does not correlate with that of CPS lawyers due to the differing nature of the roles. The Ministry of Justice has submitted a pay flexibility case to invest in changes to our reward framework via a multi-year deal effective from August 2020. The case is currently being considered by the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury, and aims to reduce both operational and financial risks.
Asked by: Sally-Ann Hart (Conservative - Hastings and Rye)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what measures are in place to ensure that Historic England can compel owners of ancient monuments, which are on the at risk register, to repair and keep in good order those ruins and buildings.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
Historic England has no powers to compel the owners of Scheduled Ancient Monuments to keep them in good order, however its Heritage At Risk Repair Grants budget can help fund the repair and conservation of those that have been included on its Heritage at Risk Register. It can also fund activities that help to reduce or avoid related risks.
Asked by: Sally-Ann Hart (Conservative - Hastings and Rye)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the advice to women to seek medical advice or call an ambulance on 999 if they experience certain complications from medical abortions at home, whether Emergency Departments are recording the complications medical abortions based on whether those pills were taken (a) at home, (b) partially at home, or (c) in a clinic; and whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of requiring Emergency Departments to distinguish between home and in-clinic medical abortion complications.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This level of detail is not recorded in the Emergency Care Data Set or Hospital Episode Statistics accident and emergency data. The Department acknowledges there are limitations with the abortion complications data that is collected. We are planning to examine with partner organisations how well these systems are working in relation to recording complications arising from abortions and whether improvement is required.
Asked by: Sally-Ann Hart (Conservative - Hastings and Rye)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of assigning family members of clinically vulnerable or disabled relatives who live in care homes, key worker status; and what steps he is taking to bring forward legislative proposals to ensure that vulnerable people have access to support and care from their families.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
New visiting arrangements will start on 8 March. From that date, every care home will be asked to ensure that each resident can receive regular indoor visits from one person whom they have nominated as their single named visitor. In addition, with the agreement of the care home, visitors to residents who need personal care will have access to the same testing and personal protective equipment as care home staff so that they can provide extra support, like help with washing, dressing or eating.
Asked by: Sally-Ann Hart (Conservative - Hastings and Rye)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure people with a learning disability are given priority for receiving a covid-19 vaccine in the next phase of the vaccination programme.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
On 24 February the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation published a clarification of their advice on vaccinating people with a learning disability. They confirmed their view that priority should be given to those with a severe and profound learning disability, but recognised the issues around coding of learning disability on general practitioner (GP) systems and supported a practical approach of inviting everyone who is on the GP Learning Disability Register for vaccination in cohort six.
Asked by: Sally-Ann Hart (Conservative - Hastings and Rye)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of including café au lait marks in children's Red Book health records to improve the early diagnosis of neurofibromatosis Type 1.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The content of the red book is determined by The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. The Department continues to work with the Royal College and the National Health Service to ensure the red book is up to date and accessible.
Asked by: Sally-Ann Hart (Conservative - Hastings and Rye)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps are being taken to ensure that neighbours can share any additional cost of delivering broadband under the Universal Service Obligation for broadband once the cost cap for delivery has been reached.
Answered by Matt Warman
Implementation of the Universal Service Obligation is the responsibility of Ofcom. The Universal Service Conditions set out by Ofcom require the Universal Service Providers to divide the ‘Total Cost of Provision of Infrastructure which is capable of being shared’ by the ‘Number of relevant premises’.
As the independent regulator, Ofcom is currently investigating BT’s compliance with its obligations as a broadband Universal Service Provider as they are concerned BT may not be complying with the regulatory conditions correctly when it assesses excess costs for a given connection.
We understand that Ofcom expects to determine the next steps before the end of this year.
Asked by: Sally-Ann Hart (Conservative - Hastings and Rye)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what progress her Department is making on the development and roll out of the Emergency Services Network; and when rural communities will be able to connect to that network in order to have mobile connectivity in areas where there is otherwise none.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
The Home Office’s Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme (ESMCP), is building a new Emergency Services Network (ESN) to replace the current Airwave network used by the Emergency Services as well as a range of other users.
The software that ESN runs on is being provided by Motorola Solutions and the infrastructure is being built by EE; created by upgrading their existing network, including deploying more 4G radio frequencies in rural areas.
To maximise coverage for the emergency services the government will build 292 further sites in the most remote and rural areas of Britain. These sites will also form part of the Shared Rural Network.
To support ESN, we need to activate these masts before ESN goes live for emergency services users. Detailed plans are still being refined but we currently expect ESN to be fully operational during 2025. As individual masts are activated as part of the ESN programme, they will be available to EE’s commercial customers immediately, even before ESN itself is live. Wherever possible, we have chosen a “future-proofed” design for these mast structures, meaning that they can be easily upgraded to allow access by all of the UK’s commercial mobile operators to improve coverage to communities.
ESMCP remains a complex and challenging programme. Over the past year, core elements of the technology have been delivered. The ‘push-to-talk’ solution now works with ESN devices connected to EE’s commercial network. The Air-to-Ground solution, interworking with Airwave and Control Room integration have all been successfully demonstrated. A ‘data only’ service is also in operational use by an increasing number of emergency services users. The programme is now working to complete development of the core technology, and deliver additional coverage including for rural areas and London Underground. We currently expect to switch off Airwave during 2025 once we have completed the technology delivery and proving and then deployment to users.
Asked by: Sally-Ann Hart (Conservative - Hastings and Rye)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
What recent assessment the Government has made of the (a) political and (b) humanitarian situation of the Rohingya.
Answered by Nigel Adams
We are working to improve the situation in Myanmar by pushing for implementation of the Rakhine Advisory Commission’s recommendations. The Rohingya were disenfranchised in Myanmar’s recent elections and we have conveyed our concerns to the Myanmar government. We continue to push for accountability for the Rohingya. We are the second largest donor to the Rohingya response in Bangladesh, providing £293.5m since 2017. In Myanmar’s Rakhine state, we have provided over £44m since 2017, including over £25m for the Rohingya.