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Written Question
Cabinet Office: Apprentices
Friday 1st March 2024

Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)

Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how much his Department (a) paid in apprenticeship levy fees and (b) spent from its apprenticeship levy funds between September 2021 and August 2023.

Answered by John Glen - Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office

The Cabinet Office has contributed £6,388,833 into its apprenticeship levy funds between 01 September 2021 and 31 August 2023. This includes the 10% government top up.

During the same period the department has spent £2,981,047 from its apprenticeship levy funds.


Written Question
Refugees: Afghanistan
Monday 27th November 2023

Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)

Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, with reference to the oral contribution of the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs on 8 November 2023, Official Report, column 114, what responsibility the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs has for Pathway Two of the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme.

Answered by Johnny Mercer - Minister of State (Cabinet Office) (Minister for Veterans' Affairs)

In October this year, the Prime Minister asked me to coordinate departmental plans for relocating eligible Afghans and their families under both the ARAP and ACRS schemes. Departments retain responsibility for their specific policy areas.


Written Question
Disease Control and Emergencies: Ministers
Wednesday 28th June 2023

Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)

Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, whether the Prime Minister plans to appoint a Minister for pandemic and disaster preparedness.

Answered by Jeremy Quin

My right Hon. friend the Deputy Prime Minister is responsible for the oversight of civil contingencies & resilience.

The government has a well-established method of planning for risks through the lead government department model, with the Cabinet Office supporting in its convening role. Risks such as pandemics, which have significant cross-cutting impacts, have cross-government governance - with Ministerial oversight through National Security Council (Resilience) where required. The government has set out its overarching approach to this through the Resilience Framework.


Written Question
International Labour Organisation
Tuesday 27th June 2023

Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)

Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many times (a) Ministers and (b) officials held meetings with the International Labour Organisation each year since 2019; what the reasons for each of those meetings were; and who was present at each meeting.

Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)

Details of Ministers’ and Permanent Secretaries' meetings with external individuals and organisations are published quarterly in arrears on GOV.UK. Published declarations include the purpose of the meeting and the names of any additional external organisations or individuals in attendance.


Written Question
Nurses: Industrial Diseases
Monday 19th June 2023

Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)

Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, whether he plans to release statistics on (a) covid-19 and (b) other workplace-related illness and deaths among the nursing workforce broken down by ethnicity.

Answered by Jeremy Quin

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.

A response to the Hon Lady's Parliamentary Question of 9 June is attached.


Written Question
Small Businesses: Billing
Tuesday 6th June 2023

Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)

Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what proportion of contracts tendered on Contracts Finder were awarded to companies signed-up to the Prompt Payment Code.

Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)

Government does not collate this information centrally. However, the list of suppliers who are signatories to the Prompt Payment Code is publicly available via the Small Business Commissioners website. Likewise, information from Contracts Finder, and the Find a Tender service are available under an Open Government License for external stakeholders to carry out their own analysis.

The Government is a leader in driving payment performance improvement through its procurement and supply chains. In 2019, it introduced a new measure that requires bidders for large government contracts to pay promptly or risk being excluded from government procurements.


Written Question
Cabinet Office: Billing
Monday 27th March 2023

Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)

Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment he has made of the proportion of invoices his Department paid to small and medium-sized enterprises within five days in the 2021-2022 financial year.

Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)

This information is not held by the Cabinet Office, as we cannot separate out small and medium-sized enterprises. I refer you to the Cabinet Office Prompt Payment statistics, which can be found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1093446/Cabinet_Office_prompt_payment_data_-_April_2021_to_March_2022__3_.csv/preview

This Conservative Government knows that small and medium sized businesses are the backbone of the British economy and I am proud of the work we are doing to support them. For instance, the Procurement Bill we are introducing will bring four complex regimes into one and enable simpler, more flexible public procurement processes, giving small and medium sized businesses greater opportunities to benefit from Government contracts.


Written Question
Small Businesses
Thursday 9th March 2023

Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)

Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many times the Department’s Small Business Advisory Panel has met in each of the last five years.

Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)

The SME Advisory Panel met 19 times between February 2018 and February 2023 for official Cabinet Office led SME Advisory Panel meetings. Panel members also contributed to the Baroness Neville-Rolfe led SME Roundtable on the Procurement Bill in October.

The SME Advisory Panel was set up by the Cabinet Office in 2011 and works with the Government to support start-ups and small businesses via government procurement.


Written Question
Small Businesses
Thursday 9th March 2023

Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)

Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many times the Department’s Small Business Advisory Panel has met in each of the last five years.

Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)

The SME Advisory Panel met 19 times between February 2018 and February 2023 for official Cabinet Office led SME Advisory Panel meetings. Panel members also contributed to the Baroness Neville-Rolfe led SME Roundtable on the Procurement Bill in October.

The SME Advisory Panel was set up by the Cabinet Office in 2011 and works with the Government to support start-ups and small businesses via government procurement.


Written Question
Government Departments: Contracts
Thursday 9th March 2023

Asked by: Seema Malhotra (Labour (Co-op) - Feltham and Heston)

Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many (a) businesses of any size and (b) SMEs have signed up to the Contracts Finder platform in each year since its launch in 2011.

Answered by Alex Burghart - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)

Contracts Finder originally went live in 2011 as a Business Link service. It was replatformed as a GOV.UK service in 2015. Data from 2011 - 2014 has been archived and cannot be interrogated to answer these questions.

Contracts Awarded to SMEs:

Total awards

Awarded to SMEs

% awarded to SMEs

2015

12,414

298

2.40%

2016

18,747

1,828

9.75%

2017

24,237

3,922

16.18%

2018

29,187

9,290

31.83%

2019

33,217

11,510

34.65%

2020

31,398

11,980

38.16%

2021

48,292

17,752

36.76%

2022

53,851

20,899

38.81%

Registered businesses:

All Business

SME

%

2015

14,604

2,767

18.9%

2016

1,068

484

45.3%

2017

10,194

4,722

46.3%

2018

8,682

3,827

44.1%

2019

7,704

3,313

43%

2020

9,559

3,599

37.7%

2021

9,084

2,687

29.6%

2022

7,851

2,067

26.3%

The Procurement Bill, currently passing through Parliament, will create a simpler and more transparent procurement regime that will further open up public procurement to SMEs. The Bill includes a new duty on contracting authorities to have regard to the particular barriers facing SMEs.