Asked by: Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley East)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, what budget will be allocated to the Office for Veterans Affairs for the financial year 2022-23.
Answered by Leo Docherty - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence) (Minister for the Armed Forces)
The 2022-23 budget allocation for the Office for Veterans’ Affairs has not yet been confirmed as the Cabinet Office's business planning process is still ongoing.
Asked by: Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley East)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many death certificates have recorded both covid-19 and underlying industrial disease since March 2020.
Answered by Michael Ellis
The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority. I have, therefore, asked the Authority to respond.
Asked by: Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley East)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, whether his Department has taken steps to ensure that underlying industrial disease is recorded on the death certificates of former miners with respiratory conditions who die with covid-19.
Answered by Michael Ellis
The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority. I have, therefore, asked the Authority to respond.
Asked by: Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley East)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many veterans were employed by the Civil Service in (a) February 2020 and (ii) November 2021.
Answered by Leo Docherty - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence) (Minister for the Armed Forces)
I am committed to ensuring that veterans enter appropriate employment post service. The Great Place to Work for Veterans Scheme is an example of one of the initiatives we have brought in to support veteran employment. A successful trial phase ran in six departments for nine months.
1,524 veterans who applied through the scheme received an interview and 344 received a job offer.
Given this was just a trial phase rolled out in six early adopter departments, it is not appropriate to measure the proportion of jobs filled through the scheme across the whole Civil Service.
Asked by: Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley East)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, with reference to the announcement entitled Detail of the Great Place to Work for Veterans initiative published in October 2020, how many and what proportion of civil service vacancies were filled through this initiative in (a) January to March, (b) April to June and (c) July to September 2021.
Answered by Leo Docherty - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence) (Minister for the Armed Forces)
I am committed to ensuring that veterans enter appropriate employment post service. The Great Place to Work for Veterans Scheme is an example of one of the initiatives we have brought in to support veteran employment. A successful trial phase ran in six departments for nine months.
1,524 veterans who applied through the scheme received an interview and 344 received a job offer.
Given this was just a trial phase rolled out in six early adopter departments, it is not appropriate to measure the proportion of jobs filled through the scheme across the whole Civil Service.
Asked by: Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley East)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, what estimate he has made of the number of veterans who have received (a) an interview and (b) a job through the Great Place to Work scheme.
Answered by Leo Docherty - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence) (Minister for the Armed Forces)
I am committed to ensuring that veterans enter appropriate employment post service. The Great Place to Work for Veterans Scheme is an example of one of the initiatives we have brought in to support veteran employment. A successful trial phase ran in six departments for nine months.
1,524 veterans who applied through the scheme received an interview and 344 received a job offer.
Given this was just a trial phase rolled out in six early adopter departments, it is not appropriate to measure the proportion of jobs filled through the scheme across the whole Civil Service.
Asked by: Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley East)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, what recent progress his Department has made on developing new ways to measure loss of veteran lives through suicide.
Answered by Leo Docherty - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence) (Minister for the Armed Forces)
The Office for Veterans’ Affairs has been working with the Office for National Statistics to further develop plans for a ten year retrospective study looking at suicides within the veteran community. We are working with the MoD to access the data required for this study, and this analysis will look at issues including the frequency of suicide within the veteran community since 2011 and how this rate has changed. This study is expected to be conducted with results published next year.
The Office for Veterans’ Affairs also continues to engage with the Office for National Statistics as analysis plans are put in place for the veterans data collected in the 2021 England and Wales census, which will be used to produce a measure of the number of veterans who take their own lives each year. It is expected that the first annual statistic on this will be published in 2023.
Asked by: Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley East)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, what recent progress his Department has made on its review of veteran deaths through suicide in the last ten years.
Answered by Leo Docherty - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence) (Minister for the Armed Forces)
The Office for Veterans’ Affairs has been working with the Office for National Statistics to further develop plans for a ten year retrospective study looking at suicides within the veteran community. We are working with the MoD to access the data required for this study, and this analysis will look at issues including the frequency of suicide within the veteran community since 2011 and how this rate has changed. This study is expected to be conducted with results published next year.
The Office for Veterans’ Affairs also continues to engage with the Office for National Statistics as analysis plans are put in place for the veterans data collected in the 2021 England and Wales census, which will be used to produce a measure of the number of veterans who take their own lives each year. It is expected that the first annual statistic on this will be published in 2023.
Asked by: Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley East)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps he plans to take to help ensure that lessons are learnt from the handling of the covid-19 pandemic before the public inquiry into its handling, for the purposes of ensuring a stronger response in the event that the virus mutates in a dangerous way between autumn 2021 and spring 2022.
Answered by Michael Ellis
The Government has consistently adapted its response to COVID-19, including new variants, as more is learnt about the virus and how best to manage it.
The Government has developed a wide range of tools to: reduce the risk of new variants emerging; stop and slow importation of the most dangerous variants; identify new variants and outbreaks; and ensure there is an appropriate response if further outbreaks occur. This includes - but is not limited to - the enhancement of domestic sequencing capacity this year. Our domestic capacity is set to further increase over the coming months, enabling a higher number of PCR positive cases to undergo whole genome sequencing, which in turn improves our ability to detect any new variants.
The Government is committed to learning lessons from COVID-19 to inform our preparedness for future epidemics. The government fully expects that many of those lessons will come from the public inquiry which will begin its work in spring 2022.
Asked by: Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley East)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, what progress he has made on (a) hiring staff, (b) finding offices and (c) sending advance requests for documents in preparation for the public inquiry into the handling of the covid-19 pandemic.
Answered by Michael Ellis
On 12 May, the Prime Minister confirmed that a public inquiry into COVID-19 would be established on a statutory basis, with full formal powers, and that it will begin its work in spring 2022.
Further details will be set out in due course.