Asked by: Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to help secure the potential benefits of the supply chain position of the UK’s lead in floating wind technology.
Answered by Anne-Marie Trevelyan
The Government set an ambitious target of 1GW of floating offshore wind by 2030, last year as part of the wider 40GW by 2030 offshore wind target. This will stimulate development in projects and investment in the supply chain.
As part of the Government’s £1 billion Net Zero Innovation Portfolio fund, announced in my Rt. Hon. Friend the Prime Minister’s Ten Point Plan, we are supporting innovation through the Floating Offshore Wind Demonstration Programme. This aims to support development and demonstration of state of the art technologies and products in the future offshore wind industry.
Asked by: Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how many people started receiving (a) statutory paternity pay and (b) shared parental pay in each quarter since April 2015.
Answered by Paul Scully
The Government is committed to supporting working parents. In 2015, we introduced Shared Parental Leave and Pay which gives eligible parents much more flexibility and choice in how they share care for their new child between them in the first year. The scheme is in addition to the Government’s 2-week Paternity Leave and Pay policy and gives fathers and partners access to up to 50 weeks of leave and 37 weeks of pay.
Take-up of Shared Parental Leave and Pay has been broadly in line with our initial estimates, which anticipated that a cultural change like this would take time to bed-in.
Table 1 below shows the number of individuals in receipt of Statutory Paternity Pay and Statutory Shared Parental Pay based on the month that the claim was first made.
Table 1: Individuals in receipt of Statutory Paternity Pay and Statutory Shared Parental Pay based on the month that the claim was first made by quarter, 2015/16 to 2019/20
| Statutory Paternity Pay (month first claimed) | Statutory Shared Parental Pay (month first claimed) |
Q1 15/16 | 51,900 | 1,200 |
Q2 15/16 | 55,000 | 1,400 |
Q3 15/16 | 52,200 | 1,500 |
Q4 15/16 | 54,200 | 1,900 |
Q1 16/17 | 55,100 | 2,000 |
Q2 16/17 | 56,200 | 2,000 |
Q3 16/17 | 52,900 | 1,700 |
Q4 16/17 | 54,000 | 2,000 |
Q1 17/18 | 51,400 | 2,100 |
Q2 17/18 | 55,500 | 2,200 |
Q3 17/18 | 52,600 | 1,900 |
Q4 17/18 | 51,200 | 1,900 |
Q1 18/19 | 48,300 | 2,300 |
Q2 18/19 | 50,300 | 2,600 |
Q3 18/19 | 47,600 | 2,200 |
Q4 18/19 | 54,000 | 2,400 |
Q1 19/20 | 50,800 | 2,900 |
Q2 19/20 | 53,100 | 3,500 |
Q3 19/20 | 50,400 | 2,400 |
Data based on the month first claimed means that an individual who first claims statutory payment in a given month (i.e. had not claimed it in the previous month) and continues receiving statutory pay for multiple months would only be counted in the first month.
Asked by: Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, when she plans to reduce the age of entitlement to the National Living Wage to 21; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
The Government has announced that in April 2020 the National Living Wage (NLW) will increase by 6.2 per cent to £8.72 for those aged 25 and over. The Government has also announced inflation-beating increases in the National Minimum Wage (NMW) rates for younger workers and apprentices of between 4.6 per cent and 6.5 per cent.
My rt. hon. Friend Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer has pledged that the National Living Wage will increase further, reaching two-thirds of median earnings by 2024, providing economic conditions allow. The Government also plans to expand the reach of the National Living Wage, bringing down the eligibility threshold first to age 23 in 2021 and then to 21 by 2024.