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Written Question
Development Aid: Migrant Camps
Monday 20th March 2023

Asked by: Stuart C McDonald (Scottish National Party - Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East)

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential link between the level of UK aid spending between 2020 and 2021 on the spread of antimicrobial resistance and the risk of drug-resistant infections in refugee camps in low and middle-income countries.

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

In 2021, the UK was the third largest development donor in the G7 as a percentage of GNI, spending over £11 billion on aid. The UK is committed to the global eradication of antimicrobial resistance and supports a wide range of activities to do this.

Through our £265m ODA Fleming Fund, the UK builds partnerships with LMICs to strengthen AMR surveillance, diagnostics and laboratory capacity. The Global AMR Innovation Fund (GAMRIF), another UK aid fund, supports early-stage innovative research in underfunded areas of AMR research and development for the benefit of people in low- and middle-income countries.

We have also used our aid budget to reduce the risks of antimicrobial resistance by helping prevent the emergence and spread of infectious diseases. Between April 2020 and December 2021, in partnership with Unilever the UK reached over 4 million refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) with handwashing messages to prevent the spread of infection in countries such as Bangladesh, Cameroon, Syria, South Sudan and Yemen. The UK also supports the work of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Organisation for Migration and the Red Cross Movement, each of which include work on water, sanitation and hygiene as part of their programming and support displaced persons, including refugees and migrants in camps.


Written Question
Shares: Sales
Monday 19th April 2021

Asked by: Stuart C McDonald (Scottish National Party - Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East)

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the potential effect on short selling the financial market of The Short Selling (Notification Thresholds) Regulations 2021; and what plans he has to bring forward legislative proposals to regulate short selling in the future.

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

Short selling is regulated in the UK under the Short Selling Regulation, introduced in 2012. As with all regulation, the Treasury works closely with the regulators and market participants to monitor the effectiveness of the regulatory regime, in line with the government’s objectives of supporting economic growth and financial stability.

The Short Selling (Notification Thresholds) Regulations 2021 lowered the threshold for the reporting of net short positions to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), in relation to the issued share capital of a company that has shares admitted to trading on a trading venue, to 0.1%. HM Treasury will continue to consider with the FCA whether the notification threshold remains appropriate given market conditions.


Written Question
Revenue and Customs: Scotland
Tuesday 2nd March 2021

Asked by: Stuart C McDonald (Scottish National Party - Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East)

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what impact assessment has been carried out on the effect on staff at HMRC's office in Cumbernauld of requiring those employees to travel to a new office in Glasgow; and if he will publish that assessment.

Answered by Jesse Norman

HMRC undertake People Equality Impact Assessments (PEIA) on a regular basis at national and regional levels, covering all the impacts on employees as a result of their Locations Programme. The impact on employees in Cumbernauld who will be required to travel to a new office in Glasgow will be included in the wider PEIA for the Glasgow Region and will be updated later this year. HMRC publish national PEIAs externally; the regional PEIAs are published internally and made available to all employees.

HMRC provided the Honourable Member with the most recent Glasgow Regional PEIA, which included Cumbernauld, in December 2020.


Written Question
Revenue and Customs: Recruitment
Tuesday 2nd March 2021

Asked by: Stuart C McDonald (Scottish National Party - Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East)

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many temporary workers have been recruited by HMRC in the last twelve months; and what roles those workers have performed.

Answered by Jesse Norman

HMRC have recruited c.3,794 temporary workers into the department over the last twelve months. The largest proportion, 2,564, relates to workers recruited to supplement the existing workforce to support UK Transition and COVID-19 schemes.

The table below provides a breakdown;

Area

Business Unit

Temporary Workers

Covid19 and UKT Schemes (Bulk)

CSG/CCG

1588

Borders Design to Delivery

976

Digital / Technology

CDIO

198

RCDTS

100

CSTD

40

Operational Delivery

Customer Services

671

Finance / Tax / Legal

Solicitors Office

33

CFO

31

Compliance

CCG

75

Other

Communications

1

CPO

52

HR

17

Transformation

2

UK Transition

4

Customs Border Design

6

Total

3794


Written Question
Revenue and Customs: Redundancy
Tuesday 2nd March 2021

Asked by: Stuart C McDonald (Scottish National Party - Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East)

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many staff have been made redundant as part of HMRC's Building our future programme to date; and what recent estimate he has made of what the total number of redundancies will be under that programme.

Answered by Jesse Norman

Since the commencement of HMRC’s Location Programme activity, 45,158 people have been invited to undertake a one-to-one discussion to determine whether or not they are able to migrate to a future HMRC location and/or opt-in to move. Of those people, 5,251 have subsequently left HMRC on an exit package. A further 204 people have accepted Voluntary Redundancy offers and are due to leave HMRC by 30 June 2021.

Learning from HMRC’s experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has given the department the opportunity to look at what flexibilities HMRC can allow to help people to stay working in HMRC, HMRC will review their approach for the remainder of the programme.


Written Question
Revenue and Customs: Cumbernauld
Wednesday 16th September 2020

Asked by: Stuart C McDonald (Scottish National Party - Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East)

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when HMRC's lease on its office in Cumbernauld will expire.

Answered by Jesse Norman

The lease for the HMRC office in Cumbernauld (Accounts Office) expires on 1 April 2021. Under the exit provisions of the STEPS PFI contract, HMRC have the option to extend the lease. In line with their locations strategy and to allow them to remain in the property until the Glasgow Regional Centre opens, HMRC are actively working on an extension and expect to issue an update soon.

HMRC will undertake to inform the Honourable Member of the outcome.


Written Question
Customs: Electronic Government
Thursday 2nd July 2020

Asked by: Stuart C McDonald (Scottish National Party - Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East)

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for what reason he decided to develop a bespoke customs management software instead of using UNCTAD's ASYCUDA system.

Answered by Jesse Norman

HMRC are not developing a bespoke Customs Management software. They have selected a commercial package called Declaration Management System (DMS) as part of the CDS programme. DMS has been deployed into HMRC’s live environment and traders are already making transitions onto the new platform.

UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) offer the ASYCUDA system to developing countries as an alternative to DMS. There are about 90 countries with relatively small Customs functions (e.g. Albania, Palestine, and Somoa) using ASYCUDA worldwide. ASYCUDA is not used by any G7 or G20 countries.

ASYCUDA was considered alongside DMS as one of the options for CHIEF replacement. It was not selected as the preferred option because (a) it did not meet all of the Union Customs Code functional requirements and (b) there were no reference countries processing anything like (pre EU Exit) UK declaration volumes, and no guarantees that ASYCUDA could meet UK volumes. With an expected five-fold increase in declaration volumes resulting from our departure from the EU, ASYCUDA looked less well suited to UK requirements.


Written Question
UK Trade with EU: Customs
Thursday 2nd July 2020

Asked by: Stuart C McDonald (Scottish National Party - Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East)

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what contingency plans he has put in place for the potential eventuality that customs declarations software fails after the transition period has ended.

Answered by Jesse Norman

HMRC continue to test their customs systems to ensure they will remain effective following the end of the Transition Period. In the unlikely event of an unplanned outage there are fallback procedures in place. In addition, there is a disaster recovery system for CHIEF, and the new Customs Declaration Service is protected by the cloud-based environment it is hosted on.


Written Question
Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme: Fraud
Friday 26th June 2020

Asked by: Stuart C McDonald (Scottish National Party - Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East)

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many reports of abuse of the furlough scheme the Government has received; and what progress he has made in investigating them.

Answered by Jesse Norman

As of 19 June, HMRC have confirmed receipt of 3,351 allegations of fraud relating specifically to the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme. These have been assessed in line with HMRC’s standard operating procedures for fraudulent allegations.


Written Question
Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme
Friday 26th June 2020

Asked by: Stuart C McDonald (Scottish National Party - Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East)

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the number of firms using the furlough scheme towards the cost of redundancy payments.

Answered by Jesse Norman

As per the latest updates to the guidance for the Coronavirus Job Retention scheme, grants cannot be used to substitute redundancy payments.

HMRC will continue to monitor businesses after the scheme has closed.

Full guidance can be found on GOV.UK: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claim-for-wage-costs-through-the-coronavirus-job-retention-scheme.