Asked by: Tahir Ali (Labour - Birmingham, Hall Green)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he plans to take to improve the performance of the Disclosure and Barring Service.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
The DBS publishes its KPIs in the annual business plan. By the end of Quarter 3 2023/24, DBS expects to have met the 85% target for Basic and Standard checks. For Enhanced checks, the DBS aims to issue 80% of checks within 14 days. In quarter 2 2023/24, the average attainment was 77.2% (noting the 80% target was met on day 17).
An Enhanced check requires the DBS to send applications to the police for local data searches and local intelligence checks. Currently some police forces’ turnaround times have been affected by increased volumes of disclosure applications against original forecasts. To improve performance, extra funding has been provided to police forces to recruit more staff to service the additional demand for Enhanced DBS checks that is being seen across the regulated employment sector. The DBS is also working in collaboration with policing partners to enhance the quality of an enhanced criminal record check referral to improve turnaround times.
The DBS continues to modernise its services through the replacement of legacy IT systems and is working to deliver further digitisation of its disclosure products to further enhance performance outcomes.
Asked by: Tahir Ali (Labour - Birmingham, Hall Green)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps he is taking to improve rail services between Birmingham and Manchester.
Answered by Huw Merriman - Minister of State (Department for Transport)
In May 2023, CrossCountry increased service frequency to two trains per hour from Birmingham to both Manchester and Bristol.
A new CrossCountry National Rail Contract commenced in October 2023. This will deliver improvements for passengers travelling on CrossCountry services, including between the West Midlands and Manchester. Cascaded additional carriages will be introduced and the entire CrossCountry train fleet is due to be refurbished over the next few years.
Asked by: Tahir Ali (Labour - Birmingham, Hall Green)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has made an estimate of the proportion of low-income families that attend yearly dental check-ups in Birmingham.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance on recall intervals indicates that a healthy adult with good oral health need only see a dentist once every two years, and a child once every year. Data is therefore collected accordingly.
Under our reforms of July 2022 practices have been reminded that urgent dental care should be provided as part of their core service offer to patients, and that adherence to risk based recall intervals and other NICE guidance is a contractual requirement.
NHS Dental Statistics for England, 2022-23 Annual Report, brings together information on National Health Service dental activity in England for the 12-month period to 31 March 2023 and information on the number of patients seen by an NHS dentist up to 30 June 2023. This is available at the following link:
The data shows that 58.5% of courses of treatments were delivered to patients exempt from paying patient charges in 2022/23 for Birmingham and Solihull Integrated Care Board.
Asked by: Tahir Ali (Labour - Birmingham, Hall Green)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps his Department is taking to increase the mobility of skilled labour into the UK.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
Our Points Based System enables the Government to prioritise the skills and talent we need to help our economy grow and support our NHS, while encouraging investment in, and protecting, our own resident workforce.
The UK’s immigration offer enables talented individuals to come to the UK through a variety of different routes, including Global Talent, Skilled Worker, and Global Business Mobility. More recently we have added the High Potential Individual route for recent graduates of top global universities to build their careers in the UK.
The Government will continue to use the levers provided by the Points Based system to allow highly skilled workers to come to the UK, while taking decisive action against those take advantage of the system at the expense of those who play by the rules.
Asked by: Tahir Ali (Labour - Birmingham, Hall Green)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps his Department is taking to increase the mobility of young people between the UK and Europe.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The UK remain open to negotiating new Youth Mobility Scheme (YMS) arrangements with other countries and territories, including EU Member States. However, as each YMS is subject to a bilateral, reciprocal arrangement which also provides benefit to UK nationals, with the details agreed between the relevant parties, we are unable to disclose the status of negotiations as they occur.
Asked by: Tahir Ali (Labour - Birmingham, Hall Green)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has made an assessment of the potential implications for her policies of the data analysis by Mencap on the number of people with learning disabilities and/or autistic people in mental health hospitals, published on 31 March 2023.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
‘Assuring Transformation’ data is published monthly by NHS England to monitor the number of people with a learning disability and autistic people in mental health hospitals. It is regularly reviewed and discussed by the ministerially chaired Building the Right Support Delivery Board to inform actions to drive further progress in reducing the number of autistic people and people with a learning disability in mental health inpatient settings.
Asked by: Tahir Ali (Labour - Birmingham, Hall Green)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what his planned timetable is for providing feedback on the Full Business Case for the Birmingham Highways Maintenance and Management PFI contract, submitted to his Department by Birmingham City Council and Birmingham Highways Ltd in August 2023.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Government has funded Birmingham City Council’s Highways Maintenance contract at £50.3 million a year for 13 years and will continue to do so, maintaining the current level of funding to the council at £50 million a year for the remainder of the current spending review period until 2023/24.
After this time, West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) will become eligible for an additional share of the £8.3 billion as the £151 million for WMCA did not previously include an allocation for Birmingham City Council’s roads. This is part of the £2.2 billion wider funding for East Midlands and West Midlands.
This is in addition to the £1bn of CRSTS funding to WMCA up to 2026/27, and CRSTS 2 indicative funding of over £2.6billion over 5 years from 2027/28 to 2031/32.
Asked by: Tahir Ali (Labour - Birmingham, Hall Green)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether he has made an assessment of the potential impact of the time taken to make a decision on the Birmingham Highways Maintenance and Management PFI contract on (a) the total funding and (b) maintenance of Birmingham Highways.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Government has funded Birmingham City Council’s Highways Maintenance contract at £50.3 million a year for 13 years and will continue to do so, maintaining the current level of funding to the council at £50 million a year for the remainder of the current spending review period until 2023/24.
After this time, West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) will become eligible for an additional share of the £8.3 billion as the £151 million for WMCA did not previously include an allocation for Birmingham City Council’s roads. This is part of the £2.2 billion wider funding for East Midlands and West Midlands.
This is in addition to the £1bn of CRSTS funding to WMCA up to 2026/27, and CRSTS 2 indicative funding of over £2.6billion over 5 years from 2027/28 to 2031/32.
Asked by: Tahir Ali (Labour - Birmingham, Hall Green)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, if she will take steps to align the UK with EU (a) standards and (b) regulations.
Answered by Kevin Hollinrake - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The UK government has recently announced plans to continue recognising the EU’s CE marking indefinitely for 18 manufactured goods product regulations managed by the Department for Business and Trade. This announcement followed extensive engagement with industry. We are working closely with businesses and other stakeholders to ensure our approach to regulation supports the UK economy, industry and consumers.
Asked by: Tahir Ali (Labour - Birmingham, Hall Green)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the average waiting time is for an adult autism diagnosis.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
Data on the average waiting times between referral for an autism assessment and diagnosis is not held centrally. Some data is held on average length of time between referral and first care contact. NHS England analysis indicates that, as of June 2023, for people aged 18 years old and over, there were 3,730 referrals for suspected autism where the date of first care contact falls within the period April to June 2023, which is the latest quarter available. The median waiting time for these referrals was 225 days.
The autism assessment waiting times data published on 14 September 2023 showed that the number of patients aged 18 years old and over with an open referral for suspected autism was 59,099 in June 2023. The data also showed that, in June 2023, 2,906 patients, or 5.8%, aged 18 years old and over with an open suspected autism referral in the month, that has been open for at least 13 weeks, received a first appointment in 13 weeks or less. The subsequent waiting times publication is 14 December 2023.