Asked by: Tom Blenkinsop (Labour - Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what proportion of apprentices in the Tees Valley area (a) went on to work full-time with the employer with which they trained and (b) were subsequently unemployed in the last year for which figures are available.
Answered by Nick Boles
Statistical data broken down by region on (a) apprentices working full-time for the employer with which they trained or (b) were subsequently unemployed, is not available.
Latest Apprenticeship Evaluation Learner Survey 2016 data show that 9 out of 10 of all recent apprenticeship completers were in employment 12-20 months after completion. And 72% of those in employment were with the same employer with whom they completed their apprenticeship.
Information on Apprenticeship starts by region and local authority is published as a supplementary table (first link) to a Statistical First Release (second link).
Asked by: Tom Blenkinsop (Labour - Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what support has been provided by the Government for the growth of the energy-from-waste industry.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government has provided a range of support for energy from waste technologies through the Renewables Obligation (RO), the Renewable Incentive (RHI), the Feed-In Tariff and the Contracts for Difference (CfD). The technologies supported include: Landfill Gas, Sewage Gas, Energy from Waste with CHP, Anaerobic Digestion and Advanced Conversion Technologies.
As of the end of 2015, our support has brought forward just over 2.4 GWh of capacity in these technologies, delivering just under 9.4TWh of renewable electricity.
The Green Investment Bank (GIB) has provided support to 20 projects using energy from waste technologies. Direct commitments by the Green Investment Bank (GIB) to date total £334m with additional indirect commitments of £130m to Foresight Group LLP through the Foresight-managed Recycling and Waste LP (RAW) fund, in which GIB is a cornerstone investor, and Greensphere Capital LLP which manages the UK Green and Sustainable Waste and Energy Investment Limited Partnership (UKGSWEI) fund on behalf of the GIB.
Asked by: Tom Blenkinsop (Labour - Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, when he was made aware of the decision by Air Products to exit its energy-from-waste business.
Answered by Anna Soubry
The Government engages with Air Products in relation to their Tees Valley energy-from-waste plant at both Official and Ministerial level. My Department was first made aware of this decision on 4th April and will be working with the Local Enterprise Partnership to explore the impacts of this announcement.
Asked by: Tom Blenkinsop (Labour - Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, if he will amend the remit of the taskforce created to respond to the closure of SSI in Redcar to include the Teesside economy as a whole.
Answered by Anna Soubry
Where there are redundancies within the Tees Valley, the Government will work with local partners, including the Tees Valley Combined Authority, the Local Enterprise Partnership and the SSI Task Force to determine how support can be most effectively targeted to affected individuals. The SSI Task Force is already supporting the Tees Valley economy more broadly, for example through the £16m Support for Businesses Schemes, which the Task Force reports has created 186 jobs, safeguarded 326 jobs and committed £4.1m funding, attracting £6m in private sector match.
Asked by: Tom Blenkinsop (Labour - Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what steps she is taking to reduce the number of children living in fuel poverty.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We are investing close to £1 billion a year to help consumers through a reformed supplier obligation and Warm Home Discount, and plan to reform both schemes to focus that funding better on those that need it most.
Our ability to do that is strengthened significantly by the introduction of an improved definition of fuel poverty which captures those in genuine need who are facing the overlapping problem of a low household income and high energy costs.
This low income high costs indicator has meant a change in the demographic of who is considered to be fuel poor in England - with homes with at least one child now accounting for nearly half of the fuel poor population.
We will be consulting on our proposals to reform the supplier obligation and the Warm Home Discount later this year.
Asked by: Tom Blenkinsop (Labour - Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what funding the Government has provided for carbon capture and storage research and development projects not based in the UK since 2010.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Under DECC’s £20m CCS Innovation Programme, Net Power LLC, a US company, was awarded a Research and Development grant of £7.5m to demonstrate a British invented low carbon power generation technology. Net Power worked with Goodwin Steel castings, an established UK manufacturer, to manufacture turbine casings for the project.
Through the International Climate Fund (ICF) the Government has funded capacity building projects in a number of partner countries. In December 2012, the UK committed £60 million from the ICF to trust funds operated by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank to support developing countries to develop both the technical and institutional knowledge necessary to enable the deployment of CCS technologies. The ICF finance is supporting CCS capacity building through pilot projects, with the aim of demonstrating the technology and reducing the cost of the technology application across the CCS chain.