Asked by: Bill Grant (Conservative - Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether his Department has made an assessment of the effect on the economy of the steam railway in Doon Valley; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
Transport, culture and tourism in Scotland are devolved matters, and so as a heritage railway issue, any assessment would be the responsibility of the Scottish Government.
Asked by: Ben Bradley (Conservative - Mansfield)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if he will make an estimate of the amount of funding his Department has spent on arts and culture provision in former coalfield communities in each of the last five years.
Answered by Michael Ellis
Historic England and Heritage Lottery Fund support coalfield communities by conserving and protecting key industrial heritage sites, their associated settlements and community buildings which provide a strong sense of place and community identity, supporting the economic and social regeneration of coalfield communities through heritage regeneration.
Between April 2012 and March 2017, Heritage Lottery Fund awarded £285.3m to 1,302 projects in coalfield community areas within the UK. By regional breakdown this includes East Midlands - £53,132,700; North East -£18,846,633; North West - £6,848,900; South East -£22,186,300; West Midlands -£35,198,600; Yorkshire and The Humber -£58,670,600.
Arts Council England have also provided significant investment into coalfield communities over the last five years: 2012/2013, £38,970,236; 2013/2014, £31,766,586; 2014/2015, £28,307,054; 2015/2016, £34,077,475; and 2016/2017, £41,625,973.
In addition to this, between 2013/14 and 2017/18 the National Coal Mining Museum England has received, on average, £2.45 million a year of funding.
Asked by: Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the answer by Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth on 30 October (HL Deb, col 1155), who will sit on the parks action group; and how frequently it intends to meet.
Answered by Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
The Parks Action Group will bring together government officials from Departments with an interest in parks and green spaces alongside experts from across the parks, leisure, heritage and environmental sectors. The first meeting will take place on 23rd November and will be chaired by Marcus Jones (Minister for Parks and Green Spaces).
The Parks Action Group will convene thematic meetings as required to support delivery of the group’s collectively agreed actions. Marcus Jones will chair a further formal meeting of the Parks Action Group in 2018, to assess progress.
The members of the Parks Action Group (Sectoral Group) are:
The members of the Parks Action Group (Cross-Departmental Group) will be senior officials for the policy areas with an interest in Parks and Green Spaces from the following Departments:
Asked by: Mike Hill (Labour - Hartlepool)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if she will visit the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Hartlepool.
Answered by John Glen - Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office
As Minister for Arts, Heritage and Tourism, I would be delighted to visit the National Museum of the Royal Navy in Hartlepool, subject to diary commitments. Hartlepool has a fantastic maritime and industrial heritage and the museum plays an important role in telling the story of the North East’s contribution to Royal Navy heritage.
Asked by: Lord Storey (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
Her Majesty's Government how many UNESCO World Heritage sites there are in the UK; and where those sites are.
Answered by Lord Ashton of Hyde
There are 31 World Heritage Sites for which the UK has responsibility. These are as follows:
Blaenavon Industrial Landscape
Blenheim Palace
Canterbury Cathedral, St Augustine’s Abbey, and St Martin’s Church
Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd
City of Bath
Cornwall and West Devon Mining Landscape
Derwent Valley Mills
Dorset and East Devon Coast
Durham Castle and Cathedral
Frontiers of the Roman Empire
Giant’s Causeway and Causeway Coast
Gorham’s Cave Complex
Gough and Inaccessible Islands
Heart of Neolithic Orkney
Henderson Island
Historic Town of St George and Related Fortifications, Bermuda
Ironbridge Gorge
Lake District
Liverpool – Maritime Mercantile City
Maritime Greenwich
New Lanark
Old and New Towns of Edinburgh
Palace of Westminster and Westminster Abbey including Saint Margaret’s church
Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Saltaire
St Kilda
Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites
Studley Royal Park including the Ruins of Fountains Abbey
The Forth Bridge
Tower of London
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what discussions his Department has had with the Department for Transport on the potential merits of improving rail infrastructure on the Durham heritage coast in order to promote employment opportunities and inward investment in East Durham.
Answered by Margot James
Through its Growth Deal the North East Local Enterprise Partnership has prioritised £3.44m of funding through the Local Growth Fund (LGF) for the construction of a new station at Horden (Peterlee) on the Durham Coast line. The station will improve local travel links and improved access to more employment opportunities in the East Durham area and beyond.
In November 2016 the Department for Transport received an application to the second round of the New Stations Fund from Durham County Council to support the construction of the station. The Department for Transport is currently evaluating all bids against the qualifying and assessment criteria.
Also as part of the new Northern Franchise which operates on the Durham Coast line, Seaham will benefit from an additional early morning service to Middlesbrough and later evening service from Newcastle by May 2018. Also by 2020 the Pacer trains currently in operation will have been removed from the fleet.
Asked by: Thangam Debbonaire (Labour - Bristol West)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, which museums partly or wholly reliant on public funding, have (a) closed part of their service, (b) reduced educational programmes and (c) closed completely in the last 12 months.
Answered by Lord Vaizey of Didcot
The Department does not hold data on a) and b).
Between 2012 and 2016, the Department for Education has provided £4.8 million for the “Museums and Schools” programme to support regional museums working with schools, in partnership with National Museums. The programme has exceeded its targets with over 68,000 pupils benefitting, and according to Arts Council England (ACE) data, the number of children attending events at ACE-sponsored museums continues to increase.
c) In the last 12 months, three former local authority-funded museums in England have closed: Snibston Discovery Museum, Orpington Museum and Durham Light Infantry Museum.
Orpington Museum has been replaced with two permanent displays in Bromley Central Library. A section of Durham Light Infantry Museum is now on display at the Palace Green Library, as part of the Somme 1916 exhibition.
Snibston Discovery Museum's collection has been dispersed locally - 61 objects that were on loan from Leicester City Museum Service have been returned along with 40 objects connected to the city's industrial heritage.
Asked by: David Anderson (Labour - Blaydon)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what proportion of coal produced and imported into the UK is used for (a) electricity generation, (b) steel production, (c) cement manufacture, (d) domestic uses, (e) carbon fibre goods, (f) liquid fuel manufacture, (g) mobile phone components and (h) heritage railways in the latest year for which figures are available.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The table below gives the proportion of coal produced and imported into the UK by sector for 2014. DECC only produces industry consumption data for the main industrial sectors. Therefore, data is not broken down specifically for cement manufacture, carbon fibre goods, liquid fuel manufacture and mobile phone components. For industry the table shows the two largest consumers and iron and steel.
| Thousand Tonnes | Proportion % |
Total Demand | 48,500 |
|
Transformation | 45,665 | 94.1% |
Of which: Electricity Generation | 38,400 | 79.2% |
Industry | 2,240 | 4.6% |
Of which : Mineral Products | 1173 | 2.4% |
Pulp, paper, printing, etc | 136 | 0.2% |
Iron and Steel | 54 | 0.1% |
Heritage railways | 13 | 0.03% |
Domestic | 547 | 1.1% |
*Other | 35 | 0.1% |
*includes energy industry use, public administration, commercial and miscellaneous.
Source:
DUKES table 2.4 available at: