Written Statements

Tuesday 24th February 2015 Written Statements

Tuesday 24 February 2015

Triennal Review of the Civil Service Commission

Tuesday 24th February 2015 Written Statements

[The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)]

Lord Wallace of Saltaire announced on 29 July 2014 that the Government had asked Sir Gerry Grimstone to lead a triennial review of the Civil Service Commission. I am now pleased to announce the completion of the review.

The commission plays an important role providing assurance that selection to appointments in the civil service is on merit and hearing and determining appeals made under the civil service code.

The review concludes that the functions performed by the commission are still required and that it should be retained as an Executive non-departmental public body. The review also looked at whether its remit should be extended or amended to support the civil service in facing its future challenges. The report makes 31 recommendations. The Government welcome the review and thank Sir Gerry for his work. The Government will consider its recommendations carefully.

In the course of his review, Sir Gerry consulted with a wide range of stakeholders and ensured there was independent challenge. I would like to thank all contributors and Sir Gerry for his work on this review, and his useful report.

The full report of the triennial review of the Civil Service Commission — “A Better Civil Service”— can be found on gov.uk and copies have been placed in the Library of both Houses.

It can also available online at: http://www.parliament. uk/writtenstatements

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Equitable Life Payment Scheme

Tuesday 24th February 2015 Written Statements

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Andrea Leadsom)]

As of 31 January 2015, the scheme has now issued payments surpassing £1 billion to 896,367 policyholders.

The figures are broken down as follows:

412,445 payments to individual investors have been issued totalling £560.3 million. 37,764 with-profits annuitants (WPAs) or their estates have been issued payments by the scheme. These initial and subsequent payments total £271.4 million.

446,158 payments totalling £169.3 million have been issued to those who bought their policy through their company pension scheme.

There are now approximately 142,000 policyholders who are due a payment but where the scheme has not yet been able to trace or validate their address.

The scheme has gone to significant lengths to trace eligible policyholders. It remains committed to tracing and paying as many eligible policyholders as possible, and will continue to consider all proportionate actions it can take to do this, including working with the Department for Work and Pensions.

The scheme encourages any policyholders who believe themselves to be eligible to call the scheme on: 0300 0200 150. The scheme can verify the identity of most policyholders on the telephone, which means any payment due can usually be received within two weeks.

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North Wales Prison

Tuesday 24th February 2015 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Andrew Selous)]

The construction of the new prison in north Wales is already under way as part of the prison new capacity and unit cost programmes. I can confirm that the new prison will be operated by Her Majesty’s Prison Service (HMPS) but with 34 % of service provision outsourced, including the running of the large industrial workshop complex. This new model will bring the public, voluntary and private sectors together, working to provide the best rehabilitative environment and to tackle reoffending rates.

The prison will provide 2,106 male category C places for offenders from north Wales and north-west England, and will have a small remand function serving the courts in north Wales. The first houseblock will start to take prisoners from early 2017. In addition to places for education and resettlement, there will be 12 large workshop spaces that can be used flexibly for a range of work and skills training activities and a recycling unit. This new prison will enable offenders to be held closer to home, allowing better support for their rehabilitation and reintegration into their communities on release.

The decision to allow HMPS to operate the prison reflects the success of the prison unit cost programme which will save £300 million per annum from prison budgets by 2015-16 and reduces unit costs by £2,200 per place. The innovative approach we are taking in north Wales provides value for the taxpayer, makes best use of the considerable public sector expertise in running safe and decent prisons and will draw on the core strengths of the public, private and voluntary sectors to achieve the best results. It will incorporate the learning and good practice from previous prison mobilisations to ensure that it operates efficiently while providing prisoners with a robust and effective regime to assist them to address their offending behaviour.

This £212 million investment in constructing the prison is a significant opportunity for north Wales, with the project set to boost the regional economy by around £23 million a year and create up to 1,000 jobs once operational. The Ministry of Justice has been working closely with Welsh devolved health and education services to develop suitable models for the prison and will continue to work with the Welsh Government and other partners to agree the necessary resourcing as delivery requirements are finalised.

Our estate strategy will achieve long-term cost reduction in the prison estate through the policy of “New for Old”—this means replacing uneconomic prison places with modern, fit for purpose accommodation at much lower cost. The National Audit Office has stated that:

“The strategy for the prison estate is the most coherent and comprehensive for many years, has quickly cut operating costs, and is a significant improvement in value for money on the approaches of the past.”

The north Wales prison will provide good quality prison accommodation that delivers value for the taxpayer as a result of the low cost per place. Creating a modern low-cost prison estate is essential to further reduce the overall cost of the prison system.

[HCWS297]

December 2014 Electoral Registers (England and Wales)

Tuesday 24th February 2015 Written Statements

[Mr Gary Streeter]

(Representing the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission): The Electoral Commission has today published a report on its analysis of the December 2014 electoral registers in England and Wales. This is part of the Commission’s programme of work monitoring the progress of the transition to individual electoral registration (IER). In April, it will publish equivalent data and analysis for Scotland, which began the transition to IER on 19 September after the referendum on independence.

The publication of the December registers is a key milestone in the transition to IER, but it is not the end of the process and work has been, and still is, continuing to ensure that as many people as possible are registered to vote at their correct address in advance of the May 2015 polls.

The Commission’s analysis of the December registers identified that the size of the December 2014 electorate in England and Wales was approximately 2% lower than it was following the final household canvass in February/March 2014. This means there were around 920,000 fewer entries on the registers in December 2014. This decline is likely attributable to the lack of comprehensive household canvass activity in 2014. The processes followed in 2014 were unique in this regard; canvass activity in 2015 and all subsequent years will involve sending forms to all properties to check who is resident at an address and to identify new electors who can subsequently be invited to register.

To address this, the Commission has strongly recommended that all electoral registration officers (EROs) carry out an audit of their registers by sending a letter to every property in their area showing who is registered to vote at that particular address and prompting anyone who is not yet registered to do so. All EROs in England and Wales have confirmed that they have or will be carrying out this activity or are considering other comprehensive activity which seeks to address the issues identified by our analysis of the 1 December registers data. Should any ERO decide not to undertake such activity, the Commission will make a recommendation to the Secretary of State to issue a direction to require them to do so. The Commission also welcomed the January 2015 announcement that £6.8 million would be made available to EROs to support activity to maximise registration, and many EROs have used their share of this to fund sending out these household notification letters.

There also appear to have been more specific challenges, including the registration of students at their term-time address; therefore some local authorities with large student and young mobile populations have seen larger than average falls in numbers of entries on the register. The Commission also reports that the number of registered attainer—16 and 17-year-olds—is significantly lower than in previous years.

While no one on the 1 December registers will be removed from the register before the May 2015 elections unless the ERO is no longer satisfied that they are entitled to remain registered at that address, more needs to be done to target those not yet included on the register at their current address.

EROs have comprehensive plans in place to get people registered and the Commission is running online and television advertising campaigns to encourage people to register. The results of this activity are already encouraging and we welcome the great work that has been done, and is still planned, by a huge number of organisations to get voters registered. It is positive that as of the publication date of the Commission’s analysis, around 2 million applications to register have already been made since 1 December—166,000 of which were on national voter registration day itself. We know that some of these will be duplicate entries and therefore not new additions to the register and that more work is clearly needed, however, the Commission is also confident that appropriate plans are in place to ensure voters know what they need to do to get registered.

The Commission is also working with partners including the National Union of Students, the Association of Colleges and Universities UK among other organisations to help get students and other young people registered and is planning further public awareness activity specifically targeted at these groups.

The Commission has encountered problems collecting reliable data from each ERO due to issues with the electoral management software (EMS) systems they use to manage the electoral register. The Cabinet Office contracted directly with suppliers to provide these systems and the Commission provided the Cabinet Office with a clear indication of the data that they and EROs would need to make a full assessment of progress. Despite this, not all local authorities have been able to provide the management information the Commission expected. The absence of some key data, and issues with the quality of other aspects of the data, has affected the analysis the Commission is able to do at this stage. In particular, the Commission could not obtain a full set of data of a sufficient quality to enable a detailed analysis of progress with the transition to IER in this report.

These issues with data have created a real risk that the Commission will not have sufficient information to be able to make a robust, evidence-based recommendation in June 2015 to inform the UK Government’s decision on whether to recommend to Parliament that the end of the transition should be brought forward. The Commission’s report sets out that, without urgent action by the Cabinet Office and software suppliers to ensure that the necessary data will be available to allow for a full and rigorous analysis of the state of the registers, it is highly unlikely that the Commission will be able to recommend that the end of the transition be brought forward to December 2015.

Copies of the Commission’s report have been placed in the Library and it is also available on the Commission’s website: www.electoralcommission.org.uk

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