Asked by: Baroness Whitaker (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether the provisions in Part 4 of the Schools Bill (independent educational institutions) remains their policy.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department’s position on the Schools Bill will be confirmed in due course. The policies support the department’s objective of ensuring that all children receive a safe and suitable education, and the department remains fully committed to taking forward these measures, including through legislation where this is necessary.
Part 3 of the Schools Bill would place a duty on local authorities in England to establish and maintain Children Not in School registers, to provide support to home educators when requested, and update the process for School Attendance Orders to improve efficacy. Part 3 also includes measures on school attendance, which would place the Department’s recently published school attendance guidance ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ on a statutory footing, introduce a national framework for the issuing of fixed penalty notices pertaining to attendance, and bring consistency in how all state funded schools grant leaves of absence in extenuating circumstances.
Part 4 of the Schools Bill seeks to improve safeguarding for children who do not attend state funded schools. It would extend the school registration requirement so that all settings serving children of compulsory school age full time are required to provide a safe and suitably broad education. It strengthens the powers allowing Ofsted and the Department to investigate and take action against illegal unregistered schools. It would also improve the regulation of registered independent schools by ensuring that school registrations correctly reflect each schools safe capacity, age range and other characteristics, and includes measures to improve enforcement powers to better address the needs of children at failing and unsafe schools.
Asked by: Baroness Whitaker (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they intend to proceed with the policies in Part 3 (school attendance) and Part 4 (independent educational institutions) of the Schools Bill.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department’s position on the Schools Bill will be confirmed in due course. The policies support the department’s objective of ensuring that all children receive a safe and suitable education, and the department remains fully committed to taking forward these measures, including through legislation where this is necessary.
Part 3 of the Schools Bill would place a duty on local authorities in England to establish and maintain Children Not in School registers, to provide support to home educators when requested, and update the process for School Attendance Orders to improve efficacy. Part 3 also includes measures on school attendance, which would place the Department’s recently published school attendance guidance ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ on a statutory footing, introduce a national framework for the issuing of fixed penalty notices pertaining to attendance, and bring consistency in how all state funded schools grant leaves of absence in extenuating circumstances.
Part 4 of the Schools Bill seeks to improve safeguarding for children who do not attend state funded schools. It would extend the school registration requirement so that all settings serving children of compulsory school age full time are required to provide a safe and suitably broad education. It strengthens the powers allowing Ofsted and the Department to investigate and take action against illegal unregistered schools. It would also improve the regulation of registered independent schools by ensuring that school registrations correctly reflect each schools safe capacity, age range and other characteristics, and includes measures to improve enforcement powers to better address the needs of children at failing and unsafe schools.
Asked by: Baroness Whitaker (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to The Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult’s report Cost Reduction Pathway of Tidal Stream Energy in the UK and France, published on 17 October, whether they will set a 2030 target for tidal stream energy as they have done for offshore wind, nuclear and hydrogen production.
Answered by Lord Callanan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The Government welcomes the Catapult’s report and will continue to work with the sector to promote deployment of tidal energy where feasible. Over 40MW of new tidal stream power has been secured in Scotland and Wales via the Contracts for Difference scheme this year. This was the first time that tidal stream power has been procured at this scale.
Asked by: Baroness Whitaker (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to The Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult’s report Cost Reduction Pathway of Tidal Stream Energy in the UK and France, published on 17 October, whether they will keep a ringfenced amount of generation of tidal stream energy in upcoming Contracts for Difference auctions.
Answered by Lord Callanan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The Government is currently developing auction parameters for Allocation Round 5 of the Contracts for Difference scheme, including any for tidal stream, taking into account evidence of the pipeline of available projects. The Government will publish details of these parameters ahead of the round opening in March 2023.
Asked by: Baroness Whitaker (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to The Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult’s report Cost Reduction Pathway of Tidal Stream Energy in the UK and France, published on 17 October, whether they plan to extend the proposed streamlining of planning legislation for offshore wind to tidal stream energy.
Answered by Lord Callanan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The energy National Policy Statements are being updated to include Tidal Stream generation. Details will be published in due course with an annex for Tidal Range which indicates what a well-developed project proposal entails, to aid developers in their planning process.
Asked by: Baroness Whitaker (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of (1) the CSIRO report Dispatchability and energy storage costs for complementary wave, wind, and solar PV systems, published on 27 September, and (2) the potential for wave energy to assist with maintaining grid stability in the UK as the share of renewable energy increases.
Answered by Lord Callanan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
Analysis has confirmed the predictability, resilience and potential cost-effectiveness of marine energy, which could play a key role in delivering net zero, as noted in the cited report. The Government is pleased that, at the last contracts for difference auction, four tidal stream projects were successful. The Department continues to explore options to increase the production of wave and tidal energy, including innovative funding mechanisms.
Asked by: Baroness Whitaker (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they have taken to obtain agreement for climate change mitigation measures through the World Trade Organization.
Answered by Lord Callanan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The UK is working with international partners to help tackle climate change and champion the multilateral trading system through the World Trade Organisation, in line with our global ambition on climate change. The UK is actively engaged at the Committee on Trade and Environment (CTE) and the Trade and Environmental Sustainability Structured Discussions (TESSD) group to accelerate progress towards multilateral solutions, including to promote trade in environmental goods and services and find solutions to help mitigate carbon leakage risk.
Asked by: Baroness Whitaker (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Law Commission report Celebrating Marriage: A New Weddings Law, published 19 July, what plans, if any, they have to grant legal recognition to humanist marriages; and on what timescale they plan to grant such recognition.
Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Law Commission report contains 57 recommendations for legislative reform.
We must now take the time to consider the Law Commission’s recommendations fully. As has been set out in Parliament, marriage will always be one of our most important institutions, and we have a duty to consider the implications of any changes to the law in this area very carefully, including balancing the needs and interests of all groups. We will publish a response to the report in due course.
Asked by: Baroness Whitaker (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government why all references to ”sexual and reproductive health and rights” and ”bodily autonomy” were removed from the Statement on freedom of religion or belief and gender equality, published on 7 July.
Answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The UK is committed to defending and promoting universal and comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights and will continue working with other countries to protect gender equality in international agreements. In our capacity as Chair of the event, we amended the statement we made at the Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB) Conference to make the final statement more inclusive of all perspectives and views to allow for a constructive exchange of views on all issues. The UK continues to fund support and lead on issues of gender including on SRHR, through initiatives related to Women,Peace and Security and Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict.
Asked by: Baroness Whitaker (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, following the removal of references to “sexual and reproductive health and rights” and “bodily autonomy” from the Statement on freedom of religion or belief and gender equality, whether the original statement can be reinstated.
Answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The UK is committed to defending and promoting universal and comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights and will continue working with other countries to protect gender equality in international agreements. In our capacity as Chair of the event, we amended the statement we made at the Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB) Conference to make the final statement more inclusive of all perspectives and views to allow for a constructive exchange of views on all issues. The UK continues to fund support and lead on issues of gender including on SRHR, through initiatives related to Women,Peace and Security and Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict.