Asked by: Lord Spellar (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many prisoners on remand are currently held in prison.
Answered by Lord Timpson - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
As of 30 September 2024, the remand prison population was 17,662.
Asked by: Lord Spellar (Labour - Life peer)
Question
To ask the hon. Member for Broxbourne, representing the House of Commons Commission, for what reason the Polycom phone system malfunctioned on 9 May 2024.
Answered by Charles Walker
I am sorry that the right hon. Member and all colleagues continue to experience inconvenience in telephony services which are currently below standard. The latest issue with handsets underlines the need for the solution which the Parliamentary Digital Service is implementing later this year.
Polycom devices need to communicate with an external supplier to register the device and make/receive calls. Each device communicates with one of two external servers. One of the servers experienced issues on Thursday 9 May and any device that attempted to connect to this server was impacted by the outage. Polycom phones communicating with the working server did not experience an outage.
The first report the Digital Service received of handsets not working was at 12.13pm on Thursday 9 May. The team declared a major incident shortly afterwards and service was restored at 9.46am on 10 May.
The Voice Programme is upgrading and replacing the existing telephony infrastructure and when implemented, handsets will have 99.999% reliability of connecting.
Asked by: Lord Spellar (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of bringing forward legislative proposals to remove access to benefits for people sentenced to be held in secure mental health facilities.
Answered by Jo Churchill
The DWP Secretary of State has asked officials to look into the rules around benefits entitlements for offenders who are detained in psychiatric hospitals.
Asked by: Lord Spellar (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when he plans to reply to the letter of 12 February 2024 from the Rt hon. Member for Warley.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
The letter was transferred to the Home Office from the Department for Business and Trade on 18 April. We are considering the matters raised and will respond shortly.
Asked by: Lord Spellar (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many hon. Members he has held meetings on constituency cases with since his appointment.
Answered by Paul Maynard
Information on meetings on constituency cases is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.
Information on ministerial meetings can be found here: DWP ministerial gifts, hospitality, travel and meetings - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Asked by: Lord Spellar (Labour - Life peer)
Question
To ask the hon. Member for Broxbourne, representing the House of Commons Commission, what assessment the Commission has made of the level of performance of the Polycom phone system.
Answered by Charles Walker
The performance of the current telephony system is not good enough and is falling short of reasonable expectation. The Parliamentary Digital Service is working hard with our suppliers and technology partners to bring the level of service up to an acceptable standard. A new solution has been procured and will be implemented later this year. I apologise to the right hon. Member and all colleagues for the inconvenience they are experiencing.
Asked by: Lord Spellar (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what estimate his Department has made of the number of graduate nuclear (a) engineers and (b) scientists required for the military nuclear programme.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Shadow Secretary of State for Defence
As announced in the Defence Nuclear Enterprise (DNE) Command Paper: Delivering the UK’s Nuclear Deterrent as a National Endeavor, the Department is investing to increase its intake of nuclear sector graduates by an additional 2,000 personnel over the next four years.
Of these 2,000, over 1,600 are for the DNE, with up to 70% of these graduates expected to join in engineering posts with the remainder in a range of supporting professions such as science (including physics, material science, nuclear science), commercial and finance.
Asked by: Lord Spellar (Labour - Life peer)
Question
To ask the hon. Member for Broxbourne, representing the Speaker's Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, what assessment the Committee has made of the effectiveness of the handling of MPs expenses claims by IPSA.
Answered by Charles Walker
The Speaker’s Committee meets IPSA throughout the year to assess its performance, running costs and effectiveness in handling MPs’ expenses. The Committee last met IPSA on 5 March 2024 and a transcript of that session is available on the Committee’s website: https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/14403/pdf/
In 2023, 65.3 per cent of MPs and their staff rated IPSA’s service as either good or very good, which was up on this measure in 2019 when 25.1 per cent rated the service in that way. The time taken for IPSA to reimburse MPs’ claims has reduced from an average of 8 days in 2020-21 to 2.6 days in 2023-24. Compliance with IPSA’s scheme is currently at 99.9%.
Through its scrutiny of IPSA, the Committee is looking at the steps being taken by IPSA to help improve its effectiveness in enabling MPs and their staff to claim for expenses and business costs. IPSA’s ongoing work includes:
The Committee plans to consider IPSA’s Annual Report and Accounts for 2023-24 later in the summer at which point it will assess IPSA’s latest results against its performance indicators.
Asked by: Lord Spellar (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, when he plans to respond to the letter of 18 October 2023 from the hon. Member for Warley relating to Mr Bashir Ali and his father Aden Ali Dine.
Answered by Paul Maynard
On 19 March 2024, DWP provided an interim response to the MP’s office. A full response will be provided in due course.
Asked by: Lord Spellar (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what lessons his Department has learned for the future provision of service accommodation from the Single Living Accommodation Modernisation project.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Shadow Secretary of State for Defence
Lessons learnt from the Single Living Accommodation Modernisation project include that it provided value for money through standardisation of design, and economies of scale through a managed pipeline of projects.
The Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) is continuing to realise these benefits through our Single Living Accommodation Programmatic Approach.
Standard designs have been developed in consultation with the front-line commands and industry partners.
Design layouts have been amended to provide better functional spaces in bedrooms and common areas.
The design of building fabric and services has been improved to achieve through life Net Zero Carbon requirements.