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Written Question
Agriculture and horticulture: Subsidies
Tuesday 12th March 2024

Asked by: Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask His Majesty's Government what is the number of full time equivalent personnel employed by DEFRA to administer farming and horticultural grants and subsidies in England on the latest date for which figures are available.

Answered by Lord Douglas-Miller - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

The information requested is not held centrally and to obtain it would incur disproportionate costs.

Defra’s Grants Hub data does not hold a ‘Farming & Horticulture’ flag so it would not be possible to quickly pull together a list of schemes in scope of this question.

Manually reviewing the schemes and deciding if they fit or not, without a standard definition of what counts as ‘Farming & Horticulture’, would require a degree of personal judgement and therefore yield some inaccuracy. It would then be necessary to validate the list with teams to ensure they are ‘Farming & Horticulture’ grants.

From experience of similar requests, this would push the cost to disproportionate (ie greater than the HMT-set limit of £850 for a PQ answer).


Written Question
Agriculture: Employment
Wednesday 6th March 2024

Asked by: Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask His Majesty's Government what is the number of (1) farmers, and (2) their direct employees, for the latest date for which figures are available.

Answered by Lord Douglas-Miller - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

Farmers are defined here as full time and part time principal farmers, business partners, directors and spouses. All other agricultural workers are defined here as regular employees, salaried managers and casual workers who were working on the holding on 1 June 2023.

Agricultural workforce in England in 2023

2023

Farmers

178,696

All other agricultural workers

113,705

Total agricultural workforce

292,401

Notes

(a) Commercial holdings are those registered with the Rural Payments Agency for payments or livestock purposes and with significant levels of farming activity (as recorded in responses to the Defra June Survey of Agriculture or the Cattle Tracing System). Holdings are only included if they have more than five hectares of agricultural land, one hectare of orchards, 0.5 hectares of vegetables or 0.1 hectares of protected crops, or more than 10 cows, 50 pigs, 20 sheep, 20 goats or 1,000 poultry.

Full data series for agricultural workforce are published here for England. A copy is attached to this answer.

Similar figures for the UK are available at gov.uk.


Written Question
Private Bills: Fees and Charges
Monday 5th February 2024

Asked by: Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Conservative - Life peer)

Question

To ask the Senior Deputy Speaker when the list of fees charged to promoters of private bills was last reviewed.

Answered by Lord Gardiner of Kimble

The current level of Private Bill fees was agreed to by the House on 27 March 2000, and the consequent amendments to Private Business Standing Orders agreed to on 24 July 2000, following a recommendation of the Select Committee of House of Lords’ Offices (4th Report, Session 1999-2000, HL Paper 45). A review of private legislation fees charged to promoters and applicants, as set out in the Table of fees in Private Business Standing Orders, is planned to take place this year.


Written Question
Politically Exposed Persons
Wednesday 17th January 2024

Asked by: Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the letter from Baroness Penn to Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts on 22 August 2023, when they expect to publish the interim report on the review of treatment of Politically Exposed Persons by financial institutions.

Answered by Baroness Vere of Norbiton - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)

The Financial Services and Markets Act 2023 committed the Financial Conduct Authority to conduct, and publish the conclusions of, a review into how financial institutions are following its guidance on politically exposed persons (PEPs) by the end of June 2024. As set out in the Written Statement on the treatment of PEPs published on 14 December 2023, given the strength of concern on this issue, the Government expects that the FCA will prioritise this review over the coming months.


Written Question
Individual Savings Accounts: Stocks and Shares
Tuesday 24th October 2023

Asked by: Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask His Majesty's Government what plans, if any, they have to permit fractionated shares to be held in ISAs.

Answered by Baroness Penn - Minister on Leave (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State)

HMRC’s long standing view on interpretation of the current law is that a fraction of a share is not a share for the purposes of the ISA legislation.

The government is committed to ensuring the ISA the market works for both industry and consumers. We are aware of representations from the industry to allow fractional shares to be included in ISAs going forward, and are considering the issue.


Written Question
Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme: VAT
Friday 29th September 2023

Asked by: Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask His Majesty's Government what was the value of VAT relief given under the Listed Places of Worship Scheme in each of the past two financial years.

Answered by Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)

The Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme (LPWGS) was established in 2001 to provide grants towards VAT paid on repairs and maintenance to the nation's listed churches and cathedrals. The scheme, which presently handles around 7000 claims per annum, applies to all faiths and denominations and is delivered UK wide. It is currently funded through a combination of £17 million from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s core baseline, together with £25 million available from HMT reserves (so a total of up to £42m total each financial year).

Historically, the scheme has operated with an underspend each year. However, efforts are underway to reduce underspend, including via a new LPWGS website and comms outreach campaign. Initial data since the launch of the website in July 2023 suggests a gradual increase in uptake and grants being made.

The LPWGS website provides details of the annual spend of the scheme, but does not provide details of previous years’ allocations. See here: https://listed-places-of-worship-grant.dcms.gov.uk/about-us/.


Written Question
Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme: VAT
Friday 29th September 2023

Asked by: Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether they have any plans to amend the present ability to reclaim VAT under the Listed Places of Worship Scheme.

Answered by Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)

Listed places of worship represent some of the nation's finest heritage, and HM Government recognises the need to preserve and maintain such hallowed buildings. The Listed Place of Worship Grant Scheme aims to mitigate the cost of doing so and to support listed and protected buildings for the benefit of present and future generations.

There are presently no plans to amend the eligibility criteria for the scheme, but we keep them under review. We have also been working to ensure that the accessibility and uptake of the scheme is improved, particularly through the development of a new website and application process. Officials maintain regular contact with key people and organisations representing listed places of worship, and continue to welcome feedback on the operation and effectiveness of the scheme. I was pleased to visit St Peter and St Paul's church in Albury, Surrey, earlier this year to hear how the Listed Places of Worship grant scheme helped them to carry out repairs to the church roof.


Written Question
National Insurance
Thursday 28th September 2023

Asked by: Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many national insurance numbers were issued in each of the past five years; and how many were outstanding at each year end.

Answered by Viscount Younger of Leckie - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

The department regularly publishes the number of National Insurance Numbers (NINOs) allocated by DWP to Adult Foreign Nationals on Stat-Xplore, and these are shown in Table 1 for the past five years. The number of outstanding applications at the end of each year are shown in Table 2. These figures do not include those NINOs issued by HMRC to juveniles.

Table 1: Annual number of National Insurance Numbers Allocated to Adult Foreign Nationals, April 2018 to March 2023

FYE 2019

650,000

FYE 2020

760,000

FYE 2021

230,000

FYE 2022

770,000

FYE 2023

1,110,000

Source: Stat-Xplore

Note: Data has been rounded to the nearest 10,000.

Table 2: Number of outstanding National Insurance Number applications at the end of the last 5 business years

FYE 2019

86,000

FYE 2020

60,000

FYE 2021

55,000

FYE 2022

22,000

FYE 2023

10,000

Source: Internal NINO clerical Capacity Plans and NINO Work Position Overviews.

Note: Data has been rounded to the nearest 1,000.


Written Question
Property: Ownership
Friday 22nd September 2023

Asked by: Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many requests were made to HMRC for details of property ownership under the (1) "offshore company", or (2) "legitimate interest", provision in each of the past two years; and how many were accepted.

Answered by Baroness Penn - Minister on Leave (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State)

The Trust Registration Service (TRS) is a register of beneficial ownership of trusts held by HMRC, rather than property ownership. Third parties have been able to request access to information held on the TRS since 1 September 2022.


Written Question
Community Health Fund: Public Consultation
Monday 24th July 2023

Asked by: Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Conservative - Life peer)

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask His Majesty's Government when they plan to launch their technical consultation on the Community Health Fund; and how long this consultation will be open for submissions.

Answered by Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)

His Majesty’s Government has recently announced that community wealth funds will become the fourth cause for dormant assets funding in England.

A community wealth fund will provide funding sources to local communities, with spending decisions made by local residents about how to improve their communities. The Government will soon launch a technical consultation on the design of this important new initiative and welcomes views on how best to ensure its long-term impact; the consultation will be open for 12 weeks.

Secondary legislation to enable dormant assets funding to be directed to community wealth funds will be introduced as soon as Parliamentary time allows.