Asked by: Lord Leong (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they have taken to tackle fraud in public sector contracts; and what estimate they have made of how much money was lost to fraud in each of the last three years.
Answered by Baroness Neville-Rolfe - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
The Public Sector Fraud Authority (PSFA), established in August 2022, works with government departments to help public bodies understand and reduce the impact of fraud and error against the public sector. The support provided includes monitoring compliance against the Government Counter Fraud Functional Standards GovS013. These standards are referenced within the Government Commercial Functional Standards GovS008 to signpost counter fraud best practices to commercial colleagues across government. The Procurement Bill will strengthen the counter fraud response in procurement and contracts by extending the grounds for exclusion and establishing a debarment list.
In 2021/2022 government departments detected c£224m in fraud related to public procurement and contracts (outside of tax and welfare). This figure is an increase on previous years (£169m in 2019/20 and £125m in 2020/21).
Asked by: Lord Leong (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they have taken to support small and medium-sized enterprises bidding for public contracts.
Answered by Baroness Neville-Rolfe - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of the UK economy. That is why we are making sure the power of Government spending supports this vital sector.
We are increasing opportunities for SMEs in a variety of ways - from transparently publishing contract pipelines to simplifying bidding processes and strengthening prompt payment measures.
We are also introducing a duty for contracting authorities to have regard to reducing and removing barriers to SME participation in procurement, and removing unnecessary obstacles relating to audited accounts and insurance in the conditions of participation.
The new procurement regime we are putting in place will create a simpler and significantly more transparent system that will further open up public procurement to SMEs so that they can compete for and win more public contracts.
Asked by: Lord Leong (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many external management consultants have been contracted by departments since 2019; and how many senior civil servants have taken early retirement since 2019.
Answered by Baroness Neville-Rolfe - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
Information on how many external management consultants have been contracted by departments since 2019 is not held centrally.
The pension scheme administrator (MyCSP) is unable to provide the requested information as there are no markers or indicators on member records which signifies that a member is classed as a ‘Senior Civil Servant’.
Asked by: Lord Leong (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made to determine whether the app TikTok is being used on any government-issued mobile devices; and whether they consider the presence of the app on government phones to be a threat to national security.
Answered by Baroness Neville-Rolfe - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
The Cabinet Office maintains a constant dialogue with departments on their security and data concerns. Departments are required to manage all applications and services on their networks, taking into account security and data protection risks.
Specific information on the use of any individual application is not routinely held centrally.
With regards to the threat to national security His Majesty’s Government does not comment on these matters.
Asked by: Lord Leong (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many honours nominations were received for candidates of East and Southeast Asian origin in each of the last three years; and how many of those nominees received an honour.
Answered by Baroness Neville-Rolfe - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
Honours recipients are asked to anonymously complete a diversity monitoring form when they are offered their honour. The information collected is only used for statistical purposes to improve the diversity of the honours system.
As per the data collected, the below table outlines the number of nominees who received an honour in the last three years who declared themselves as Asian. There is a further breakdown of the numbers of nominees who declared their ethnic group listed on the diversity monitoring form (using the agreed list of ethnic groups from the 2021 census).
The Cabinet Office is unable to provide the data for all honours nominations received from nominees of East and Southeast Asian origin as honours are submitted to respective departments who carry out initial sifting ahead of submitting to the Cabinet Office. Therefore we do not hold the data for all nominations received.
| 2020 NY2020/BD2020 | 2021 NY2021/BD2021 | 2022 NY2022/BD2022 |
Total Asian | 167 | 162 | 175 |
Indian | 77 | 81 | 93 |
Pakistani | 34 | 32 | 43 |
Bangladeshi | 16 | 18 | 17 |
Chinese | 9 | 3 | 4 |
Other | 31 | 28 | 18 |
Asked by: Lord Leong (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of their commitment to pay (1) 90 per cent of undisputed and valid invoices from SMEs within five days, and (2) 100 per cent of all undisputed and valid invoices within 30 days, as part of their Prompt Payment Policy.
Answered by Baroness Neville-Rolfe - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
(1) In terms of the 90% of undisputed and valid invoices from SMEs within 5 days target: at the end of the previous financial year, 13 of 16 departments were exceeding 85% payment of all invoices within 5 days, with 7 departments paying over 90% of all invoices within this time period.
(2) In terms of the 100% of valid and undisputed invoices being paid in 30 days target: as of the same date, 14 of 16 departments were paying in excess of 95% of their invoices within 30 days, with 6 of these exceeding 99%. This information is published quarterly on GOV.UK.
Cabinet Office works with departments to improve payment performance. In addition, the Procurement Bill will ensure that 30 day payment terms are included in government supply chain contracts.
Asked by: Lord Leong (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government why they have included international students in their net migration figures.
Answered by Baroness Neville-Rolfe - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.
A response to the Hon. Member's Parliamentary Question of 29 November is attached.
Professor Sir Ian Diamond | National Statistician
The Lord Leong CBE
House of Lords
London
SW1A0PW
08 December 2022
Dear Lord Leong,
As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking why international students have been included in our net migration figures (HL3844).
Statistics on long-term international migration produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) are estimated in accordance with international standards. The United Nations definition of a long-term migrant is: “A person who moves to a country other than that of his or her usual residence for a period of at least a year (12 months), so that the country of destination effectively becomes his or her new country of usual residence[1] .” International students will typically live in the UK for more than a year, and so meet the definition of a long-term migrant.
However, we recognise this definition is narrow and doesn’t always meet user needs. We have plans to explore alternative definitions, including estimating net migration by reason, such as study[2] . This will help provide more context to headline measures of migration, addressing recent findings from the ONS research that most international students will leave the UK after their studies are concluded.
Yours sincerely,
Professor Sir Ian Diamond
[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/ methodologies/longterminternationalmigrationestimatesmethodology#:~:text=Definition%20of%20a%20l ongterm%20migrant&text=%E2%80%9CA%20person%20who%20moves%20to,new%20country%20of%20 usual%20residence.%E2%80%9D
[2] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/internationalmigration/ articles/internationalmigrationstatisticaldesignprogressreport/july2022#how-we-are-transformingmigration-statistics
Asked by: Lord Leong (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many people they have employed as part of the Civil Service Fast Stream in the last three years; and of those, how many have since left the Civil Service; and of those, how many cited low pay as a reason for leaving.
Answered by Baroness Neville-Rolfe - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
1,909 individuals have joined the centrally managed Civil Service Fast Stream schemes in the last three years - further data on Fast Stream recruitment up to 2021 is already published externally at:
85 of these individuals have left the Civil Service. None of those who provided a reason for leaving through an exit survey stated this was due to pay and reward considerations though this does not necessarily mean it was not a consideration for them.