Asked by: Lord Shinkwin (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the expected impact on (1) the mental health, and (2) the educational attainment, of children with autism and neurodiverse conditions required to move schools following the planned introduction of VAT on private school fees in January 2025; and what stakeholder groups have been involved in developing the assessment.
Answered by Lord Livermore - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
On 29 July, the Government announced that, as of 1 January 2025, all education services and vocational training provided by a private school in the UK for a charge will be subject to VAT at the standard rate of 20 per cent.
This was a tough but necessary decision that will secure additional funding to help deliver the Government’s commitments relating to education and young people, including opening 3,000 new nurseries, rolling out breakfast clubs to all primary schools, and recruiting 6,500 new teachers.
The Government has carefully considered the impact that this policy will have on pupils and their families across both the state and private sector. Following scrutiny of the Government's costings by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), details of the Government’s assessment of the expected impacts of these policy changes will be published at the Budget on 30 October in the usual way.
The Government is committed to improving SEND provision in mainstream state schools, as well as ensuring state special schools cater to those with the most complex needs.
Asked by: Lord Shinkwin (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of Executive Order 13959 from the President of the United States on Addressing the Threat from Securities Investments that Finance Communist Chinese Military Companies; and whether they plan to enact a similar policy.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
The Government has put in place a framework to ensure that the UK has clean, transparent and safe markets, overseen by high quality independent regulators. The UK is well known as a global financial centre with high standards.
The Government has powers in place to ensure it can tackle financial threats to UK national security, for example under the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act, and the National Security and Investment Act.
It would not be appropriate for the Government to comment on financial services policy or regulation in other jurisdictions.
Asked by: Lord Shinkwin (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many disabled people have been furloughed as part of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, as (1) a number and, and (2) a proportion, of all employees furloughed under that Scheme. [T]
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
It is not possible to provide an answer to this question as HMRC do not require employers to inform HMRC if employees included in their RTI returns or a Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme claim are disabled.
Asked by: Lord Shinkwin (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to ensure transparent and consistent workforce data reporting to support (1) women, (2) BAME, (3) disabled, and (4) LGBTQ+, graduates to realise their potential and, on merit, reach the top of their professions.
Answered by Baroness Berridge
Pay gaps are caused by a range of factors. To address them, we must ensure that everybody has equal access to opportunities.
In 2017, we introduced mandatory gender pay gap reporting for large employers, providing an unprecedented level of transparency. The gender pay gap is currently at a record low of 17.3%. However, the gap for full-time employees increased slightly to 8.9%. To address the drivers of the gap, we’ve set out a package of commitments aiming to empower women from school right through to retirement.
The Government ran a consultation from October 2018 to January 2019 on Ethnicity Pay Reporting and received over 300 detailed responses. The Government met with businesses and representative organisations to understand the barriers towards reporting and what information could be published to allow for meaningful action to be taken. We have also run voluntary methodology testing with a broad range of businesses to better understand the complexities outlined in the consultation using real payroll data and will share next steps in due course.
Calculation and monitoring of disability and LGBT pay gaps raises significant issues of self-reporting and data accuracy and this data is not widely collected by employers. Although we have no plans for data collection of pay for these characteristics, we want to achieve practical changes for disabled people, which remove barriers and increase opportunity. The Government will publish an ambitious ‘National Strategy for Disabled People’. We will ensure that the lived experience of disabled people is at the heart of the new National Strategy and focus on the issues that disabled people say affect them the most.
The 108,000 respondents to the National LGBT Survey told us that their priority in the workplace is to tackle discrimination. So the Government Equalities Office is exploring the creation of a package of measures to tackle LGBT workplace discrimination. LGBT people should be able to be themselves in the workplace, so that they can do their best work and achieve their full potential.
Diverse workforces make good business sense. For example, organisations in the top 25% for gender diversity on their executive teams are 21% more likely to have profits above their industry average, and organisations where over 20% of managers are women have been associated with higher performance than organisations with less than 15% representation of women.
Asked by: Lord Shinkwin (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government on how many occasions (1) in the last tax year for which figures are available, and (2) for each of the tax years since the introduction of Gift Aid, HMRC reclaimed or recovered Gift Aid from an individual because they had mistakenly made a Gift Aid declaration to a charity or had not paid sufficient tax to cover the Gift Aid.
Answered by Lord O'Neill of Gatley
Around £1.3bn of Gift Aid was paid to charities in 2015/16, the highest year of Gift Aid payments since the scheme began. During 2015/16, HMRC contacted 2,580 individuals where a shortfall was identified in the tax needed to cover the donation. Individual donors are responsible for ensuring they have paid sufficient tax to cover any Gift Aid reclaimed in their donation. No statistics are available for earlier years.