Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask His Majesty's Government how much each Government department has under-spent against their (1) capital, and (2) current expenditure, budgets.
Answered by Baroness Vere of Norbiton - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
Resource and Capital Departmental Expenditure Limits (DEL) are published in Supplementary Estimates towards the end of each financial year. Treasury then publishes final outturn figures for Resource and Capital DEL usually in July.
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask His Majesty's Government what are the most recent figures for the volume of trade between Holyhead and the Republic of Ireland; and how these compare with corresponding figures in 2015.
Answered by Baroness Vere of Norbiton - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
The volume of trade between Holyhead and the Republic of Ireland from 2021 to 2024 is as follows:
Table1: Republic of Ireland trade with Holyhead port, imports and exports trade value and net mass (2021-2024)
Exports to Ireland | Imports from Ireland | ||||
Statistical Value (£) | Net Mass (kg) | Statistical Value (£) | Net Mass (kg) | ||
Holyhead | |||||
2021(1) | 5,914,018,273 | 742,755,135 | - | - | |
2022 | 8,710,696,860 | 836,776,181 | 6,219,013,646 | 675,794,695 | |
2023 | 9,197,743,475 | 943,345,494 | 7,685,784,587 | 811,262,695 | |
2024(2) | 1,983,688,480 | 247,346,818 | 2,094,184,476 | 262,110,514 | |
25,806,147,088 | 2,770,223,628 | 15,998,982,709 | 1,749,167,904 | ||
Data Source: HMRC, Overseas Trade in Goods Statistics | |||||
(1) HMRC does not have data for 2021 imports as Staged Customs Controls (SCC) allowed an extended period for traders to complete their declarations. During this period HMRC continued to source intra-EU data from Intrastat declarations. (2) 2024 only contains data relating to January, February, and March. | |||||
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) does not have port data prior to 2021 as the UK was part of the European Union and customs declarations were not required for these movements. Trade data for intra-EU movements was collected via monthly Intrastat declarations which did not collect information on ports.
Also, HMRC does not have data for 2021 imports as Staged Customs Controls (SCC) allowed an extended period for traders to complete their declarations. During this period HMRC continued to source intra-EU data from Intrastat declarations.
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether payments of compensation to contaminated blood victims will be funded outside the projected annual expenditure on health and social security budgets.
Answered by Baroness Neville-Rolfe - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
Given the uncertainty over costs, the scheme will be scored as Capital Annually Managed Expenditure. Annually Managed Expenditure is spend on programmes which are demand led - such as welfare, tax credits or public sector pensions. It is spent on items that may be unpredictable or not easily controlled by departments, as opposed to Departmental Expenditure Limits (DEL) which are allocated to and spent by Government departments. We will set out what this means for the public finances in the usual way at the next fiscal event.
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask His Majesty's Government what was the percentage turnout of voters in the May county council elections in England, by county.
Answered by Baroness Scott of Bybrook - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
The Electoral Commission is the independent electoral regulator and will be providing their analysis of the running of the May polls 2024. This will include data on turnout.
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask His Majesty's Government what discussions Ministers have had with (1) Tata Steel, (2) the Welsh Government, and (3) companies in the nuclear energy sector, concerning the possibility of constructing a small nuclear reactor at Port Talbot to provide energy for the manufacture of steel.
Answered by Lord Offord of Garvel - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The construction of a small nuclear reactor at Port Talbot to provide energy for the manufacture of steel has not been discussed as part of Tata Steel's plans for the construction of an Electric Arc Furnace at the site. The UK Government does not have a role in Tata Steel's energy purchasing arrangements, and the energy sources that Tata will choose to use are a commercial decision for them.
The Alternative Routes to Market for New Nuclear Projects consultation explored potential wider roles of nuclear energy beyond electricity generation, including large scale industrial applications. The consultation responses are now being analysed and will help shape future policy.
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask His Majesty's Government what discussions they have had with Avanti West Coast train executive in relation to their performance in maintaining scheduled direct passenger services between (1) London and Holyhead, and (2) London and Wrexham.
Answered by Lord Davies of Gower - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
Avanti West Coast (AWC) has made significant progress in recovering from recent poor reliability and punctuality, but we are clear that performance is still not good enough and there is more to do. Officials continue to closely monitor and review AWC’s progress to a sustained recovery, restoring services reliably on the West Coast Main Line and delivering good value for the taxpayer. Officials regularly meet with AWC senior management to review performance and we will always hold AWC to account for matters within its control.
Over the next few months AWC is working to introduce a brand-new fleet of bi-mode Hitachi trains offering more space and a quieter journey for passengers along the North Wales mainline.
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many miles of road in England have speed limits of (1) 20, and (2) 30, miles per hour.
Answered by Lord Davies of Gower - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
This information is not centrally held.
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what are the most recent statistics on the Economic Activity Rate of each of the UK's four nations, and what were the equivalent rates (1) 10, and (2) 20, years earlier.
Answered by Baroness Neville-Rolfe - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.
Please see the letter attached from the National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority.
The Rt Hon. the Lord Wigley
House of Lords
London
SW1A 0PW
Dear Lord Wigley,
As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking what are the most recent statistics on the Economic Activity Rate of each of the UK’s four nations, and what were the equivalent rates (1) 10, and (2) 20, years earlier (HL4552).
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) collects information on the labour market status of individuals through the Labour Force Survey (LFS), which is a survey of people resident in households in the UK.
The responses allow us to identify how many people are economically active; that is, those who are engaged with the labour market, either through employment or who are unemployed and actively seeking work. We are also able to calculate economic activity rates by region using these data.
Due to the current smaller sample sizes being achieved by the LFS, recent estimates are showing increased volatility and should be treated with additional caution. We are currently undertaking a programme of work to improve our estimates of the UK labour market. As part of this work, we have updated our labour market estimates from July to September 2022 onwards to incorporate more up to date estimates of the UK population. Labour market estimates prior to this remain based on older population estimates. Therefore, the latest available estimates of the UK labour market, for January to March 2024, are on a different population basis than those ten and twenty years earlier. As a result of this we recommend caution when considering long-term movements in these series.
The latest available estimates (January to March 2024) of the economic activity rates, for people aged 16 to 64 years, resident in each of the UK’s four nations are presented in Table 1, alongside estimates for January to March 2014 and January to March 2004.
Yours sincerely,
Professor Sir Ian Diamond
Table 1: Economic Activity Rates, people aged 16 to 64 years, England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, seasonally adjusted.
| England | Scotland | Wales | Northern Ireland |
January to March 2004 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
January to March 2024 [1] |
|
|
|
|
Source: Labour Force Survey
[1] Estimate based on more up to date population estimates and subject to greater volatility due to smaller achieved sample sizes. We advise caution when interpreting movements in these series.
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many refugees from Gaza have been accepted into the UK since October 2023.
Answered by Lord Sharpe of Epsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Home Office publishes data on asylum decisions in table Asy_D02 of the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’ on gov.uk. The latest data relates to 2023. Data for the year ending March 2024 will be published on 23 May 2024. From October to December 2023, 69 asylum claims (relating to 84 people) from nationals of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, of which Gaza forms a part, were granted some form of protection.
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many visas they have issued for overseas students undertaking undergraduate degree courses in universities in (1) England, (2) Scotland, (3) Wales, and (4) Northern Ireland, in the current academic year.
Answered by Lord Sharpe of Epsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Home Office publishes data on sponsored study visas by course level in the 'Immigration Statistics Quarterly Release'.
The dataset does not provide a breakdown of the UK constituent country in which the University was based.