Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask His Majesty's Government how much finance, other than that provided under the Barnett formula, was made available to (1) Wales, (2) Scotland, and (3) Northern Ireland, in each of the past three financial years.
Answered by Baroness Vere of Norbiton - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
The UK Government makes available significant funding across the UK to meet UK-wide policy objectives. The Government spends across the UK on all reserved policy areas (such as national security and the honours system), and provides direct support for people and businesses in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
HM Treasury does not have a single figure to quantify the total level of support provided across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as there are multiple programmes funded by various departments. However, the ONS Country and Regional Analysis publication presents estimates for the allocation of identifiable expenditure between the UK countries and nine English regions.
It is for the devolved administrations to decide how to allocate their funding in devolved areas. The published Statement of Funding policy document sets out how the devolved administrations are funded, including Barnett-based funding and agreed borrowing and tax powers. The Block Grant Transparency publication breaks down all changes in the devolved administrations’ block grant funding from the 2015 Spending Review up to and including Main Estimates 2023-24. This publication is updated regularly, and the most recent report was published in July 2023.
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government in how many (1) primary, and (2) secondary, schools in England is the Welsh language taught as an optional subject.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department does not collect this information. However, schools are free to teach whichever languages they choose to suit the needs of their pupils.
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Wales Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government when the Prime Minister last visited Senedd Cymru, and on how many occasions during 2023 he had discussions in person with the First Minister of Wales.
Answered by Baroness Swinburne - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
The Prime Minister visits all parts of the United Kingdom regularly.
Details of official visits can be found on the gov.uk website as part of the government’s transparency agenda. The Prime Minister also undertakes party political visits across the United Kingdom.
The Secretary of State for Wales, the Minister for Intergovernmental Relations and the Prime Minister undertake constructive engagement with the Welsh Government and the Senedd Cymru, with relevant meetings as appropriate. Details of future official visits will be announced in the usual way.
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what are the latest employment activity rates for (1) each region of England, (2) England, (3) Wales, (4) Scotland, and (5) Northern Ireland.
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.
I will deposit a copy of the dataset for employment activity rates for each region of England, England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland in the House Libraries.
The Rt Hon. the Lord Wigley
House of Lords
London
SW1A 0PW
21 December 2023
Dear Lord Wigley,
As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking for the latest employment activity rates for (1) each region of England (2) England (3) Wales, (4) Scotland, and (5) Northern Ireland (HL1373).
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) collects information on respondents’ labour market status as part of the Labour Force Survey (LFS), which is a survey of people resident in households in the UK.
The economic activity rate is the proportion of the UK population aged 16-64 years who are engaged with the labour market, either through employment or searching for work while unemployed. The employment rate is the proportion of the UK population aged 16 to 64 years who are employed.
The latest LFS estimates available are for the period April to June 2023. Due to increased uncertainty in LFS estimates from May to July 2023, the latest LFS estimates are not being released. To give users a more considered view of the labour market, we have applied growth rates from administrative data (HMRC PAYE RTI (Pay As You Earn Real Time Information) for employment and Claimant Count for unemployment) to April to June 2023 LFS data to produce adjusted employment, unemployment, and economic inactivity estimates.
Table 1 shows estimates of economic activity and employment rates using LFS data from March to May 1992 to April to June 2023, and experimental adjusted estimates from May to July 2023 to August to October 2023.
As the data are quite extensive, a copy of Table 1 has been placed in the House of Lords Library.
Yours sincerely,
Sir Ian Diamond
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government what discussions they have had with Welsh Ministers and officials of the Welsh Government concerning the implications of the Victims and Prisoners Bill for the devolution settlement.
Answered by Lord Bellamy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Ministry of Justice has engaged closely with the Welsh Government at ministerial and official level throughout the drafting and passage of the Victims and Prisoners Bill to ensure the Bill reflects the current devolution settlement. The legislative consent motion process is engaged for clause 15 and Part 2 of the Bill.
A consultation ran on proposals for Part 1 of the Bill from December 2021 to February 2022. Following this consultation, Ministry of Justice officials engaged with Welsh Government officials on the proposals and sought their view on areas which relate to devolved matters. It was agreed between the Ministry of Justice and Welsh Government that clauses 12-14 would not apply to Wales due to existing commissioning arrangements for victim support services, however, clause 15 would apply to Wales.
The Bill was published in draft in May 2022 reflecting this position. A letter was sent from the First Minister of Wales to the then Secretary of State in December 2022 regarding the draft Bill stating that a legislative consent motion would be laid when the Bill was introduced confirming the Welsh Government were content with the devolution position in the Bill and no changes would be required. This letter also praised the engagement between the UK Government and Welsh Government on the Bill.
Following pre-legislative scrutiny, further measures (Parts 2 and 4) were added to the Bill. The Victims and Prisoners Bill was introduced to Parliament on 29 March 2023. Conversations took place with the Welsh Government, in particular on Part 2 of the Bill (creation of the Independent Public Advocate), to determine how Welsh Ministers would be included in the standing up of an advocate following a major incident in Wales.
Following introduction of the Bill, the Welsh Government informed Ministry of Justice officials that their position on devolution had changed and that they would lay a legislative consent memorandum stating that they would no longer consent to clause 15 applying to Wales in the form it was drafted, and that they considered that the clauses pertaining to the Victims’ Code engage the devolution process. This was laid in May 2023.
Letters have been exchanged between UK and Welsh Government Ministers and conversations have taken place between officials to seek to agree an updated position on devolution that satisfies both administrations. Following the changes made to Part 2 of the Bill during Commons Report Stage, conversations continue between officials on the application of these clauses to Wales.
A final position will be set out during Lords amending stages of the Bill.
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many schools in England currently have safety issues relating to asbestos, and by what date they expect all such asbestos to be removed.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Responsibility for keeping buildings safe and well-maintained lies with schools and their responsible bodies. Where the department is alerted to significant safety issues with a school building, that cannot be managed within local resources, it provides additional support on a case-by-case basis. The department provides immediate advisory support in all cases.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) are responsible for setting the policy and regulations for schools on asbestos management and compliance.
The department follows the HSE’s advice that, provided asbestos-containing materials are in good condition and unlikely to be disturbed, it is generally safest to manage them in place. Where asbestos-containing materials are likely to be disturbed by maintenance works or daily use of the building and cannot be easily protected, schools should have them removed. The department has allocated over £15 billion since 2015 to support this work, including £1.8 billion committed for 2023/24
The department has published bespoke guidance on asbestos management for schools in 2020 and is working with HSE and the sector to look at further ways to help them and build on existing guidance and support.
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many prosecutions were made for illegal sewage dumping in each of the water authority areas in England in the most recent year for which figures are available.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Government is holding water companies to account on a scale never seen before and the regulators will not hesitate to hold companies to take appropriate action if they are in breach of their permits and failing to meet their legal obligations. The EA can now use new powers to impose unlimited penalties for a wider range of offenses following Government’s changes to broaden of the scope of the existing civil sanctions regime and remove the previous cap on penalties.
The EA has made 59 prosecutions against water and sewerage companies for pollution offences since 2015, securing fines of over £150m.
Four prosecutions have been concluded so far in 2023 for pollution offences:
More prosecutions are progressing through the court system with hearing dates next year.
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what are the latest annual figures for gross value added per head of population for (1) England, (2) Wales, (3) Scotland, and (4) Northern Ireland.
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
11 December 2023
Dear Lord Wigley,
As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking for the latest annual figures for gross value added per head of population for (1) England, (2) Wales, (3) Scotland, and (4) Northern Ireland (HL898).
The latest available annual figures are for the calendar year 2021, published on 25 April 2023 as part of the regional economic activity by gross domestic product UK: 1998 to 2021 [1] release. Although the headline statistics in this release focus on gross domestic product (GDP), the published tables also include gross value added (GVA) estimates, which differ from GDP only in that they exclude the effect of taxes (less subsidies) on products.
The GVA per head figures you have requested are as follows:
(1) England, £31,138 per person
(2) Wales, £22,380 per person
(3) Scotland, £27,361 per person
(4) Northern Ireland, £24,007 per person
Yours sincerely,
Professor Sir Ian Diamond
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many branches of (1) Barclays, (2) NatWest, (3) Lloyds Bank, and (4) HSBC, in the UK have closed in 2023 so far; and what were the corresponding figures for 2022.
Answered by Baroness Vere of Norbiton - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Government does not make assessments of bank branch closures. However, in the event of a closure of a core cash service, for example a bank branch, LINK provides an assessment of a community’s cash access needs. It keeps an updated record of these assessments on its website as part of its overview of branch closures announced by banks since January 2022, alongside any banking hubs or deposit services recommended.
Decisions on opening and closing branches are taken by the management team of each bank on a commercial basis, with which the Government does not interfere.
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many Home Office employees are employed in Wales in (1) police services, (2) prison services, (3) border control, and (4) other services.
Answered by Lord Sharpe of Epsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Of the areas listed, the Home Office only provides border control services. Of the 957 Home Office staff based in Wales. Unfortunately, the number of Border Force members of staff cannot be released for national security reasons.