Asked by: Andy Sawford (Labour (Co-op) - Corby)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, if his Department will publish an analysis of the savings from local authorities' transformational schemes set against the timescales involved.
Answered by Kris Hopkins
My Department is supporting transformational schemes across local authorities in England and has published the projected savings from schemes funded through the Transformation Challenge Award.
In September 2014, 32 local authorities were awarded £8.6 million to deliver transformational projects with projected savings of up to £100 million over the next 10 years. In November 2014, 73 local authorities, working in partnership with other parts of the public sector were awarded £89.4 million to deliver large scale transformational projects, with projected savings estimated to be over £900 million over the next 10 years. On-going monitoring and accountability for these savings will be the responsibility of individual authorities and their partners.
Asked by: Andy Sawford (Labour (Co-op) - Corby)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent steps he has taken to improve the performance of the East Midlands Ambulance Service.
Answered by Jane Ellison
The NHS Trust Development Authority (TDA), Care Quality Commission, clinical commissioning groups and the trust continue to work together to improve performance.
The TDA will continue to meet regularly with the trust’s leadership team to review and monitor progress, to ensure response times continue to improve.
As part of overall operational resilience planning for winter, we have provided an additional £50 million nationally to support ambulance trusts in managing extra demand.
Asked by: Andy Sawford (Labour (Co-op) - Corby)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many people in (a) each surgery in Corby constituency and (b) each clinical commissioning group area in England were unable to obtain a GP appointment within 48 hours in each month since 2010.
Answered by Dan Poulter
Data on waiting times to see a general practitioner (GP) is not collected.
The 48 hour waiting time target was removed because it was seen as too inflexible in meeting the needs of patients. The GP patient survey showed that the proportion of people who wanted to get an appointment within two days (and were able to) actually fell between 2008-09 and 2009-10 i.e. when the target was in place.
Asked by: Andy Sawford (Labour (Co-op) - Corby)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what his policy is on the advertising of e-cigarettes on television.
Answered by Jane Ellison
Advertising of e-cigarettes is subject to controls overseen by the Advertising Standards Authority, who are the United Kingdom's regulator of advertising across all media, including marketing on websites. The Committee of Advertising Practice and the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice, who are the bodies responsible for writing and maintaining the advertising codes, recently issued guidance to the advertisers of e-cigarettes to help them fully comply with the current rules.
The Revised Tobacco Products Directive will come into force in May 2016. From that time it will be illegal to advertise e-cigarettes, other than those licenced by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, on television in the UK.
Asked by: Andy Sawford (Labour (Co-op) - Corby)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, if he will discuss with his Ministerial colleagues measures to ensure that, where practical, analysis submitted by other government departments at future spending reviews includes sub-national analysis by individual local authority or local authority type.
Answered by Kris Hopkins
Robust analysis, at an appropriate spatial scale, is an important part of the policy making and delivery process.
Asked by: Andy Sawford (Labour (Co-op) - Corby)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the findings of the National Audit Office report, Financial sustainability of local authorities, published on 19 November 2014.
Answered by Kris Hopkins
The Government will publish a formal response to the Public Account Committee's consideration of the National Audit Office report; this will be presented to Parliament in due course.
Asked by: Andy Sawford (Labour (Co-op) - Corby)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, if he will publish a real-terms time series of change in individual local authority income since 2010-11.
Answered by Kris Hopkins
The Government will publish a formal response to the Public Account Committee's consideration of the National Audit Office report; this will be presented to Parliament in due course.
Asked by: Andy Sawford (Labour (Co-op) - Corby)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, with reference to paragraph 9 of the summary of the National Audit Office report, Financial sustainability of local authorities, published on 19 November 2014, what assessment he has made of the effect on the ability of local authorities to meet their statutory duties of the reduction in government funding to local authorities between 2010-11 and 2015-16.
Answered by Kris Hopkins
The Government will publish a formal response to the Public Account Committee's consideration of the National Audit Office report; this will be presented to Parliament in due course.
Asked by: Andy Sawford (Labour (Co-op) - Corby)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps he plans to take in response to the National Audit Office report, Financial sustainability of local authorities, published on 19 November 2014.
Answered by Kris Hopkins
The Government will publish a formal response to the Public Account Committee's consideration of the National Audit Office report; this will be presented to Parliament in due course.
Asked by: Andy Sawford (Labour (Co-op) - Corby)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what progress he has made on measures to (a) allow town and parish councils to send agendas electronically and (b) reform parish polls.
Answered by Kris Hopkins
I refer the hon. Member to the answer given to him on 3 April 2014, Official Report, Column 780W which explained that we are minded to make regulations to make it clear that councils (including town and parish councils) can send council papers electronically; councillors would continue to have a right to receive them in hard copy by post should they wish. As indicated in that answer, we have been undertaking an informal sounding on the Order with key partners; we now intend to make regulations before the end of the year.
Separately, we also intend to publish a consultation paper on proposals to reform parish polls, further to the enabling provisions introduced in the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014.