Asked by: Anne Main (Conservative - St Albans)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, how much her Department and its agencies and non-departmental public bodies have spent on infraction proceedings in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Amber Rudd
I refer my hon. Friend to the answer given to her by my rt. hon. Friend the Minister of State for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General today to Question 36288:
Asked by: Anne Main (Conservative - St Albans)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, how many infraction proceedings the EU has initiated against her Department in each of the last 10 years; what the reasons were for each such proceeding being undertaken; and what the outcome was of each such proceeding.
Answered by Amber Rudd
The information requested is publicly available on the website of the European Commission where the infringement cases for each member state can be found. This includes the infringement and the decision. These records go back to 2002 (though my department was only created in 2008) and can be found here.
Asked by: Anne Main (Conservative - St Albans)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, how many of the EU's free trade arrangements include provisions relating to services.
Answered by Anna Soubry
The EU liberalises trade in both goods and services through WTO negotiations and bilateral and regional trade agreements. The EU’s Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) give the UK preferential access to 53 markets outside the EU. 27 of these markets are covered by agreements with provisions on services. These deals are valuable for the UK services sector. For example, UK services exports to South Korea grew by two-thirds (to £1.5bn) between 2011, when the EU FTA was provisionally applied, and 2013. The service sectors covered, and the degree to which they are liberalised, varies between agreements. Agreements which include services provisions are also under negotiation with partners including the United States of America and Japan. However, even the most recent EU FTA to be agreed, with Canada, offers less guaranteed access than the EU Single Market.
Together with 22 other economies, the EU is also party to negotiations for a plurilateral Trade in Services Agreement to liberalise trade in services further. At the WTO, the EU offers preferential access to its services markets for the world’s poorest countries. Further information on EU trade agreements and ongoing negotiations is available on the European Commission’s DG Trade website.
Asked by: Anne Main (Conservative - St Albans)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, how much funding his Department has allocated to publicly-funded training courses through the Skills Funding Agency in each of the last six years; and what proportion of participants in such courses were nationals of (a) the UK, (b) other EU and EEA countries and (c) other countries in each such year.
Answered by Nick Boles
Information on Skills Funding Agency spending on the adult skills budget and other programmes is outlined in their Annual Report and Accounts which can be found at the following links:
2009-10 (Learning and Skills Council): https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-learning-and-skills-councils-annual-report-2009-to-2010
The Department collects self-reported data on the ethnicity of further education learners, but not nationality. Learners will be eligible for Skills Funding Agency funding if they are a citizen of a country within the European Economic Area (EEA) and have been resident in the EEA for at least three years prior to the start of learning and are ordinarily resident in England. Training providers are responsible for ensuring that individuals are eligible before claiming funding for them.
Asked by: Anne Main (Conservative - St Albans)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what estimate he has made of the annual cost to UK businesses of implementing EU harmonised legislation.
Answered by Anna Soubry
The Government produces Impact Assessments that set out the impacts to business of legislation. These are published on the LEGISLATION.GOV.UK website.
The UK has one of the lightest regulatory regimes in the OECD. The Netherlands, also in the EU, has the lightest. The European Commission has already reformed its approach to regulation, reducing the number of new initiatives proposed in its annual work programmes by over 80 per cent since 2014.
As part of the UK’s settlement with the EU, the European Commission is now committed to reviewing the burden of regulation each year, looking in particular at cutting red tape for small businesses. For the first time ever, specific targets to reduce costs for businesses will be introduced in the most burdensome areas.
Asked by: Anne Main (Conservative - St Albans)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, if he will publish any contingency plans his Department has made on trade agreements in the event of a UK exit from the EU.
Answered by Anna Soubry
At the February European Council, the Government negotiated a new settlement, giving the United Kingdom a special status in a reformed European Union. The Government's position, as set out by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to the House on 22 February, is that the UK will be stronger, safer and better off remaining in a reformed EU.