Speeches made during Parliamentary debates are recorded in Hansard. For ease of browsing we have grouped debates into individual, departmental and legislative categories.
These initiatives were driven by Baroness Drake, and are more likely to reflect personal policy preferences.
Baroness Drake has not introduced any legislation before Parliament
Baroness Drake has not co-sponsored any Bills in the current parliamentary sitting
Protecting the health and safety of the public is, and must always be, our top priority. The UK Government is working with the Devolved Administrations and local government to keep the whole of the UK safe. For example, back to work guidance documents have been developed in consultation with approximately 250 businesses, unions, industry leaders as well as the Devolved Administrations.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is working with local resilience forums to coordinate the response of local public?services, and?provide?support to the most vulnerable in our communities. The department has published guidance here for local councils during the coronavirus outbreak:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-guidance-for-local-government
It is vital that Parliament can continue to scrutinise the Government and legislate to support the coronavirus response.
Local authorities have a general duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in need living within their areas. This can include support for kinship care families who look after vulnerable children. Councils across England are getting an additional £3.2 billion to help them to deal with the immediate impacts of coronavirus, including to support vulnerable children.
Kinship families whose children left care through special guardianship orders are eligible for therapeutic support through the recently announced Adoption Support Fund COVID-19 scheme. The scheme will pay for different types of therapeutic support for families whose children have experienced trauma or abuse in their early life and as a result be made more anxious during the current coronavirus crisis.
We are working with sector organisations such as the Family Rights Group and Grandparents Plus who represent kinship carers to understand the challenges and identify opportunities to increase the support available to them.
We know that many social care providers are working together and with local government and health services to support each other with workforce shortages. We will further facilitate this mutual aid by shortly publishing guidance about the redeployment of staff and the use of volunteers. We are developing our data collection to provide information on workforce pressures across England, ensuring that resources can be targeted where they are most needed. Additionally, on 23 April we launched a new national recruitment campaign which aims to attract 20,000 people into social care over the next three months. To enable quick recruitment, we are temporarily providing free-of-charge Disclosure and Barring Service applications and fast-track Barred List checks for many of our vital social care roles. We are also working with NHS England to ensure that nurses returning to practice are deployed where they are most needed.
The Government welcomes the results of the Bank’s Climate Biennial Exploratory Scenario (CBES), which has been an important milestone in assessing UK system-wide exposures and boosting firms’ capabilities to assess climate-related risk.
Following publication of the CBES results in 2022[1], a Prudential Regulation Authority letter to CEOs[2] set out feedback on how to enhance scenario analysis and further embed supervisory expectations. In recognition that this feedback will take time to embed, the Bank has publicly stated that it will not launch a concurrent exercise in the near-term that further explores climate risks.
The Bank also affirmed in its 2023 report on climate-related risks and the regulatory capital frameworks[3] that it will further develop its capabilities to test the resilience of the financial system to climate risks- including how scenario exercises and stress tests can help the Bank and firms understand the exposure of the financial system to risks and progress work to understand material regime gaps in the capital frameworks. Further, the Bank continues to support the development of climate scenarios as a member of the NGFS’s dedicated “Scenario Design and Analysis” Workstream.
The Bank of England has statutory responsibilities for monetary policy and financial stability, and operational independence from the Government to carry out those objectives.
[1] CBES results
[2] Prudential Regulation Authority letter to CEOs
[3] 2023 report on climate-related risks and the regulatory capital frameworks
The Government recognises crucial role of the financial sector in decarbonising the economy, whilst safeguarding investors.
As set out in The Green Finance Strategy in March 2023, the Department of Work and Pensions have committed to hold a series of stakeholder roundtables on this matter, planned for this Spring.
The Financial Reporting Council have also committed to undertake a fundamental review of the UK Stewardship Code 2020.
HM Treasury and the Bank of England welcome work by the NGFS to evolve and improve their climate scenarios. The NGFS scenarios have been designed in collaboration with an expert group of climate scientists and economists and are widely recognised throughout the global community. However, while the scenarios provide a useful starting point for considering how climate risks could evolve under a set of plausible outcomes, they should not be treated as forecasts, and despite significant progress in modelling capabilities, do not account for every potential implication of climate change.
The Bank of England worked with the NGFS to publish a guidance note in January 2024, which sets out how users should apply and adapt the scenarios within their work, including caveats to be mindful of, and where they may wish to tailor the intensity of the scenarios.
The Bank continues to support the development of climate scenarios as a member of the NGFS’ dedicated “Scenario Design and Analysis” Workstream. The NGFS have strived to address many of the difficulties associated with climate modelling to date and continue to make further improvements with each iteration (for example, the latest Phase IV incorporated the impacts of additional physical hazards) in line with improving scientific understanding and computational capabilities, to ensure the scenarios continue to provide an important public good for public and private stakeholders.
As the economy re-opens, we are looking at how to adjust our support in a way that ensures people can get back to work, protecting both the UK economy and the livelihoods of the British people.
On the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, the Chancellor has been clear that getting people back to work will be introduced in a measured way, avoiding a cliff edge. The scheme will run in full until July. We will then introduce more flexibility so that we move out of the scheme in a measured way that protects people’s incomes and helps support furloughed employees as they return to work. This will run for three months from August through to the end of October.
The Government will continue to monitor developments to understand the impacts of COVID-19 on individuals and businesses.
Applications for the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) opened on Monday 20th April. As of Thursday 23rd April HMRC had received about 512,000 claims with a total value of about £4.5bn.
This is a new scheme and HMRC are currently working through the analysis they will be able to provide based on the data available. HMRC will make the timescales for publication and the types of data available in due course.