Asked by: Caroline Flint (Labour - Don Valley)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that the review of the Prevent Strategy addresses the growing threat of far-right extremism.
Answered by Ben Wallace
Prevent aims to stop vulnerable people from being drawn into terrorism and does not target a specific faith or ethnic group it deals with all forms of terrorism. Almost half of those people who receive Channel support are initially referred for concerns related to right-wing extremism. The independent review of the Prevent programme, which was announced on 22 January 2019, will therefore also deal with all forms of terrorism.
Asked by: Caroline Flint (Labour - Don Valley)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what interventions his Department is making to tackle the ideologies of far-right offenders within the prison system.
Answered by Robert Buckland
Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) works closely with a range of partners to tackle extremism of all ideologies in prisons, including ideologies held by far-right offenders. An HMPPS and Home Office Joint Extremism Unit (JEXU) was established in April 2017 to be the strategic centre for all counter terrorism work in prison and probation and have oversight of delivery across the end-to-end offender management process.
Prisoners identified as being of extremist concern, or who have shown signs of being vulnerable to extremism, are managed actively as part of a comprehensive case management process. Over 22,000 prison staff have received specialist extremism awareness training, to enable them to identify, report and challenge extremist views.
HMPPS uses a wide range of interventions as part of its management of extremist offenders in prison. These range from assessment tools, such as the Extremism Risk Guidance 22+ and Extremism Risk Screening, to rehabilitative measures such as the Healthy Identity Intervention, Developing Dialogues, and the Desistance and Disengagement Programme. Interventions play an important role in helping to encourage and facilitate desistance and disengagement from extremism, support reintegration into society, and reduce the risk of further offending. All of these interventions are available to far-right offenders, if required.
Asked by: Caroline Flint (Labour - Don Valley)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking to expand mentoring services and support individuals vulnerable to recruitment by far-right organisations.
Answered by Ben Wallace
The Prevent programme is fundamentally about safeguarding and supporting vulnerable individuals to stop them from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism. Prevent addresses all forms of terrorism, including right wing terrorism.
Since 2012, over 1,300 people have been supported through the voluntary, confidential Channel programme. In 2017/18, almost half of those people who received Channel support were initially referred for concerns related to right-wing extremism. The majority of the individuals who choose to participate in Channel leave with no further terrorism-related concerns. The Channel programme continues to expand its cohort of right wing specialist intervention providers that provide bespoke intervention sessions with individuals that have been identified as being vulnerable to being radicalised by far-right organisations and their narratives.
Asked by: Caroline Flint (Labour - Don Valley)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he is taking to increase the rate of delivery of insulation measures under the Energy Company Obligation.
Answered by Chris Skidmore
The Department keeps delivery progress in constant review. ECO3 is a three and a half year scheme and obligated suppliers may deliver the obligation at any time during the obligation period. Historically, delivery has been low at the start of each scheme while suppliers end one obligation period and start to build up momentum under the new scheme rules.
The scheme allows participating Local Authorities to determine eligibility and refer households to obligated suppliers, and in those cases removing the need for suppliers to target eligible households. This is a voluntary mechanism for suppliers to use, and it equates to up to 25% of ECO.
The regulations have been in force for less than six months, and there is time for suppliers to increase delivery rate up to the end of the scheme in March 2022.
Almost 2.5m insulation, heating and other measures have been delivered since ECO began in 2013. Of those 66% were for insulation. Under ECO3, so far over 54k measures have been installed. Of those, 55% were for insulation.
Asked by: Caroline Flint (Labour - Don Valley)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment his Department has made of progress towards its ambition of ensuring that all homes achieve an Energy Performance Certificate rating of Band C by 2015, as set out in the Clean Growth Strategy.
Answered by Chris Skidmore
For the purpose of this response, I assume that the question is referring to the ambition for homes to reach Band C by 2035, rather than 2015. Good progress has already been made improving the energy performance of our housing stock, with 30% of homes in England at Band C or above, with a further 51% already at Band D, according to the 2017 English Housing Survey. This is up from 7% and 40% respectively in 2007.
Since the publication of the Clean Growth Strategy we have:
Asked by: Caroline Flint (Labour - Don Valley)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how many households have been fitted with (a) cavity wall and (b) loft insulation under the Energy Company Obligation since the beginning of the ECO3 obligation period on 3 December 2018.
Answered by Chris Skidmore
Since the start of the ECO3 obligation, 14,983 cavity wall insulations and 10,951 loft insulations have been installed in homes up to the end of March 2019.
Asked by: Caroline Flint (Labour - Don Valley)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many reported instances of far-right violence have been recorded in each of the past 10 years.
Answered by Nick Hurd
The Home Office routinely collects and releases data on the number of violent offences recorded by the police in England and Wales.This data does not include information on whether the violence was motivated by far-right ideology or not.
Asked by: Caroline Flint (Labour - Don Valley)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department plans to take to respond to concerns raised by representatives of the solar industry on the proposed Smart Export Guarantee scheme.
Answered by Claire Perry
The consultation on a Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) closed on 5 March 2019. We are currently analysing the responses we received and will publish a government response in due course. The consultation is available here:
www.gov.uk/government/consultations/the-future-for-small-scale-low-carbon-generation
Asked by: Caroline Flint (Labour - Don Valley)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps the Department has taken to ensure that solar power is able to compete on a level playing field with other energy generation technologies.
Answered by Claire Perry
Solar is a UK success story. Since 2010, solar capacity deployed has accounted for 81% of total capacity deployed under the Feed-in Tariffs scheme.
We issued a consultation on new proposals for a Smart Export Guarantee to support future arrangements for small-scale low-carbon generators to receive payment for the electricity they export to the grid. The consultation closes on the 5th March 2019 and can be viewed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/the-future-for-small-scale-low-carbon-generation.
Asked by: Caroline Flint (Labour - Don Valley)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, when his Department plans to publish its proposals on recompensing small scale renewables exporting to the grid.
Answered by Claire Perry
We published a call for evidence on the future of small-scale low-carbon generation in the summer and we intend to follow this up with a consultation on proposals for future arrangements shortly.