Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
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 costs to local authorities of supporting people made intentionally homeless.
Answered by Marcus Jones - Treasurer of HM Household (Deputy Chief Whip, House of Commons)
Where a household is found to be intentionally homeless, but is in priority need, the local housing authority must also ensure that accommodation is available for long enough to give the applicant a reasonable opportunity to find a home. An applicant can ask the authority to review a decision that they are intentionally homeless and, if still dissatisfied, can appeal to the county court on a point of law. Over the next four years the Government will invest £149 million in central programmes to prevent and reduce homelessness in England. We have also protected and maintained homelessness prevention funding for councils, reaching £315 million by 2019/20, to ensure they can provide advice to all those who approach them for help. In addition, £870 million in Discretionary Housing Payment funding is being provided to councils across the Parliament.
Homelessness data, including households who are intentionally homeless, is published at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-homelessness
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment he has made of the effect of late payment by large firms on small businesses and suppliers in the last 12 months.
Answered by Margot James
The Department does not collect data on the effect of late payment by large firms on small businesses and suppliers. Other organisations have made assessments. For example, in December 2016 BACs reported the overall level of late payment debt owed to small and medium businesses standing at £26.3 billion.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the value of feasibility studies to ascertain how to prioritise delayed work in schools identified in phase 2 of the Priority School Building Programme.
Answered by Edward Timpson
The PSBP2 team conducted scoping studies of the successful school buildings in summer 2015. The scoping studies assessed the scope of work required to address condition need, together with any specific issues. The EFA team then confirmed the programme for delivery of the building projects at the 277 schools in December 2015 and work has since started at a number of schools to develop feasibility studies.
Where possible, schools in the worst condition are being delivered first. We also have a review process in place that allows us to consider bringing forward work at a school if there is a genuine need and we can do so within the programme constraints.
Detailed feasibility studies are carried out for each school to identify the options available to address condition need. Each feasibility study is independently reviewed and approved.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what support is being provided for schools identified under phase 2 of the Priority Schools Building Programme which are awaiting urgent repairs.
Answered by Edward Timpson
Over the previous parliament, the department allocated £18 billion to maintain and improve the condition of school buildings. A further £4.2 billion of funding was announced to be allocated over 2015-18 to schools, local authorities, academy trusts and voluntary aided partnerships to improve their own schools.
Schools that are part of PSBP2 are also eligible to apply for the Condition Improvement Fund (CIF) for blocks or areas of the school that are not included in the work they will receive under the programme.
Each school in PSBP has direct contact with an EFA Project Director who can provide further tailored advice in regards to repairs and sources of potential funding. There is also a review process in place that allows us to consider bringing forward work at a school if there is a genuine need and we can do so within the programme constraints.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to encourage investment in renewable energy in the least-developed countries; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Lord Wharton of Yarm
The UK Government is encouraging investment in renewable energy to improve energy access by poor people and promote economic development, in both the on-grid and off-grid energy sectors. Through our Energy Africa campaign we are also seeking to accelerate the expansion of the household solar market in Africa, removing policy and regulatory barriers to market expansion through compacts with partner countries.
In addition, CDC, the UK’s Development Finance Institution, invests in renewable energy supporting a portfolio of 5.75 GW of capacity already in operation or currently under construction.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what assessment the Government has made of using the Joint Precision Airdrop System to provide aid to besieged Syrian civilians.
Answered by Mike Penning
The UK does not possess a Joint Precision Airdrop System (JPADS) capability. Our assessment is that, although JPADS is relatively precise, the size and weight of the system and the risk risk of collateral damage are such that it is not generally suitable for use in a populated environment. We continue to work with allies and partners on potential options for delivering aid but the most effective means remains road deliveries of large quantities, organised by Humanitarian agencies and coordinated with authorities on the ground.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to simplify the process for UK-resident EEA nationals and their families to apply for permanent residence status.
Answered by Robert Goodwill
We continue to make all applications quicker and easier. As part of the ongoing Home Office programme to digitise all applications for immigration routes, a service was launched in October 2016 to enable single EEA applicants to apply for permanent residence online.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many contracts (a) his Department and (b) its non-departmental bodies and agencies have awarded to The Grace Partnership since 2014.
Answered by Philip Dunne
The Department can confirm following a detailed search of its Business Management Services database, that “The Grace Partnership” are not a registered supplier and consequently there are no records of any spend or contracts being held with this company.
Responses from all of the Department’s Non-Departmental Public Bodies and its agencies, including special health authorities, have confirmed that no contracts are or have been held with The Grace Partnership since 2014.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to reduce the incidence of 999 emergency services being used to provide non-emergency social care.
Answered by David Mowat
The Care Act 2014 promotes wellbeing and independence, and does not just wait to respond when people reach a crisis point.
The Care Act requires that local authorities must provide or arrange for the provision of services, facilities or resources that will contribute towards preventing, delaying or reducing the needs for care and support of adults and carers.
The Act also places a duty on local authorities to establish and maintain a service for providing people in its area with information and advice relating to care and support for adults and support for carers. The Government provided local authorities with start-up funding of £32.5 million capital funding to support them to develop new online services that provide people with more consistent and more easily accessible information about their local care and support options.
In addition, NHS Choices has a selection of pages aimed at providing targeted information and advice on care and support. This includes a direct link (based on post code) to each local authority website’s contact page on how a person can access a needs assessment.
NHS England’s review of urgent and emergency care proposes a fundamental shift in the way urgent and emergency care services are provided, delivering more care closer to home where clinically appropriate.
The integrated urgent care service will build on the success of NHS 111 and will help to deliver the benefits for all patients set out in the Urgent and Emergency Care review. The intent is to enable commissioners to deliver a functionally integrated 24/7 urgent care service that is the ‘front door’ of the National Health Service, and which provides the public with access to both treatment and clinical advice. This will include NHS 111 providers and general practitioner out-of-hours services, community services, ambulance services, emergency departments and social care.
Asked by: Charlotte Leslie (Conservative - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential detriment to patients of NICE postponing until 2018 its decision on the use of bisphosphonates for breast cancer patients.
Answered by Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
The current National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guideline, Early and locally advanced breast cancer: diagnosis and management (CG80), makes the following recommendation:
“Offer bisphosphonates to patients identified by algorithms 1 and 2 in ‘Guidance for the management of breast cancer treatment-induced bone loss: a consensus position statement from a UK expert group’ (2008) (see appendix 2 of the full guideline page 113).”
NICE is currently updating this guidance and the use of adjuvant bisphosphonates has been identified as one of the key areas that will be covered in the update, which is scheduled for publication in July 2018.
The guideline has been scheduled to take into account the latest available evidence on the adjuvant use of bisphosphonates for the treatment of breast cancer. In the absence of guidance from NICE, clinicians and commissioners should make decisions on the adjuvant use of bisphosphonates based on an assessment of the available evidence.