Asked by: Christine Jardine (Liberal Democrat - Edinburgh West)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, with reference to the meeting of the UK and Overseas Territories Joint Ministerial Council between 19 and 21 November 2024, what progress has been made on the implementation of public registers of beneficial ownership in the Overseas Territories.
Answered by Stephen Doughty - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Work is ongoing to improve beneficial ownership transparency in the Overseas Territories. At the Joint Ministerial Council (JMC) in November 2024, the Falkland Islands and Saint Helena committed to join Montserrat and Gibraltar in implementing fully public registers by April 2025. The British Virgin Islands (BVI), Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Anguilla and Turks and Caicos Islands agreed to implement registers of beneficial ownership, accessible to those with a legitimate interest, by June 2025. It remains our expectation that the Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies will ultimately implement fully public registers.
Every Territory is making progress towards these commitments and FCDO officials are in regular contact with counterparts in the Overseas Territories on their proposals for registers to ensure they meet the agreement made at JMC. I have and will continue to raise this directly with elected leaders across the Overseas Territories. I have recently spoken with the Premiers of BVI and Bermuda on this issue.
Asked by: Christine Jardine (Liberal Democrat - Edinburgh West)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of the Online Safety Act 2023 on (a) small websites, (b) personal blogs and (c) community forums.
Answered by Feryal Clark - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
Under the Online Safety Act, in-scope user-to-user and search services must risk assess for content that is illegal and harmful to children. Ofcom, the independent regulator for this regime, set out what steps small, low-risk providers need to take to fulfil their duties following their risk assessment. When implementing these duties, Ofcom is legally required to ensure burdens on providers are proportionate to their risk factors, size, and capacity. Ofcom recently launched an online digital toolkit, aimed at helping smaller services with compliance (https://www.ofcom.org.uk/online-safety/illegal-and-harmful-content/ofcom-launches-digital-safety-toolkit-for-online-services/
Asked by: Christine Jardine (Liberal Democrat - Edinburgh West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure blind and partially sighted people have access to health information in an accessible format.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Under the Equality Act 2010, health and social care organisations must make reasonable adjustments to ensure that disabled people are not disadvantaged. Since 2016, all National Health Service organisations and publicly funded social care providers are expected to meet the Accessible Information Standard which details the approach to supporting the information and communication support needs of patients and carers with a disability, impairment or sensory loss, including blind and partially sighted people. NHS England has been undertaking a review of the Accessible Information Standard (AIS) to help ensure that the communication needs of people with a disability, impairment, or sensory loss are met in health and care provision. A revised AIS will be published in due course. In the meantime, the current AIS remains in force and therefore there should not be a gap in provision for people using services.
Asked by: Christine Jardine (Liberal Democrat - Edinburgh West)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, for what reason her Department has chosen to decline to support more open access services along the Kings Cross to Edinburgh Waverley via Newcastle route.
Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
As detailed in the 4 February response to the Office of Rail and Road, the Department did not support Lumo’s applications to operate additional Open Access services between London Kings Cross and Newcastle, and to extend existing Newcastle/Edinburgh services on to Glasgow, due to concern over the capacity of the East Coast Main Line and the consequential detrimental effects on reliability; and also the impact of the revenue reduction to existing services on the route, which would diminish revenue and thus increase subsidy from taxpayers to the railway as a whole. Access to the network, however, is currently a matter for the Office of Rail and Road in its capacity as independent regulator, and it will now consider the Department’s response alongside those from other consultees, and its statutory duties before making, a decision.
Asked by: Christine Jardine (Liberal Democrat - Edinburgh West)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps she is taking to help increase the availability of electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
Answered by Lilian Greenwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
We have committed £200m funding in the Autumn budget to support charging infrastructure rollout. This is on top of over £6 billion in private investment committed out to 2030, and bolsters existing grants and funding to support chargepoint installation. There are now over 74,000 public chargepoints in the UK, with almost 20,000 new chargepoints added and a 45% increase in rural chargepoints in 2024. On 24 December, we announced a range of measures to remove barriers to chargepoint rollout, including to improve grid connections for chargepoints.
Asked by: Christine Jardine (Liberal Democrat - Edinburgh West)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to address the pension shortfalls experienced by police officers who, affected by the McCloud judgement, are classified as being in Immediate Detriment.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Home Office)
While the Home Office has responsibility for overarching policy and legislative changes to the police pension regulations in England & Wales, the police pension scheme is locally administered by individual police forces. The Home Office is working with the policing sector to support the effective implementation of the McCloud remedy for all affected individuals.
It is for each Chief Constable, in their role as scheme manager for their force, to determine their administrative timetable, including when remedy payments will be distributed.
The devolved governments have overarching policy and legislative responsibility in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Asked by: Christine Jardine (Liberal Democrat - Edinburgh West)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps his Department is taking to help protect female members of the armed forces from sexual harassment.
Answered by Al Carns - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence) (Minister for Veterans)
Sexual Harassment has no place in our Armed Forces.
Every individual must be treated with dignity and respect.
We have a Zero Tolerance policy in Defence – unacceptable behaviour of any kind is not tolerated people will be held accountable.
All criminal behaviour is investigated by the Service police and those found to be below the standard will be met with sanctions, including Termination of Service.
Asked by: Christine Jardine (Liberal Democrat - Edinburgh West)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to the Answer of 6 November 2024 to Question 11845 on Employers’ Contributions: Essex, whether she plans to (a) collect and (b) publish data on the number of (i) businesses and (ii) employers impacted by changes to employer National Insurance contributions at constituency level; and whether she has had discussions with local authorities on the regional impact of those changes.
Answered by James Murray - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
HMRC monitors Employer National Insurance Contributions through receipts monitoring, and information collected from Real Time Information returns.
Receipts are published via the monthly HMRC tax and National Insurance receipts publication: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hmrc-tax-and-nics-receipts-for-the-uk
Asked by: Christine Jardine (Liberal Democrat - Edinburgh West)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether the independent review into the loan charge will include consideration of the issuing of section 684 notices prior to 2011.
Answered by James Murray - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
At Budget, the Government committed to an independent review of the Loan Charge to help bring the matter to a close for those affected whilst ensuring fairness for all taxpayers.
Further details will be set out in due course.
Asked by: Christine Jardine (Liberal Democrat - Edinburgh West)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, if the Government will take steps to re-establish a separate department for International Development.
Answered by Anneliese Dodds - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
As set out in the 2024 Labour Party manifesto, the Government's plans are to strengthen international development work within the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.