Asked by: Christopher Chope (Conservative - Christchurch)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what information his Department holds on (a) the number of pedicabs outside Greater London that are licensed as (i) taxis and (ii) private hire vehicles and (b) the number and proportion of those pedicabs that are in (A) Oxford, (B) Salisbury, (C) Bristol and (D) Cambridge; and if he will make an assessment of the potential impact on the number of licensed pedicabs of paragraph 8.3 of his Department's guidance entitled Taxi and private hire vehicle licensing best practice guidance for licensing authorities in England, updated on 17 November 2023.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
Outside London pedicabs can be licensed as taxis. Pedicabs cannot be licensed as a private hire vehicle as legislation defines a private hire vehicle as a motor vehicle. The Department for Transport issues guidance on licensing taxis and private hire vehicles to authorities who should consider the recommendations made and their obligation under the Regulators’ Code to carry out their activities in a way that supports those they regulate to comply and grow. The Best Practice Guidance to licensing authorities in England sets out that where there is local interest in providing pedicab services, licensing authorities should make appropriate adjustments to their licensing requirements for drivers and vehicles to accommodate these requests. Subject to the legal requirements, it is for licensing authorities to consider the appropriate licensing requirements to operate a pedicab under a taxi and taxi driver licence.
The Department does not hold data on the number of pedicabs licensed as taxis in England.
Asked by: Christopher Chope (Conservative - Christchurch)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to paragraph 8.3 of his Department's publication entitled Taxi and private hire vehicle licensing best practice guidance for licensing authorities in England, updated on 17 November 2023, what guidance his Department plans to provide on the appropriate adjustments that licensing authorities should make to their licensing requirements for drivers and vehicles to provide pedicab services outside Greater London.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
Outside London pedicabs can be licensed as taxis. Pedicabs cannot be licensed as a private hire vehicle as legislation defines a private hire vehicle as a motor vehicle. The Department for Transport issues guidance on licensing taxis and private hire vehicles to authorities who should consider the recommendations made and their obligation under the Regulators’ Code to carry out their activities in a way that supports those they regulate to comply and grow. The Best Practice Guidance to licensing authorities in England sets out that where there is local interest in providing pedicab services, licensing authorities should make appropriate adjustments to their licensing requirements for drivers and vehicles to accommodate these requests. Subject to the legal requirements, it is for licensing authorities to consider the appropriate licensing requirements to operate a pedicab under a taxi and taxi driver licence.
The Department does not hold data on the number of pedicabs licensed as taxis in England.
Asked by: Christopher Chope (Conservative - Christchurch)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on what date work on digitally linking Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Authority Yellow Card information to NHS clinical records (a) began and (b) is expected to be completed.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has been working with the National Health Service to explore approaches to facilitate digital linkage of Yellow Card information to clinical records, and to potentially enable faster access to information, where considered necessary for an assessment. Any such approach would be subject to strict information governance controls and prior consultation with stakeholder groups.
In 2020, the MHRA began delivery of a substantially enhanced Yellow Card platform under the SafetyConnect programme, aligned to the recommendations in Baroness Cumberlege’s Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review. The new infrastructure is designed with the intent of enabling connectivity to other systems, to facilitate the exchange of information. During that time the MHRA has engaged with the NHS around the evolving technical options for robust and secure connectivity and enhanced user journeys. The first step in these enhancements is use of the common NHS login capability within Yellow Card, which is expected to go live in 2024.
Deeper connectivity between systems will be subject to internal and external stakeholder engagement and substantial information governance controls, with elements completed over a phased and multi-year work plan.
Asked by: Christopher Chope (Conservative - Christchurch)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an assessment of the effectiveness of drugs available within the NHS to treat (a) epidermolysis bullosa and (b) other inflammatory skin conditions.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) makes independent, evidence-based recommendations for the National Health Service on whether new licensed medicines should be routinely funded by the NHS, based on an assessment of their costs and benefits.
Currently, there is one product licensed specifically for epidermolysis bullosa, Filsuvez gel, which contains birch bark extract. The NICE recommends birch bark extract as a clinically and cost effective use of NHS resources, and the NHS is legally required to fund it in line with the NICE’s recommendations. Other healthcare products are also used in the care of epidermolysis bullosa patients. There are a number of licensed and NICE recommended treatments for other inflammatory skin conditions that are now routinely available for NHS patients.
Asked by: Christopher Chope (Conservative - Christchurch)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will (a) publish average weight to height ratios for children in England and (b) provide advice on any health implications for those who have a ratio significantly larger or smaller than the average.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) collects data on the height and weight status of children aged four to five years old, who are in Reception, and 10 to 11 years old, who are in Year six. The data collected and published by NHS England is expressed as a Body Mass Index (BMI) centile, to estimate child overweight and obesity. Data on average weight to height ratios for children in England is not available. The Department does not plan to publish data on average weight to height ratios, or average waist to height ratios for children in England. Waist measurements are not collected as part of the NCMP.
The clinical guidance from the National Institute of Health and Care Research recommends that a waist to height ratio measurement is considered alongside a child’s BMI centile in individual clinical assessments, to give a practical estimate of central adiposity. If a child falls into an unhealthy weight category, a waist to height ratio will give additional health information in clinical settings. This includes helping to assess and predict individual health risks such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension, or cardiovascular disease, as the location of where children carry weight on their bodies has an influence on their health.
Asked by: Christopher Chope (Conservative - Christchurch)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the gross income of the DVLA was from fees for providing information about the personal details of the keepers of vehicles registered on the DVLA database in each of the last four years for which information is available; and how much of that income came from commercial parking companies.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The income from fees for providing information about keepers of vehicles registered on the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) database is shown in the table below:
Financial Year | £m |
| 2019 – 20 | 23.29 |
| 2020 – 21 | 13.18 |
| 2021 – 22 | 23.90 |
| 2022 – 23 | 30.18 |
These fees are set to cover the costs of providing services to its customers.
The specific information requested about commercial parking companies is not held. The DVLA does publish information about who it shares its data with on GOV.UK. This includes volumes for enquiries made through the keeper at date of event (KADOE) service which provides details of the registered vehicle keeper on a specified date. This report includes electronic enquiries made by parking companies and can be viewed using the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/who-dvla-shares-data-with.
Asked by: Christopher Chope (Conservative - Christchurch)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many civil servants have conditions of employment which impose (a) no and (b) a four day limit on the number of days each week that they can work from home; and whether he has made a comparative assessment of the productivity of those who work from home for four days or more each week and those who do not.
Answered by John Glen - Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office
There is no information available centrally on how many civil servants have conditions of employment that impose no, and a four day limit on the number of days each week they can work from home. Decisions on terms and conditions of employment are made by the employing department, depending on their specific business requirements and nature of the role. Where business requirements allow for it, departments will operate flexible working arrangements.
Civil servants are expected to spend a minimum of 60% of their working time in the office with decisions on implementing and evaluating this expectation made by departments. A small number of home working contracts are in place but these are not routinely approved other than for a very small number of roles, or where a workplace adjustment is agreed for conditions recognised under the Equality Act. Equally, there are also employees who work only from the workplace, due to the nature of their roles, or through personal choice.
There have been no specific central comparative assessments within the civil service of productivity of those who work from home for four days or more each week. It is recognised within departments that there are clear benefits of face-to-face working, including productivity, with complex tasks and problem solving undertaken more efficiently.
Asked by: Christopher Chope (Conservative - Christchurch)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when he plans to publish the Government response to the consultation on commercial and non-commercial movements of pets into Great Britain, launched in August 2021.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
In August 2021 we launched a consultation on the commercial and non-commercial movement of pets into Great Britain. It was a wide-ranging consultation with excellent engagement and some complex issues to work through. The consultation response will be published soon.
Asked by: Christopher Chope (Conservative - Christchurch)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Coroner’s report entitled Oli Hoque: Prevention of future deaths report, published on 13 October 2022, what steps NHS England is taking to allow the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Authority to compel the timely production of clinical data when conducting investigations into harms arising from regulated medicines.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The NHS England National Patient Safety Team and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) routinely work closely on both system development, and a number of safety issues. The NHS England National Patient Safety Team have a data sharing agreement with the MHRA, and provide regular sharing of patient safety incidents reported to NHS England, that are classified as medication incidents or medical device incidents. In addition, the MHRA are able to request focussed searches of reported incidents if they are working on a specific issue.
However, the MHRA does not have the legal powers to compel healthcare professionals to provide additional information after an initial report of a suspected adverse reaction. The MHRA has been working with the National Health Service to explore approaches to facilitate digital linkage of Yellow Card information to clinical records, and potentially to enable faster access to information, where considered necessary for an assessment. This work remains ongoing.
Asked by: Christopher Chope (Conservative - Christchurch)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many Yellow Cards for covid-19 vaccinations were (a) identified by the MHRA as being of special interest and (b) followed up by the MHRA in (i) 2021, (ii) 2022 and (iii) 2023.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
Adverse events of special interest (AESI) are medical events or conditions that have been identified as possible vaccine safety concerns, based mainly on previous experience with other vaccines and immune-mediated events which theoretically may occur, as vaccines stimulate an immune response. AESIs for COVID-19 vaccines were subject to enhanced surveillance by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and many other regulators from the start of the United Kingdom’s immunisation programme.
Specifically in relation to AESIs, the MHRA has received 22880 UK spontaneous suspected adverse reaction (ADR) reports across all COVID-19 vaccines. Over 157 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been given in the UK. It is important to note that Yellow Card reports are not proof of a side effect occurring, and the incidence of a reaction occurring cannot be determined by these reports. The MHRA considers that the benefits of the COVID-19 vaccines continue to outweigh the risks for the majority of people.
The MHRA acknowledges receipt of every Yellow Card report received, and a team of safety experts follow up for additional information as necessary, including consideration of reports with a fatal outcome, based on the completeness, severity, and clinical details provided in the report. Responses to follow-up requests for ADR reports are recorded and stored with the original report on our ADR database. The information is then passed downstream for use in signal detection and the identification of safety concerns.
The data is available for its core purpose of assessment and signal detection, however, the systems were not designed to quantify follow-up metrics requested in this parliamentary question. As such it is not possible to automatically generate metrics on the proportion of follow-up requests sent. The MHRA has provided information on follow up rates under Freedom of Information, within the 20 day statutory timeframes based on manual review of reports, and is committed to publishing high level data on its website.