Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
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 that people with Parkinson’s receive their medication on time.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Dissolution.
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
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 improve support for autistic adults.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
We are committed to supporting autistic people to live healthy, independent lives and to participate in their local communities. We are currently reviewing our cross-Government autism strategy and extending it to include children and young people. The Government expects to publish the revised all age autism strategy by the end of the calendar year.
Learning disability and autism are one of the clinical priorities in the NHS Long Term Plan which was published on 7 January 2019. The Plan has a renewed focus on supporting people with learning disabilities or autism or both by improving diagnostic pathways, reducing over-prescribing of medicines, and by ensuring people have access to high-quality care and support in the community.
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
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 (a) update GP guidance and (b) increase GP awareness of the symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
General practice is where most patients with chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) are likely to be managed, and the condition is identified as a key area of clinical knowledge in the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) Applied Knowledge Test (AKT) content guide. The AKT is a summative assessment of the knowledge base that underpins general practice in the United Kingdom within the context of the National Health Service and is a key part of GPs’ qualifying exams.
In 2007, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published the clinical guideline, ‘Chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (or encephalopathy): Diagnosis and management of CFS/ME in adults and children. This sets out best practice in the diagnosis, treatment, care and support of people with the condition
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will increase funding for (a) magistrates courts and (b) county courts to prevent court closures.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
HM Courts & Tribunals Service assesses the court and tribunal estate against its estates principles - ensuring access to justice, delivering value for money and enabling efficiency in longer-term.
The decision to close any court is not taken lightly – it only happens following full public consultation and only when effective access to justice can be maintained. Courts that have closed were either underused, dilapidated or too close to one another with every penny of those closed since 2016 reinvested in the justice system.
We have always been clear that our Reform Programme will result in the need for fewer court and tribunal buildings and that this will only happen when there is sound evidence that people are using them less.
There are currently no active proposals to close further crown or magistrates’ courts beyond those already announced.
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will increase the £66 million funding for early years education announced in the Spending Round 2019 by 10 per cent by 2021.
Answered by Rishi Sunak - Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, and Minister for the Union
At Spending Round 2019 the government announced an additional £66m to increase the hourly rate paid to early years providers through the government’s free hours offers. The Department for Education will share further details of funding for 2020-21 in due course.
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what progress has been made on replacing the Northern Rail franchise.
Answered by Chris Heaton-Harris - Secretary of State for Northern Ireland
We are developing contingency plans for the replacement of the current franchise with either a new short-term management contract with Northern or the Operator of Last Resort (OLR). If we find the operator to be in default of its current contract and that default was material and not capable of remedy, we have the right to terminate the current franchise. If such a right is exercised, a decision on next steps will be based on a full and rigorous analysis into what delivers the best outcomes for passengers and taxpayers and what would best enable the implementation of the forthcoming recommendations of the Williams Review.
We will take a decision once we have the full information, and will provide Parliament with a full update on these next steps at the appropriate time.
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
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 reduce waiting times for mental health (a) referrals and (b) treatment.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
The Government is committed to ensuring that everyone who has a mental health need is able to access timely treatment based on their clinical need.
We have made ambitious commitments in the NHS Long Term Plan to make mental health services available to an extra 380,000 adults and 345,000 children and young people aged 0-25 by 2023/24.
The NHS Long Term Plan commits the National Health Service to test and roll out comprehensive waiting time standards for adults and children over the next decade. This builds on the already established waiting time standards for children and young people’s eating disorder services, early intervention for psychosis that covers all ages and adult improving access to psychological therapies services which are all being met or on track for delivery by 2020/21 in line with previous commitments.
Specific waiting times targets for emergency mental health services will take effect from 2020.
The ongoing NHS clinical review of standards has reported its interim findings which set out a number of proposed future waiting time standards for testing in mental health. These include:
- assessment within 24 hours for urgent community referrals;
- seen by liaison psychiatry in accident and emergency within 1 hour from referral;
- four week waiting times for children and young people to access specialist mental health services; and
- four week waiting times for adults to community mental health teams.
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people were convicted of voter ID fraud in the last twelve months.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
There is no specific offence of voter ID fraud. Cases are usually prosecuted as offences involving fraud by false representation as well as offences involving impersonation.
It is not possible to ascertain if an offender was convicted specifically for voter ID fraud as this information is not centrally held in the court proceedings database. As a result, identifying the number of offenders convicted for voter ID fraud from court data would require a manual search of court records, which would be of disproportionate cost.
The Electoral Commission hold more detailed information which can be found at this link: https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/who-we-are-and-what-we-do/our-views-and-research/our-research/electoral-fraud-data/2018-electoral-fraud-data
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps he is taking to (a) prevent pension phone scams and (b) bring people who undertake pension phone scams to justice.
Answered by John Glen - Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office
The Government is committed to protecting people from pension scams, and pursuing those who perpetrate pension scams wherever possible. That is why the government established Project Bloom, a joint taskforce between government, regulators and law enforcement to share intelligence, raise awareness of scams through communications campaigns, and take enforcement action when appropriate.
Regulations to ban pensions cold calling came into force in early January 2019, using the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 (PECR) as a legal framework. Firms who break the rules could face penalties of up to half a million pounds. As well as deterring cold callers by making their activities illegal, the cold calling ban makes it clear to the public that any pensions cold call they receive is illegal and likely to be a scam call.
The Government also recently amended PECR to allow fines on individual directors who consent to or connive in or neglect to prevent serious contraventions of PECR by their organisation(s). The new measure came into force in December 2018. This measure gives the Information Commissioner the power to impose civil monetary penalties of up to £500,000 on those in positions of responsibility in all forms of corporate entities.
In addition, the Government has recently provided the National Trading Standards Scams team up to £640,000 for the roll out of call blocking devices, free of charge, to vulnerable people, including old aged pensioners. The National Trading Standards launched this project on 15 October of this year.
Asked by: Faisal Rashid (Labour - Warrington South)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, when she plans to bring forward legislative proposals to ensure that restaurant staff receive 100 per cent of their tips.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
The Employment (Allocation of Tips) Bill, announced as part of the Queen’s Speech, is a key part of the Government’s commitment to building fairer workplaces for all.
The Government plans to introduce this legislation in the current Parliamentary session, requiring employers to pass on 100 per cent of tips and service charges to their workers. Where employers distribute tips, they will be required to do so fairly and transparently.
We expect over 1 million workers to benefit from this legislation, many of whom earn the National Minimum Wage or National Living Wage.