Gareth Davies

The consultation on GS2222 is ongoing, and closes on 31^st October 2021. A response to the consultation will be published in due course.

More information on the consultation can be found here: https://www.churchofengland.org/resources/parish-reorganisation-and-church-property/review-mission-and-pastoral-measure-2011 and a paper with responses to frequency asked questions about GS2222 is available here: https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2021-10/GS2222%20QA%20for%20website%20FAQ_01102021_0.pdf

There have been over 550 responses to the questionnaire and approximately 600 responses via email, which can be broken down into approximately two-thirds laity to one-third clergy. It is not possible to give a breakdown of responses by constituency and area.

In line with the practice of successive administrations, details of internal discussions are not normally disclosed.

The Government is clear however that leaving the EU presents the UK with many opportunities. The Government has already established a new points-based immigration system to attract the brightest and best, new trade agreements, and a replacement of the bureaucratic Common Agricultural Policy. This Government will continue to maximise opportunities to support long-term economic growth and strengthen the UK’s global position.

Our Paternity Leave entitlement enables eligible employed fathers to take two weeks of paid leave within the first eight weeks following the birth or adoption placement. Eligible employed fathers also have other entitlements to balance work with childcare, including paid annual leave, unpaid parental leave and the right to request flexible working.

Shared Parental Leave allows eligible parents to share up to 50 weeks of leave and up to 37 weeks of pay in the first year.

As set out in our Manifesto, we are committed to making it easier for fathers to take Paternity Leave. In 2019 the Government consulted on high-level options for reforming parental leave and pay. We are currently considering responses to the consultation and will respond in due course.

The Government is committed to tackling unfair business practices and keeps competition law under constant review to ensure that it is as effective as possible in protecting the interests of consumers and businesses.

Passing off is a well-established principle in common law and is used to protect businesses (including SMEs) who operate in the UK against other businesses misrepresenting themselves to the public as that first business. It is often seen as a flexible and entirely appropriate mechanism to deal with unregistered trade mark infringement. The Government has not made any specific assessment of the potential benefits to SMEs of codifying the legal doctrine of passing off.

Owners of registered and unregistered trade marks, in particular SMEs have various affordable avenues to address trade mark infringement, including passing off claims. These avenues include the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court which includes a small claims track specifically designed to help SMEs address IP disputes in a more affordable way. SMEs may also take advantage of the IP Pro Bono initiative and mediation services, including the mediation service offered by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO). Full guidance for SMEs on how to address IP infringement, including affordable access to justice is available at the IPO’s website (www.ipo.gov.uk).

In July 2020, The Oversight Trust published an independent review of Big Society Capital (BSC) as part of its role in overseeing the organisation. This report outlined the progress BSC has made towards its objectives as a social investment wholesaler and market-builder, including in mobilising private capital for social investment. Since 2011, BSC has signed £680m of investments to support social enterprises and charities, and has leveraged £1.4bn of investments from private investors alongside this. This has contributed to 97 fund level investments and provided capital to over 1,200 charities and social enterprises, with 73% of these organisations located in the 50% most deprived places in the UK.

In July 2020, The Oversight Trust published an independent review of Big Society Capital (BSC) as part of its role in overseeing the organisation. This report outlined the progress BSC has made towards its objectives as a social investment wholesaler and market-builder, including in mobilising private capital for social investment. Since 2011, BSC has signed £680m of investments to support social enterprises and charities, and has leveraged £1.4bn of investments from private investors alongside this. This has contributed to 97 fund level investments and provided capital to over 1,200 charities and social enterprises, with 73% of these organisations located in the 50% most deprived places in the UK.

Decisions about transport, including in Lincolnshire, are a matter for local transport authorities, working with transport operators.

However, students should not be prevented from undertaking a T Level industry placement due to the additional transport costs. Therefore we are taking a number of steps to ensure that students are able to access placements regardless of where they live. We have increased the travel bursaries that young people can draw on to help with travel costs and providers can use the T Level Capacity and Delivery Fund to help with travel costs. Additionally, the National Apprenticeships Service has been looking to encourage more employers including small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to offer placements as SMEs make up the majority of employers in rural areas.

We are also looking at imaginative and innovative approaches to student transport which already exist and enable greater access to placements, in particular for students in rural areas, and how we can foster these approaches more widely for T Levels.

The Government will confirm arrangements for the PE and Sport Premium in the 2020/21 academic year as soon as possible.

Input costs for fuel, feed and fertiliser are worryingly high. We are monitoring the situation closely. To ease cashflow concerns, in England we have announced bringing forward half of the Direct Payment to July from December. We have powers in the Agriculture Act to help sectors if necessary.

We have just announced £30 Million to help farmers add value to their products, and we have boosted Countryside Stewardship payment rates by an average of 30%. We will shortly launch the Sustainable Farming Incentive, for which farmers will receive quarterly payments.

We expect to publish the Government Food Strategy shortly. The Strategy will set out the Government's ambition and priorities for the food system, considering the evidence set out in Henry Dimbleby's independent review last year. The white paper will not include an assessment of the impacts of solar farm developments on agricultural land.

Driving a motorised vehicle on a footpath, bridleway or restricted byway without the landowner’s consent is a criminal offence and enforcement is a matter for the police.

An offence under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 may have been committed if damage is caused.

The maintenance of public rights of way is a local issue. Local highway authorities have statutory duties to record and keep public rights of way open and it is the authority’s responsibility to prevent the stopping-up or obstruction of public rights of way.

The Department holds information on personal injury accidents only and the latest available statistics on road safety are for the calendar year 2018. 2019 statistics will be available in September 2020.

The second Road Investment Strategy will confirm the Government’s plans for the strategic road network. We expect this to be published in due course.

The Government, via the Cabinet Office Disability Unit, is supporting the British Standards Institute in its development of a public information symbol to support disabled people with non-visible disabilities.

The Government has consulted on proposals to increase the number of Changing Places toilet facilities through mandating them in a range of public buildings, using the statutory building regulations framework. Changing Places toilets meet the needs of people with profound and multiple learning disabilities, as well as people with other physical disabilities such as spinal injuries, muscular dystrophy and multiple sclerosis.

At present, there are 89 community diagnostic centres (CDCs) operational across the country, and these have delivered over 2.8 million additional tests since programme started reporting in July 2021. In December 2022, my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, approved a further 20 locations for new CDCs across the country, which will help more people to easily access life-saving checks, tests and scans. The NHS has also delivered the first of its waiting time ambitions, with waits of two years or more for elective surgery virtually eliminated in July 2022.

Public Health England publishes data on hospital-onset bloodstream infection as incidence rates. However, prevalence data are not available.

NHS England is responsible for the allocation of resources to clinical commissioning groups (CCGs). Funding is distributed on the basis of a weighted capitation formula, informed by independent advice from the Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation, and population estimates provided by the Office for National Statistics.

NHS England published five-year CCG allocations 2019-20 to 2023-24 on 8 February 2019 at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/ccg-allocations-2019-20-to-2023-24-core-services/

Allocations figures for South Lincolnshire Clinical Commissioning Group in the years requested are set out in the following table.

The information is not available in the format requested. The available information in the following table shows the number of unplanned accident and emergency (A&E) attendance, at Grantham and District Hospital, Pilgrim Hospital Boston and Lincoln County Hospital in 2016/17, 2017/18 and 2018/19.

It should be noted that the number of admissions will include those patients that attended A&E more than once.

Source: Hospital Episode Statistics, NHS Digital

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Ministry of Defence work together to ensure that British troops deployed to the UN's peacekeeping operation in Mali, MINUSMA, receive comprehensive pre-deployment training, including on human rights, preventing sexual exploitation and abuse and Conflict-Related Sexual Violence (CRSV). The UK's long range reconnaissance task group in Mali is a high capability commitment intended to enable MINUSMA to conduct more effective intelligence-led operations across the full range of its mandated tasks, including protection of civilians and prevention of CRSV. UK troops themselves have visited a large number of Malian communities, including some which have not previously interacted with peacekeepers, to deter criminal activity and violence against civilians, to provide a UN presence and to understand local population's concerns.

The UK Government has a strong commitment to ensuring UN peacekeeping is equipped to tackle CRSV. Across all missions, including MINUSMA, and as a member of the UN Security Council, we support specific protection and assistance for women affected by armed conflict, and advocate for civilian and uniformed gender advisers to enable missions to address the needs of victims and survivors of CRSV.

Deeper engagement with the Indo-Pacific is fundamental to the UK’s future economy, security and values.

The Foreign Secretary’s visits to India in December, and to the Republic of Korea and Vietnam in September, advanced collaboration across critical sectors. The UK’s application for ASEAN Dialogue Partner status and planned accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership will deepen our political, security and economic relations across the region.

The UK is working with partners to address instability. I attended international meetings on the Sahel earlier this month and in Mauritania in February. I stressed the importance of improving governance and respecting human rights.

As part of our efforts, the UK is deploying 250 peacekeeping troops to Mali and has 3 RAF Chinook helicopters deployed to a Counter Terrorism operation. We are also one of largest humanitarian donors to the Sahel. Between 2015 and 2019, the UK provided humanitarian aid to 2.3 million across the region.

The Government is clear that the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) should deal with all cases promptly and fairly. The rules on how the FOS should handle complaints state that ‘The ombudsman will attempt to resolve complaints at the earliest possible stage ’DISP 3.5 Resolution of complaints by the Ombudsman - FCA Handbook’. Inevitably some cases will be more complex than others and therefore take more time to resolves, however the FOS should deal with all cases in a timely manner.

The FOS is an independent non-governmental body. The Treasury is therefore not involved in the day-to-day operations of the FOS and the remit of the FOS is set out by the Financial Conduct Authority. Nevertheless, the Government believes that it is vitally important that the FOS should be accountable for its performance and the quality of its work. The FOS answers to a board of directors, appointed by the Financial Conduct Authority, and must make a report each year on the discharge of its functions which is required to be laid before Parliament. This ensures Parliament is able to scrutinise the efficiency, effectiveness and economy with which the FOS carries out its functions, including data concerning the time it takes for the FOS to deal with cases.

The FOS have been clear that bringing down waiting times is one of their main priorities for 2022/23 as outlined in their annual plan and budget. This includes ensuring cases are allocated more quickly and improving turnaround times by caseworkers. I am pleased to hear that the FOS are also investing in technological changes which they expect to bring down waiting times including further development of a digital portal and implementing additional intelligent automation capability.

The government remains open to the introduction of new financing instruments but would need to be satisfied that they would meet value-for-money criteria, enjoy strong and sustained demand in the long-term and be consistent with the wider fiscal objectives of government. The government continues to monitor the case for issuing a sovereign green bond and will keep this under review.

Under the landmark transparency provisions contained in section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, the UK became the first country in the world to require certain commercial organisations to report annually on the steps they have taken to prevent modern slavery, including institutional investors who fall within scope of the requirement.

The Government regularly engages with businesses, investors, civil society and industry experts to collaborate on best practice and promote key measures to tackle modern slavery. The Home Office’s statutory guidance, ‘Transparency in Supply Chains: a Practical Guide’, emphasises that it is crucial that large organisations are transparent and accountable, not just to investors but to other groups including employees, consumers and the public, whose lives are affected by their business activity. The Government also supports ShareAction’s Workforce Disclosure Initiative (WDI) and provided £200,000 of funding in 2020/21. The initiative has mobilised investors with $6.5 trillion of assets under management to call for transparency from multinational companies on how they manage their workforce.

In the meantime, to further enhance transparency, in March 2021 the Government launched an online GOV.UK registry for modern slavery statements. This new service enables investors, consumers, NGOs and others to scrutinise the effectiveness of the actions being taken and monitor progress across sectors over time. Within the first month of launching, statements covering c. 8,000 organisations have already been submitted to the registry.

If an organisation fails to publish a statement, the Secretary of State can seek an injunction to require compliance. This power has not been used to date. However, following the transparency in supply chains consultation, the Government has committed to an ambitious package of changes to section 54, including introducing financial penalties for organisations who fail to meet their statutory obligations to publish annual modern slavery statements. These measures require primary legislation and will be introduced when parliamentary time allows.

Under the landmark transparency provisions contained in section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, the UK became the first country in the world to require certain commercial organisations to report annually on the steps they have taken to prevent modern slavery, including institutional investors who fall within scope of the requirement.

The Government regularly engages with businesses, investors, civil society and industry experts to collaborate on best practice and promote key measures to tackle modern slavery. The Home Office’s statutory guidance, ‘Transparency in Supply Chains: a Practical Guide’, emphasises that it is crucial that large organisations are transparent and accountable, not just to investors but to other groups including employees, consumers and the public, whose lives are affected by their business activity. The Government also supports ShareAction’s Workforce Disclosure Initiative (WDI) and provided £200,000 of funding in 2020/21. The initiative has mobilised investors with $6.5 trillion of assets under management to call for transparency from multinational companies on how they manage their workforce.

In the meantime, to further enhance transparency, in March 2021 the Government launched an online GOV.UK registry for modern slavery statements. This new service enables investors, consumers, NGOs and others to scrutinise the effectiveness of the actions being taken and monitor progress across sectors over time. Within the first month of launching, statements covering c. 8,000 organisations have already been submitted to the registry.

If an organisation fails to publish a statement, the Secretary of State can seek an injunction to require compliance. This power has not been used to date. However, following the transparency in supply chains consultation, the Government has committed to an ambitious package of changes to section 54, including introducing financial penalties for organisations who fail to meet their statutory obligations to publish annual modern slavery statements. These measures require primary legislation and will be introduced when parliamentary time allows.

The long-term trend in burglaries recorded by the police in England has been downward and the number recorded in 2019 was 7% lower than in 2018.

The Home Office does not hold information on the number of recorded crimes, including burglaries, which involved drones.

The Government recognises the particularly invasive nature of burglary and the impact it can have on victims. Whilst police recorded crime statistics for England and Wales showed that burglary had fallen, too many people experience this traumatic crime each year. We are taking a proactive approach to driving down these crimes and have announced a £25m Safer Streets Fund to help prevent these crimes as well as supporting the recruitment of 20,000 new police officers to ensure they have the resources to deal with these crimes when they do occur. We are working to combat burglary in a number of areas, including: making homes more secure, working with the police to examine what more can be done to prevent offenders disposing of stolen goods, and improving the police and wider criminal justice system response.

The Mull of Kintyre review was instrumental in the replacement of Boards of Inquiry with Service Inquiries. As the hon. Member will be aware, a Service Inquiry is an inquiry held under statute and is not permitted to apportion blame or find negligence, but rather seeks to identify where there are lessons to help prevent recurrence.

It is not possible to overturn aspects of Boards of Inquiry held in the past without full reinvestigation of the original incident, and it would not be benificial to re-open any such inquiries, where it is deemed there are no lessons to be identified for the Service, such as where aircraft are no longer in service for example.

The information requested is not held in the format requested and could be provided only at disproportionate cost. Although an incomplete collection of 550 Boards of Inquiry (from 2008 redesignated Service Inquiries) into RAF flying accidents from the period in question is held, there is no central document recording the outcomes.

The Ministry of Defence (MOD) takes cyber security and resilience very seriously and conducts a range of activities to ensure its systems are protected against attack from malign state and non-state actors. As a result of the Integrated Review settlement, the MOD is increasing its already substantial investment in defensive cyber capabilities. These are delivered through three dedicated programmes: Defensive Cyber Operations, Cyber Resilience Programme and the Joint Crypt Key Programme. The MOD continues to work closely with industry and partners across Government, especially the National Cyber Security Centre. To guard against disinformation, Defence provides support to the cross-departmental Counter Disinformation Unit's campaigns. This work is led by the Cabinet Office and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

The Government is committed to promoting fairness and transparency for homeowners and ensuring that consumers are protected from abuse and poor service. Where owners of freehold properties pay estate rentcharges it is not appropriate that these homeowners have limited rights to challenge these costs.

That is why the Government will give freeholders on private and mixed tenure estates equivalent rights to leaseholders to challenge the reasonableness of estate rentcharges. We will also consider the option of introducing a Right to Manage for residential freeholders once we have considered the Law Commission’s report and recommendations on changes to the Right to Manage for leaseholders.

In addition, when parliamentary time allows, we will remove the statutory right for owners of rentcharges to take possession or grant a lease of the property in the event of non-payment by the homeowner.

We have introduced legislation to set ground rents on newly created leases to zero in the current session. This will be the first part of major two-part legislation to implement leasehold and Commonhold reforms in this Parliament.

The Government does not have any plans to consult on the use of expert reports in the family court system. There is already legislation in this area which emphasises the independence of experts and the key role of judicial discretion in determining when expert evidence should be put before the court.

Section 13 of the Children and Families Act 2014 makes provision in relation to the control of expert evidence, and of assessments, in children’s proceedings. This legislation is underpinned by detailed rules of court practice and procedure set out in the Family Procedure Rules 2010 and supporting Practice Directions. The Rules and Practice Directions are developed by the Family Procedure Rule Committee (FPRC), working in close conjunction with Government officials. The Committee is made up of judges and legal and lay practitioners all of whom are experts in family law.

The President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane, established a working group to identify the scale of the problem of medical expert witness shortages in the family courts, the causes and possible solutions; the final report was published in October 2020. Recently, the Family Justice Council (FJC), a sub-group of the Family Justice Board (FJB), coordinated an event aimed at medical and allied health professions, family lawyers and members of the judiciary to encourage experts to offer their services in family justice system.

The Government, the President of the Family Division, the FJC and the FPRC therefore continue to consider issues in this area as they arise.

There are no plans to review the law in this area at present. The Law of Property Act 1925, Land Registration Acts of 1925 and 2002 and the Land Registration Rules set out a clear legal framework and checks and balances for protecting the various interests in registered estates and charges, including those of third party interests.

HM Land Registry publish practice notes which offer guidance on the role and use of Form A and other restrictions, including one on ‘Notices, restrictions and protection of third-party interests’:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/notices-restrictions-and-the-protection-of-third-party-interests-in-the-register.