Gareth Johnson

The number of small businesses that were registered for VAT or PAYE in Dartford between 2006 and 2015 is shown below.

Source: ONS, UK Business: activity, size and location.

[1] Small businesses defined as employing less than 50 people. Data refers to Dartford parliamentary constituency.

[2] For 2006 and 2007, only the numbers of VAT registered businesses are available.

DECC's most recent projections of future electricity generation were made as part of the EMR December Delivery Plan 2013. The percentage of total electricity generation expected from nuclear sources in each calendar year is shown below in Table 1.

Table 1: Yearly percentage of total electricity generation expected from nuclear sources

Information on the number of UCAS applicants from Dartford constituency is shown in the table.

UCAS applicants aged under 21¹ and 21 and over to full-time undergraduate courses from Dartford constituency

Source: UCAS

1. This analysis uses country specific age definitions that align with the cut off points for school and college cohorts within the different administrations of the UK. For England, ages are defined on the 31^st August. Defining ages in this way matches the assignment of children to school cohorts.

Whilst in the vast majority of cases sentencing judges get it right, the ULS scheme is essential in ensuring that victims, family members and the public are able to request that sentences they think are unduly lenient can be reviewed.

The Government re-committed in our manifesto that we will extend the scope of the scheme. As a first step, an extension of the scheme to further terrorism offences came into effect last August.

Approximately 2,347 people have applied for sentences to be reviewed over the last 12 months. A total of 1040 sentences have been referred to my office for consideration as unduly lenient.

354 applications under the unduly lenient scheme have been rejected as they did not fall within the remit of the scheme. 30 applications would have been in the scheme but were received outside the statutory time limit of 28 days from sentence.

In the 12 months from May 2017 to April 2018, of the sentences which were referrred to the Court of Appeal and have been heard, 116 were increased and 39 remained unchanged. 15 have yet to be heard.

According to our records, in 2009 the Attorney General’s Office received requests to refer John Worboys’s sentence to the Court of Appeal from a charity that campaigned against violence against women, and from an MP who passed on a constituent’s complaint about the sentence.

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply.

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply.

I am pleased to share that more than 98% of premises in Dartford can already access a superfast broadband connection and almost 81% have access to a gigabit-capable connection. Both of these figures are above the national average. Across the UK, over 75% of UK premises now have access to a gigabit-capable broadband connection, which is a significant increase from just 6% in January 2019.

The Government is committed to working with broadband suppliers to ensure 85% of UK premises can access gigabit-capable broadband by 2025, and then for nationwide coverage by 2030. We are on track to achieve our target.

As part of Project Gigabit, the Government’s £5 billion mission to deliver lightning-fast, reliable broadband across the UK, we have begun launching procurements that give subsidies to broadband suppliers to build gigabit-capable infrastructure to premises that will not be reached by suppliers’ commercial plans alone.

In December 2022, we launched a procurement covering Kent, which will improve broadband connectivity for up to 72,000 premises, including many in Dartford. We currently aim to award a contract to the successful supplier later this year.

Constituents in Dartford have also made good use of the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme which provides a subsidy of up to £4,500 for residents and businesses towards the cost of installing gigabit-capable broadband. More than 85 premises in Dartford have received a fast, reliable connection through the voucher scheme, worth over £190,000.

Work is ongoing to ensure that the regulatory system supports the development of a UK hydrogen economy. This includes through the BEIS Hydrogen Regulators Forum and bilateral engagement. The Government will work with industry and regulators to identify, prioritise and implement any changes to the existing framework, including addressing any gaps, to support the growth of the hydrogen economy. BEIS recently consulted on existing regulatory arrangements through a consultation on hydrogen transport and storage infrastructure business models and regulation, and is currently reviewing the submitted responses.

In July 2022, the Government published the Hydrogen Sector Development Action Plan which sets out actions the Government and industry are taking to support UK supply chains. Actions include improving project visibility and holding ‘Meet the Specifier’ events, designed to increase transparency of project timings and requirements for supply chain companies. Industry will also lead work voluntarily to set levels of ambition for supply chains in UK hydrogen projects.

Between September 2019 and August 2020, the Office for Low Emission Vehicles received 38,612 applications under the Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme.

I refer my Hon Friend to my reply to the hon Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) to Question UIN 65481. Queen’s Awards for Enterprise in the categories of International Trade, Innovation and Sustainable Development recognise the achievements of companies, not individuals; therefore gender statistics are not available.

The Department has commissioned a study, “Assessing the cost reduction potential and competitiveness of novel (next generation) UK carbon capture technology,” to determine how the Department can support next generation carbon capture technology in future innovation programme funding and support cost reduction in carbon capture. The study will complete in autumn 2017.

In addition, the UK is a member of Mission Innovation, and participating in the Carbon Capture Innovation Challenge ^[1] which seeks to identify breakthrough technologies and research and development opportunities in carbon capture technology with the aim of lowering costs and facilitating global carbon capture and storage deployment.

[1] http://mission-innovation.net/our-work/innovation-challenges/carbon-capture-challenge/

With government support, charities and civil society organisations have shown significant resilience over the past few years.

Government is supporting all organisations, including charities such as the British Evacuees Association, with their energy bills. This support has now been extended until March 2024 via the Energy Bills Discount Scheme. This scheme provides long term certainty for organisations and reflects how the scale of the challenge has changed since September last year.

Whilst it is not usual for DCMS to provide direct funding to individual charities, the department will keep engaging constructively across the civil society sector to monitor the impact of rising costs, and signposting to other sources of funding where appropriate.

With government support, charities and civil society organisations have shown significant resilience over the past few years, and will again be crucial in supporting communities and households through this challenging period.

Government is supporting all organisations, including those across the civil society sector, with their energy bills. This support has now been extended until March 2024 via the Energy Bills Discount Scheme. This scheme provides long term certainty for organisations and reflects how the scale of the challenge has changed since September last year.

Government’s support for energy bills sits alongside a range of existing funding that is delivered by central and local government in the form of grants and contracts. My Department will keep engaging constructively across the civil society sector to monitor the impact of rising costs, and signposting to other sources of funding where appropriate.

Government supports the commemoration of Second World War evacuees through the work of public bodies of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, including the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Since 1994, the National Lottery Heritage Fund has awarded 120 grants, totalling £1,088,450, to projects across 95 local authorities that are specifically related to Second World War Evacuee activities. The Heritage Fund also works with museums, libraries and archives across the UK, funding a range of history-related projects, some of which will also go towards commemorating Second World War evacuees.

The Department also directly sponsors Imperial War Museums, one of our national museums devoted to highlighting the stories and experiences of the Second World War, and evacuees.

Team GB's historic medal haul in Rio is an amazing achievement and our athletes have made the country incredibly proud.

Our greatest Olympic performance in a century owed much to UK Sport’s ‘no compromise’ approach and an increase in funding. It is crucial that this funding was invested strategically in the right sports, the right athletes and the right support programmes.

We must not forget the crucial role the British public has played in making us one of the leading Olympic and Paralympic nations in the world with the continued support the public has given our top athletes through the National Lottery.

I am confident that this success will continue at the current Paralympics, and through to Tokyo in 2020.

Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) are compulsory in maintained schools at Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3. In Key Stage 4, MFL is an essential part of the English Baccalaureate combination of subjects. The Government will also build expert hubs for languages to share best teaching practice among schools and improve access to high-quality MFL teaching.

The Government is also ensuring that all schools have the resources needed to increase the take-up of MFL by their students. As a result, several measures have been put in place to encourage more MFL specialists into Initial Teacher Training. These include targeted marketing campaigns, supporting potential MFL Initial Teacher Training applicants to increase the proportion of successful applications and offering financial incentives, such as scholarships and tax-free bursaries worth up to £26,000, for MFL trainee teachers. Seed funding will also be provided to universities so that MFL undergraduates can opt in to complete Qualified Teacher Status alongside their degree. The Teacher Subject Specialism Training initiative aims to attract existing teachers into MFL by improving current teachers’ MFL skills and helping returning teachers and career changers to enter MFL teaching.

The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) publishes data on the proportion of 18 year olds entering full-time undergraduate higher education by parliamentary constituency.

The figures for the latest five years are shown in the table below:

Table 1 – Entry rates to higher education for 18 year olds in Dartford constituency

For the current financial year 2016 to 2017, the pre-16 funding for secondary pupils is published here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/schools-block-funding-allocations-2016-to-2017

Schools selective status can be viewed here:
http://www.education.gov.uk/edubase/home.xhtml

Data provided in the table below include children attending all open primary schools, secondary schools, special schools, nurseries and pupil referral units in Dartford parliamentary constituency as at 31 August each year, for which data is available. Data for any years prior to 2009 is not available.

[1] Data is based on the most recent section 5 (including section 8 deemed 5) Ofsted inspection of all open schools (primary, secondary, special, nursery and pupil referral units) as at 31 August from 2009 to 2015

Supporting local authorities to ensure sufficient school places in their area is one of this Government’s top priorities. That’s why we’ve committed to investing £7 billion in new school places up to 2021, which along with our investment in the free schools programme we expect to deliver 600,000 new places.

Kent County Council, which is responsible for school places in Dartford, received £115 million in basic need funding between 2011 and 2015, helping to create nearly 17,000 new places between 2010 and 2015. Of these, around 8,700 were primary places and around 8,200 were secondary. Kent has also been allocated £144 million to create the additional places required by September 2019.

We will be taking forward measures in the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill individually through other means during the remainder of this Parliament. Parliamentary business will be announced in the usual way.

Since consulting on the introduction of a Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) for drinks containers in 2019, officials have been developing final proposals for a DRS using further evidence and ongoing engagement with stakeholders. This will be presented in a second consultation in 2021 alongside a full impact assessment.

In April this year we updated the statutory Code of Practice for the Welfare of Dogs, made under the Animal Welfare Act 2006, which provides owners and keepers with information on how to meet the welfare needs of their dogs as required by the 2006 Act. The statutory code is available on GOV.UK.

We model air pollution along the A282 which includes the southern approach to the Dartford Crossing. Our 2017 UK plan for tackling roadside nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) concentrations was informed by our modelling which uses the latest available evidence, which indicates that all modelled sections of the A282 were compliant by 2017.

The Environment Agency responds to reports of pollution via its National Incident hotline. It also proactively identifies pollution to water bodies by carrying out targeted ecological and water quality monitoring.

Monitoring under the European Union Water Framework Directive involves assessing the water environment for its ecological and water quality status. The River Thames currently has a Moderate rating, an improvement on the 2009 baseline. The next round of classifications are due to be released in 2019.

The Environment Agency is in the process of updating the River Basin Management Plan which will develop further measures to improve the habitat, water quality and diversity of the river. This will be delivered through partnerships with industry, land owners, community groups and Defra.