Heidi Allen

I will be placing in the library of both Houses the letter of appointment that was sent to Lord Shinkwin on 21 April 2017 appointing him to the Equality and Human Rights Commission Board.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is an independent public body and decisions about the roles and responsibilities of its Board members, and how these are communicated within the organisation, are matters for the Commission itself. I have therefore asked the Commission’s Chief Executive Officer to write to the my hon. Friend with the information requested. I will place a copy of the letter in the libraries of both Houses.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is an independent public body and decisions about the roles and responsibilities of its Board members, and how these are communicated within the organisation, are matters for the Commission itself. I have therefore asked the Commission’s Chief Executive Officer to write to the my hon. Friend with the information requested. I will place a copy of the letter in the libraries of both Houses.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is an independent public body and decisions about the roles and responsibilities of its Board members, and how these are communicated within the organisation, are matters for the Commission itself. I have therefore asked the Commission’s Chief Executive Officer to write to the my hon. Friend with the information requested. I will place a copy of the letter in the libraries of both Houses.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is an independent public body and decisions about the roles and responsibilities of its Board members, and how these are communicated within the organisation, are matters for the Commission itself. I have therefore asked the Commission’s Chief Executive Officer to write to the my hon. Friend with the information requested. I will place a copy of the letter in the libraries of both Houses.

Offences of hare coursing may be prosecuted using offences created by the Game Act 1831, the Night Poaching Act 1828 and the Hunting Act 2004.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) does not hold any record of the number of reports of hare coursing offences made to the police.

The CPS does not maintain a central record of the number of prosecutions for offences of hare coursing. This information could only be obtained by examining CPS case files, which would incur disproportionate cost.

The Government is committed to ensuring that withdrawal from the EU is a successful and smooth process for the whole of the UK and that no new barriers to living and working within our union are created. The Repeal Bill will take account of devolution as it prepares us to leave the EU.

We want as many people as possible to have a chance to benefit from the digital revolution in public services. For those who can’t get online, we’ve introduced more support and for those who want to get online, we will continue to make sure the right help is in place.

Planning authorities are responsible for applying and enforcing any conditions attached to the planning permission for a fracking or wind turbine development, and this must be assessed on a case-by-case basis. This may include monitoring of noise levels.

For business energy consumption we outlined in the Government’s Clean Growth Strategy, published in 2017, our goal to enable businesses and industry to improve energy efficiency by at least 20 per cent by 2030. This will contribute to overall economic growth by reducing the amount of energy required per unit of output.

Sustainable, low carbon bioenergy has helped the UK move to a low-carbon energy mix, increase our energy security and keep costs down for consumers. We see the use of biomass as a transitional technology and have announced that support for all coal to biomass conversions will end in 2027.

The Contracts for Difference scheme is our main mechanism for supporting new renewable energy generation projects. The Clean Growth Strategy announced up to £557m of annual support for future Contracts for Difference auctions, providing developers with the confidence they need to invest in bringing forward new projects.

Government commissioned WSP/Parsons Brinckerhoff to review the available evidence on the human response to Amplitude Modulation (AM) noise produced by wind turbines. The final report of the review was published on 25 October 2016 [1].

We encourage Local Authorities and developers to apply the recommendations of the report as appropriate when considering planning applications for new sites to protect local residents from excessive AM noise.

To date, no evidence has been brought to the Department’s attention that changes the recommendations of the report.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/review-of-the-evidence-on-the-response-to-amplitude-modulation-from-wind-turbines

The Government has no plans to remove the longstanding arrangements for managing transmission constraints, under which various types of generation are compensated in order to change their planned output.

I refer the Hon member to the answer to written question 224816, answered on 28th February.

Section 106 of the Digital Economy Act 2017 provides the power for government to introduce a criminal offence in order to address the purchase of tickets for a recreational, sporting or cultural event in excess of the maximum permitted where this has been undertaken by the use of automated software ('bots'). The precise nature of the regulations is being developed in consultation with relevant stakeholders and they will be tabled in due course.

We welcome the efforts of international bodies, like the International Federation for Intellectual Impairment Sport, to make their events more inclusive. The government supports efforts that aim to encourage disabled people, including those with Down's syndrome and autism, to become active and to fulfil their sporting potential. The government's sport strategy, Sporting Future: A Strategy for an Active Nation (published in Dec 2015), places a focus on encouraging activity amongst those less likely to be active, including disabled people.

Government is not involved in the selection of the British team for the INAS World Swimming Championships - British entries are sanctioned by the UK Sport Association for People with Learning Disability (UKSA). It is for them to liaise with organisations like Down's Syndrome Swimming GB about British entries into the event.

We have not been approached about this issue and no recent discussion has taken place. Sport England is currently in discussions with National Disability Sports Organisations, about the role they can play to support the delivery of Government's strategy for sport and physical activity, Sporting Future, which is focused on tackling inactivity in priority groups, such as disabled people. This includes discussions with Special Olympics GB and Mencap about the work that they do with people with disabilities.

The government is committed to seeing an improvement in the levels of provision of accessibility services for video-on-demand (VoD) services. We have been monitoring progress of the provision of access services for VoD content since 2013 through engagement with the Authority for Television On Demand (ATVOD), platform operators and content providers. We will work with them - and use information from the April 2015 paper by Action on Hearing Loss, Sense and RNIB - to define a target that we will expect providers to reach by mid-2016. If ATVOD's 2015 annual survey of VoD services indicates that significant progress has not been made then, as we stated in the Connectivity, Content and Consumers paper (July 2013), we will consider legislation in 2016.

​The Department is working with NHS England and Department of Health and Social Care to help schools and colleges provide support for children and young people with emerging mental health issues and secure specialist treatment where it is needed.

The NHS Long Term Plan set out that by 2023/24 an extra 345,000 children and young people in England aged up to 25 will receive mental health support via NHS-funded mental health services including new Mental Health Support Teams linked to groups of schools and colleges. The teams will work with groups of schools and colleges to provide swift access to support for children and young people, especially those with emerging, mild and moderate needs. Teams will also support referrals to more specialist treatment. Roll-out is starting with a trailblazer programme to test how teams can be effectively delivered, including how they can work effectively with local authority services to provide coordinated support for children and young people. Staff for the new teams are currently be being trained and the first 59 teams will be fully operational in 25 areas of the country by the end of the year.

Directors of Children’s Services and Directors of Public Health in Local Authorities will play an important role in supporting local implementation of the new teams. The Department for Education is working with Public Health England to ensure that local authorities are kept informed and are invited to contribute to local plans for implementation.

The departmental budget for spending on sixth form funding in England from 2015-16 to 2019-20 was set in the 2015 Spending Review. As with other areas of departmental spending, sixth form funding from 2020 onwards will be considered as part of the next Spending Review.

We have protected the base rate of funding for 16 to 19 year olds for all types of providers until the end of the current spending review period in 2020 and overall, the government plans to invest nearly £7 billion during 2018-19, to ensure there is a place in education or training for every 16 to 19 year old who wants one. We are considering the efficiency and resilience of the sector and are assessing how far the current funding and regulatory structures enable high quality provision for young people.

The department works closely with HM Treasury in considering sixth form funding at ministerial and official level, and will continue to do so in the lead-up to the Spending Review.

The departmental budget for spending on sixth form funding in England from 2015-16 to 2019-20 was set in the 2015 Spending Review. As with other areas of departmental spending, sixth form funding from 2020 onwards will be considered as part of the next Spending Review.

We have protected the base rate of funding for 16 to 19 year olds for all types of providers until the end of the current spending review period in 2020 and overall, the government plans to invest nearly £7 billion during 2018-19, to ensure there is a place in education or training for every 16 to 19 year old who wants one. We are considering the efficiency and resilience of the sector and are assessing how far the current funding and regulatory structures enable high quality provision for young people.

The department works closely with HM Treasury in considering sixth form funding at ministerial and official level, and will continue to do so in the lead-up to the Spending Review.

The departmental budget for spending on sixth form funding in England from 2015-16 to 2019-20 was set in the 2015 Spending Review. As with other areas of departmental spending, sixth form funding from 2020 onwards will be considered as part of the next Spending Review.

We have protected the base rate of funding for 16 to 19 year olds for all types of providers until the end of the current spending review period in 2020 and overall, the government plans to invest nearly £7 billion during 2018-19, to ensure there is a place in education or training for every 16 to 19 year old who wants one. We are considering the efficiency and resilience of the sector and are assessing how far the current funding and regulatory structures enable high quality provision for young people.

The department works closely with HM Treasury in considering sixth form funding at ministerial and official level, and will continue to do so in the lead-up to the Spending Review.

Please see the attached table which provides the number and proportion[1]^,[2] of full and part-time regular teachers in service in state funded schools who are paid on the main, upper, leadership, other and unknown pay ranges in South Cambridgeshire constituency and in England in November 2017. Within the table, the ‘Other’ column includes the leading practitioners[3] and unqualified teachers[4] pay ranges and the ‘Unknown’ column relates to invalid codes entered by schools during the collection process that were not amended by the schools after being identified as invalid.

[1] Excludes centrally employed staff.

[2] Figures 3 or less have been suppressed.

[3] Leading practitioners are qualified teachers who are employed in posts that the relevant body has determined have the primary purpose of modelling and leading improvement of teaching skills.

[4] Unqualified teachers are teachers who are not a qualified teacher and who is prescribed by Order under section 122(5) of the Act as a school teacher for the purposes of that section.

[5] Includes leading practitioner and unqualified pay ranges.

The Government estimates that hydrofluorocarbon emissions from refrigeration and air conditioning made up around 2.5% of all UK greenhouse gas emissions in 2017, when gases are compared using their global warming potentials (GWPs). The UK greenhouse gas inventory uses the GWPs for individual hydrofluorocarbons from table 2.14 of Volume One (the Physical Science Basis) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Assessment Report 4, as agreed by decision 9/CP.2 of the Conference of Parties.

The UK was one of the earliest countries to ratify the 2016 Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol relating to hydrofluorocarbons and regulations are already in place regarding the phase down of their usage as well as controls on their management, disposal and recycling. A review is expected in 2022.

The Department is aware of the Healthy Air for Healthy Children report. There are no plans to formally review the methodology and conclusions nor publish a response to the report.

Through the Air Quality Grant more than £3 million of government funding has been awarded to 28 innovative projects to improve air quality across local authorities in England. This includes funding to trial new technology to test the effectiveness of low-cost sensors to better understand the air quality data they produce.

Air Quality forecasts and information are already published on the Defra UKAIR website. We are undertaking further work to understand the range of different audiences for air quality information, the differing requirements of those audiences, and how air quality information needs to be tailored to meet those different audiences’ needs.

No, the previous national car scrappage scheme was undertaken to support the car industry and for any nationwide scrappage schemes there are concerns over deliverability and value for money. However, we have not restricted the types of measures eligible local authorities could bid for funding for from the Clean Air Fund.

Anyone is able to take out a prosecution under the Animal Welfare Act 2006 and it is on this basis that the RSPCA investigate calls and prosecute hundreds of people each year for offences under the Act. Local authorities also have enabling powers under the Act and make decisions on their approach to the Act based on local needs and resource priorities and the arrangements that work best for them, working as necessary in partnership with others where helpful. Defra is in regular discussion with the police and Home Office on animal welfare issues and we have received no specific representations from them in the last 12 months on the costs to them of protecting animal welfare where a local authority animal welfare inspector is not in place.

The Government is aware of the European Chemicals Agency report on the regulation of the use of lead ammunition. The European Union Regulation on the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation & Restriction of Chemicals (EU REACH) committee is considering this report and will shortly make recommendations to the European Commission about the current regulation on the use of lead in gunshot over wetlands.

We will review our position once we have seen proposals from EU REACH.

We are deeply concerned about the humanitarian situation in Syria, Iraq and the region. The UN estimates that 7.6 million people are internally displaced in Syria and a further 2.9 million people are internally displaced in Iraq. There are over 3.9 million Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries.

The Disabled Persons’ Transport Advisory Committee (DPTAC) have a statutory duty to advise Ministers on the transport needs of disabled passengers, and we have discussed with them the challenges that disabled people face when using taxis and private hire vehicles (PHVs).

Ministers are considering the recommendations made in the report of the Chair of the Task and Finish Group on Taxi and Private Hire Vehicle Licensing, including those intended to improve accessibility. A Government response will be issued in due course.

We also intend to commission research to understand more clearly the experience of passengers who have been refused service by taxi and PHV drivers on account of using a wheelchair or assistance dog, and the levers available to Government to help eliminate such unacceptable behaviour.