Asked by: Ian Swales (Liberal Democrat - Redcar)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, how many firefighting jobs are not front line in each fire authority.
Answered by Penny Mordaunt - Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons
We do not hold this information centrally.
Information on staff strength and roles, by fire and rescue authority, is published annually in the Fire and Rescue Operational Statistics bulletin. The latest figures refer to end March 2014, and are available in Tables 3a and 3b of following publication:
Asked by: Ian Swales (Liberal Democrat - Redcar)
Question
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what the value and proportion of the UK content of each completed UK offshore wind farm is.
Answered by Amber Rudd
The Department does not require Developers to submit to it the value and proportion of the UK content for each completed UK offshore wind farm. However, many Developers already report on the UK content of their wind farms and it is a priority for Government to support the development of a UK-based supply chain for offshore wind and to increase the UK content of wind farms.
Asked by: Ian Swales (Liberal Democrat - Redcar)
Question
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what estimate his Department has made of the value and proportion of UK content of the forthcoming Race Bank offshore windfarm.
Answered by Amber Rudd
The Department does not estimate the value and proportion of UK content of individual offshore windfarms.
Asked by: Ian Swales (Liberal Democrat - Redcar)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how much of the Cancer Drugs Fund was spent on pancreatic cancer drugs in each year since 2010.
Answered by George Freeman
NHS England has advised that there is currently one anti-cancer therapy available through the Cancer Drugs Fund that is used in pancreatic cancers. This is Abraxane (albumin bound paclitaxel).
NHS England has estimated that, since Abraxane was added to the national Cancer Drugs Fund list in March 2014, the estimated spend in that financial year was approximately £13,000.
Based on current application rates for this drug, NHS England estimates that approximately £4.09 million will be spent on this drug in 2014-15.
Prior to April 2013, information on the indication for which a cancer drug was provided through the Fund was not collected.
Asked by: Ian Swales (Liberal Democrat - Redcar)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many nurses have been recruited by the NHS in England from (a) the UK, (b) other EU member states and (c) outside the EU in each of the last five years.
Answered by Dan Poulter
The Department does not hold information on the number of nurses recruited by the National Health Service in England from the United Kingdom and other EU member states and outside the European Union in each of the last five years.
It is the responsibility of each NHS organisation to determine how many nurses it employs and from where these nurses are recruited.
The Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC), holds data on the nationality of staff working in the NHS as at 30 September 2013, the latest published data available. September data for the years 2009 to 2014 inclusive will be published, for the first time, by the HSCIC on 23 January.
The information as at September 2013 is set out in the table below:
Hospital and Community Health services: Qualified nursing, midwifery and health visiting staff, by nationality | |
|
|
England | Headcount |
British | 269,390 |
Other EU | 12,347 |
Rest of the World | 27,792 |
Unknown | 38,415 |
Total | 347,944 |
Notes:
These statistics relate to the contracted positions within English NHS organisations and may include those where the person assigned to the position is temporarily absent, for example on maternity leave.
Data Quality:
It should be noted that well over 100,000 staff do not have a specified nationality in the whole data set which included all staff so the figures above do not show the exact numbers of each nationality, but rather an indication of the numbers with known nationalities.
Source: Health and Social Care Information Centre, Provisional NHS Hospital and Community Health Service (HCHS) monthly workforce statistics.
Asked by: Ian Swales (Liberal Democrat - Redcar)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many nurses are being trained by the NHS.
Answered by Dan Poulter
The number of pre-registration nursing places (degree and diploma courses) that were filled as at 31 March 2014 was 17,568.
In December 2014, Health Education England published their Workforce Plan for England which includes their planned Education and Training Commissions for 2015/16.
Asked by: Ian Swales (Liberal Democrat - Redcar)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will take steps to ensure that off-patent bisphosphonate drugs are made routinely available for the new indication of preventing breast cancer spreading to the bone.
Answered by George Freeman
Research led by the University of Sheffield on the effects of bisphosphonate treatment on recurrence and cause-specific mortality in women with early breast cancer was presented in 2013. We understand that NHS England’s Breast Cancer Clinical Reference Group plans to incorporate this research into guidance it will be publishing in 2015.
Asked by: Ian Swales (Liberal Democrat - Redcar)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, how much his Department spent on bank transfer transactions for tax credits and tax refunds in the last financial year.
Answered by Priti Patel
Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) includes information on bank charges in its annual report and accounts (Page 138 Other Administration Costs and Page 140 Programme Costs):
Asked by: Ian Swales (Liberal Democrat - Redcar)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how much his Department spent on bank transfer transactions for each type of benefit and pension payment in the last financial year; and what the total cost was of those transfers.
Answered by Steve Webb
DWP can provide a total figure for UK benefit bank transfers for 2013/14 (including pensions) by BACS, broken down by benefit as follows:
Benefit
| Volume | Banking Costs |
ATTENDANCE ALLOWANCE (AA) (inc Overseas) | 14,914,870 | £65,625.43 |
DISABILITY LIVING ALLOWANCE (DLA) (inc Overseas) | 47,522,463 | £209,098.84 |
EUROPEAN SOCIAL FUND (ESF) | 288 | £1.27 |
CARERS ALLOWANCE (CA) (inc Overseas) | 27,066,880 | £119,094.27 |
INCAPACITY BENEFIT (INCAP) | 10,093,974 | £44,413.49 |
INCOME SUPPORT (IS) | 146,845,498 | £646,120.19 |
INDUSTRIAL INJURIES (IIDB) | 11,975,719 | £52,693.16 |
OVERSEAS DIVISION (ODIIDB) | 73,828 | £324.84 |
JSA | 30,546,139 | £134,403.01 |
MORTGAGE DIRECT (JSA MD) | 239,080 | £1,051.95 |
LPS | 71,171 | £313.15 |
LPS MID | 1,900 | £8.36 |
MORTGAGE DIRECT (MI) | 1,299,364 | £5,717.20 |
RETIREMENT PENSIONS | 339,855,838 | £1,495,365.69 |
THIRD PARTY PAYMENTS (TPP) | 44,715 | £196.75 |
WINTER FUEL NEW RULE (WFNR) | 953,886 | £4,197.10 |
SOCIAL FUND (SF) | 1,157,008 | £5,090.84 |
DWP ESA MID | 617,369 | £2,716.42 |
DWP ESA | 44,349,674 | £195,138.57 |
DWP CPS LOCAL PAYMENTS | 1,930,311 | £8,493.37 |
PIP | 282,631 | £1,243.58 |
Universal Credit | 13,556 | £59.65 |
Benefits Total | 679,559,975 | £2,990,063.89 |
Excluding CSA/SPVA/CMS | 686,118,046 | £3,018,919.40 |
TOTAL BACS
| 699,386,621 | £3,077,301.13 |
The Department does not have the breakdown for Faster Payments by benefit type, however the total volume figure of payments is 3,261,640 and a transaction value of £526,273.
Asked by: Ian Swales (Liberal Democrat - Redcar)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what rationale lies behind NICE's advice that end-of-life criteria should only apply to medicines that extend life by at least three months.
Answered by George Freeman
In January 2009, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) issued supplementary advice to its appraisal committees on appraising treatments which may be life-extending for patients, with short life expectancy, and which are licensed for indications affecting small numbers of patients with incurable illnesses.
This sets out the following three criteria that must all be satisfied for this supplementary advice to be applied:
- the treatment is indicated for patients with a short life expectancy, normally less than 24 months;
- there is sufficient evidence to indicate that the treatment offers an extension to life, normally of at least an additional three months, compared to current NHS treatment; and
- the treatment is licensed or otherwise indicated, for small patient populations.
These criteria were developed following public consultation and set out the circumstances when NICE considers it is appropriate for its appraisal committees to apply greater flexibility in their appraisal of these treatments.
The advice has now been incorporated chapter 6 of Guide to the methods of technology appraisal 2013 which can be found at:
www.nice.org.uk/article/pmg9/chapter/6-the-appraisal-of-the-evidence-and-structured-decision-making