Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what recent estimate he has made of the number of staff in his Department in London that are paid less than the London living wage.
Answered by Oliver Dowden - Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
No staff in Cabinet Office are paid at a rate below the London Living Wage of £10.55 per hour.
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what estimate he has made of the number of people below 18 years of age who are married.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply.
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, whats steps the Government is taking to encourage young people to register to vote.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Government is committed to respecting, protecting and promoting our democracy. We want to build upon recent record levels of individuals registering to vote and participating in elections. Our Register to Vote website is widely used by young people: over 7.83 million online applications have been submitted by 16-24 year olds since the service was introduced in 2014. Ahead of the General Election in June 2017 young people aged under 25 were particularly engaged, submitting over 1 million applications - more than 35% of all applications received in the pre-election period.
Since then we have taken further steps to promote democratic engagement amongst young people. Making use of the Suffrage Fund, we have delivered three projects to promote youth engagement: a scheme to recruit and train 1000 youth Democracy Ambassadors; the development and publication of a toolkit for parliamentarians to engage young people; and a new history and citizenship resource for secondary schools (www.suffrageresources.org.uk).
The Government’s recent report, Democratic Engagement: Respecting, Protecting and Promoting Our Democracy, sets out how we work with partners to encourage democratic participation. This includes National Democracy Week, which convenes youth focused organisations such as the British Youth Council, UK Youth, Elevation Networks and Patchwork Foundation to deliver targeted democratic engagement activity. The report also highlights steps to help Higher Education providers work with local authorities to promote electoral registration amongst their student populations.
DCMS provides funding for the UK Youth Parliament, Youth Select Committee and Make Your Mark ballot which support young people to raise issues on local and national levels.
Make Your Mark is a ballot of youth views which gives the UK Youth Parliament its mandate and gets young people, aged 11-18, involved in democracy, with over 1 million young people voting in 2018. (http://www.ukyouthparliament.org.uk/makeyourmark/)
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps the Government is taking to increase voter (a) registration and (b) turnout at local government elections in May.
Answered by Chloe Smith
The Government is committed to building upon recent record levels of electors registering to vote and participating in elections. One year on from the Democratic Engagement Plan the Government published its follow up report, Democratic Engagement: Respecting, Protecting and Promoting Our Democracy, setting out progress in 2018 and priorities for 2019 and beyond.
The UK Government will help equip councils and civil society groups to improve engagement in democratic events such as at the upcoming local elections in May. This will be achieved by: sharing our knowledge and products, including our Suffrage Centenary 'Educate' projects for young people; insight and solutions to tackle barriers to electoral registration for ethnic minorities and those who are homeless or move frequently; by evaluating progress on student registration; and we have an ‘Easy Read’ guide on the Register to Vote website homepage, produced in partnership with the Royal Mencap Society, to make it easier for people with learning difficulties to apply online.
Since its introduction in 2014, the Individual Electoral Registration digital service has been a huge success, facilitating over 38 million applications; with over 75% of these being made online.
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what recent assessment his Department has made of trends in levels of domestic abuse in (a) Coventry and (b) the UK.
Answered by Chloe Smith
The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply.
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what recent estimate he has made of the number of civil servants employed directly or indirectly by the Government (a) inside and (b) outside of Greater London that are paid below the London Living Wage.
Answered by Oliver Dowden - Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
The government is committed to paying people a decent living wage, which is being addressed through the national living wage, with a commitment to increase this to reach 60% of median earnings by 2020. As of 31 March 2018, 0.9% of civil servants employed by the Government inside of London were paid below the London Living Wage rate of £10.20 per hour and 1.9% of civil servants outside of Londno, including where their location is not specified in this dataset, were paid below the Living Wage rate of £8.75 per hour. Data is not held centrally on indirectly employed agency staff and contractors working in government departments.
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what recent steps his Department has taken to prepare for the possibility of holding elections to the European Parliament in May 2019.
Answered by Chloe Smith
It remains the priority of the Government to leave the European Union with a deal.
Government is not contingency planning to hold European Parliamentary Elections.
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps his Department is taking to reduce levels of stress in the civil service.
Answered by Oliver Dowden - Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
We are committed to the health and wellbeing of all our staff, including helping them to manage stress in the workplace.
We have committed to delivering the Thriving at Work standards to refine our approach to mental health support in the workplace. The Civil Service health and wellbeing strategy features specific actions including:
Building a network of an estimated 4000 Mental Health First Aiders (MHFA’s) or equivalent who are equipped with the knowledge to recognise early symptoms and provide initial help to colleagues experiencing mental health concerns.
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what estimate his Department has made of the cost to the public purse of efforts to secure UK elections from outside interference in each year since 2010.
Answered by Chloe Smith
Whilst we have no seen evidence of successful interference, we are not complacent: this Government takes the security and integrity of our electoral processes extremely seriously. The Government is committed to working together with a full range of partners: academia, businesses, charities, regulators and civil society to respect, protect, and promote our democracy.
Protecting the UK’s electoral mechanics from foreign cyber interference is one of the National Cyber Security Centre’s key priorities. The NCSC offers political parties access to the best cyber security guidance and support, and will provide cyber security guidance to the range of bodies – notably local authorities – involved in an election.
It is also the responsibility of organisations and individuals to do what they can to reduce the vulnerability of data, which is the most effective method to deny states and others the opportunity to do harm or interfere. This is why we have spent £1.9 billion on cyber security, including establishing the NCSC since 2016.
There is also ongoing work with local authorities and electoral administrators to ensure our elections remain secure. Within these broad programmes of work to secure our democratic processes, costs specifically to secure elections from outside interference are not recorded separately.
Asked by: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what estimate his Department has made of the potential cost to the public purse of holding a second referendum on the UK's membership of the EU.
Answered by David Lidington
No such estimate has been made. The Government has no plans to hold another referendum on EU membership. The Government remains committed to delivering on the result of the 2016 EU referendum by leaving the EU.