Jo Churchill

We are supporting entrepreneurs and small businesses in many ways and are committed to making sure the UK is the best place in Europe to start and grow a business.

For example Start-up Loans provide new entrepreneurs with start-up finance and advice. And the Enterprise Finance Guarantee scheme encourages lenders, such as banks, to lend to smaller businesses that would not ordinarily get a loan. The table below shows how much both schemes have lent to small businesses in Suffolk, East of England and England and Wales.

The Government is also supporting small firms through grant funding provided by Innovate UK to support science and technology innovations that will grow the economy. In 2014/15 around 60% of Innovate UK’s funding went to small & medium sized enterprises. In the same period expenditure to micro and small enterprises in the East of England was £18.8m.

Growth hubs across England make sure that small businesses can access this support and other local and private sector support available to start and grow a business. There are currently 29 growth hubs delivering business support to around 79% of the registered business population. The remaining hubs are due to roll out across England by March 2016. The New Anglia Growth Hub provides support to businesses in the Suffolk area and has helped over 3,000 businesses and created 450 jobs. Four hubs currently provide support to businesses in the East of England area.

And the New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership has secured over £220m as part of their Growth Deal to help transform the economy of Norfolk and Suffolk. This money will fund a range of initiatives including road improvements, building new innovation centres and providing grants to help businesses grow.

The Feed-in Tariff scheme has been hugely successful in encouraging the generation of low carbon energy for homes and businesses and we will continue to incentivise this growing sector.

On heat, the Renewable Heat Incentive encourages the installation of renewable heating in place of fossil fuels in homes and non-domestic buildings. This includes air-source heat pumps; deep geothermal; energy from waste; and a wide range of other technologies.

We are supporting entrepreneurs and small businesses in many ways and are committed to making sure the UK is the best place in Europe to start and grow a business.

For example Start-up Loans provide new entrepreneurs with start-up finance and advice. And the Enterprise Finance Guarantee scheme encourages lenders, such as banks, to lend to smaller businesses that would not ordinarily get a loan. The table below shows how much both schemes have lent to small businesses in Suffolk, East of England and England and Wales.

The Government is also supporting small firms through grant funding provided by Innovate UK to support science and technology innovations that will grow the economy. In 2014/15 around 60% of Innovate UK’s funding went to small & medium sized enterprises. In the same period expenditure to micro and small enterprises in the East of England was £18.8m.

Growth hubs across England make sure that small businesses can access this support and other local and private sector support available to start and grow a business. There are currently 29 growth hubs delivering business support to around 79% of the registered business population. The remaining hubs are due to roll out across England by March 2016. The New Anglia Growth Hub provides support to businesses in the Suffolk area and has helped over 3,000 businesses and created 450 jobs. Four hubs currently provide support to businesses in the East of England area.

And the New Anglia Local Enterprise Partnership has secured over £220m as part of their Growth Deal to help transform the economy of Norfolk and Suffolk. This money will fund a range of initiatives including road improvements, building new innovation centres and providing grants to help businesses grow.

The Government has demonstrated its commitment to transparency with a number of senior pay disclosures for the Civil Service since 2010 as set out in my previous answer. Transparency policy in wider public sector workforces is the responsibility of relevant departments.

The Civil Service aims to be as transparent as possible, and already discloses a significant amount of senior pay data. The Office for National Statistics publishes a range of detailed pay information in its annual release of Civil Service Statistics, including the number of staff earning over £100,000 and other pay information. The latest release is available at:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/publicsectorpersonnel/datasets/civilservicestatistics

In addition, since 2010 the Government has published an annual list of individuals in departments, agencies and Non-departmental Public Bodies earning £150,000 and above. Departments also publish organograms every six months that include individualised salary information for their most senior staff

Relevant departments are responsible for transparency policy in wider public sector workforces.

Voting more than once at a General Election or at other national polls such as a referendum is a crime which carries a financial penalty.

We take this matter very seriously. I have raised this issue as a priority with the Electoral Commission, and will consider carefully the findings of their report on electoral registration at the 2017 General Election, as well as their upcoming report on the administration of that poll.

It is possible to determine whether an individual has voted twice at a General Election by checking the marked register of those who have voted. If anyone has evidence of someone voting twice, then they should report this to their local returning officer and to the police.

I have also written to the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) to reiterate the Government's support for the police to make every effort to investigate reports of criminal behaviour in relation to elections.

The Government will continue to consider if further steps should be taken to ensure the integrity of the electoral system and where opportunities could exist to reiterate that voting more than once at the General Election or other national polls is illegal.

Last year, One Public Estate expanded to over a third of councils in England. Together, they expect to deliver £56million in running cost savings, £138million in capital receipts, 36,000 jobs and 16,500 homes by 2020. But there are many more excellent proposals and that is why, at Autumn Statement 2015, we announced £31million of funding to expand One Public Estate. Now covering 50% of councils in England, we will continue to support more councils and deliver more benefits over the Parliament.

The Government does not hold this information, but as part of the planning process for new infrastructure National Grid Electricity Transmission will identify preferred options considering a range of factors, including impacts on land and local communities. This will need to be balanced against other considerations, such as cost and environmental impacts. National Grid Electricity Transmission are required to undertake an Environmental Impact Assessment for projects such as East Anglia GREEN, and this includes an assessment of community impacts.

I refer my hon. Friend to the answer given by my noble Friend the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State to the noble Lord Allen of Kensington on 5 July 2022 to Question HL1128.

The Department does not hold information on of the total revenue generated from the investment by small businesses in the life sciences sector in research and development for 2016-17.

At over 5,000 companies, small businesses comprise 93% of the life sciences sector. The Government recognises the importance of small businesses operating in the sector and the valuable contribution that they make.

To avoid overburdening businesses there is no mandate for companies to submit information about investments they make in R&D. In many instances it would be difficult to quantify the revenue directly attributable to R&D undertaken rather than by other business activities. Also due to the long timescales involved in R&D any revenue generated by R&D would be generated in a different year from when the R&D was performed.

The Government recognises the significant contribution made by charitable funders of research. The charity support element of Quality Related research funding, provided by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), recognises the public benefit arising from research funded by charities. Over the period 2011-17, HEFCE has protected support for institutions leveraging funding from the charitable sector and has provided £198m per annum for this through to 2016-17.

The “Allocation of Science and Research funding 2016 – 2020” confirmed the Government’s expectation that throughout this period HEFCE should continue to incentivise Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) to work with businesses and charities, leveraging additional investment. It will be for the HEFCE Board to determine how much to provide for charity research support from within their overall research allocation for 2017-18, once they have received their annual Grant Letter from Ministers.

Broadband Delivery UK has recently published information and guidance for communities on implementing their own community projects, with examples of schemes that it is aware of (available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/community-led-broadband-schemes). There are also other examples of community broadband support such as Community Broadband Scotland, which gives specific support to community projects in Scotland. The government does not, however, hold information on all community schemes in the UK.

World Heritage Sites are internationally recognised. As a result, they attract visitors from near and far.

In July, the Gorham Cave Complex in Gibraltar became the UK’s 30th World Heritage Site. I very much hope to see the Lake District become our 31st in 2017.

The Prime Minister’s Tourism Action Plan sets out how we are working to make it easier for visitors to travel around our country and discover these sites for themselves.

I am pleased to report that over 1,000 young people in Suffolk have participated in NCS in the past two years. The NCS Trust does not collect data at a constituency level. Therefore, the figures below are for the local authority area of Suffolk.

2014 – 328 participants

2015 – 710 participants

We do not hold take-up data at constituency level.

Take-up in the areas covered by the BDUK projects is available at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Hs00bNsyRV1WoOt-fow3rsNXzpcKg26AsOWvk1bvJRk/edit#gid=0

Ofcom’s, “Connected Nations 2015” publication indicates that “one in three homes had ‘superfast’ broadband with a connection of 30 Mbit/s or more" in May 2015.

The Government has committed £26.68 million to the Suffolk broadband project. The current contracted coverage is to provide superfast broadband access to 117,493 homes and businesses in the county, extending coverage to nearly 91% of premises. Procurement is still under way for part of the funding and coverage will be extended further once contracts are agreed. As 30 June 2015, the Suffolk project had covered 84,447 superfast premises.

Over £81 million of government funding has been committed to improving superfast broadband coverage in the East of England (including Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes). This will support delivery of superfast broadband to 642,160 homes and businesses in the region that would otherwise not have gained coverage.

We are determined to create a country that works for everyone. That is why we are delivering on our promise to reform the unfair, opaque and outdated school and high needs funding systems and introduce the national funding formula. Commencing in 2018-19, the national funding formula will allocate funding on the basis of the specific characteristics of every school and pupil.

For Suffolk County Council, the national funding formula means an increase in schools funding of 4.7% per pupil in 2018-19. Suffolk will also receive a 3.6% increase in its high needs budget in 2018-19, subject to technical adjustments made later in the year to reflect the latest data.

Allocations for 2018-19 for each local authority were confirmed on 19 December 2017 and is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dedicated-schools-grant-dsg-2018-to-2019. The allocations take into account the latest pupil numbers from the October 2017 census.

Schools in the constituency of Bury St Edmunds are attracting an additional 2.6% per pupil through the national funding formula in 2018-19. Their final budgets for 2018-19 will however be determined through the local formula set by Suffolk County Council.

The table shows the number of apprenticeship vacancies advertised on the official ‘Find an apprenticeship’ website, however there are a number of additional routes for an individual to apply for an apprenticeship, including directly to employers or training providers. Data is not collected on vacancies available via these routes.

Apprenticeship vacancies by region, as at 30 November 2016:

Notes:
- Data is from the Find an apprenticeship website

- East Anglia contains the following Local Authority Districts: Babergh, Breckland, Broadland, Cambridge, East Cambridgeshire, Fenland, Forest Heath, Great Yarmouth, Huntingdonshire, Ipswich, King's Lynn and West Norfolk, Mid Suffolk, North Norfolk, Norwich, Peterborough, South Cambridgeshire, South Norfolk, St Edmundsbury, Suffolk Coastal, and Waveney

- Suffolk contains the following Local Authority Districts: Mid Suffolk and Suffolk Coastal

The number of academies in East Anglia (Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire) and England are given below. These figures are correct as at October 2016.

There are no academies in Wales. We routinely publish information on all open academies and academy projects in development and this can be accessed at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/open-academies-and-academy-projects-in-development

The department collects information from each local authority on the number of schools, the number of places in those schools and the number of pupils on roll through the annual school capacity survey (SCAP).

The data is published annually. Data for May 2015 (relating to academic year 2014/15) can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-capacity-academic-year-2014-to-2015

As at May 2015, in Suffolk there were:

a) 59,140 primary school places

b) 52,169 primary school age pupils on roll

c) 329 primary pupils in excess of school capacity

d) 7,300 unfilled primary school places.

School capacities are as reported by local authorities for all school types, based on their knowledge of each school.

The number of pupils in key stage one classes of more than 30 pupils for each of the years and locations requested is given below, along with the corresponding number of classes:

This information has been taken from the Local authority tables and underlying data of the ‘schools, pupils and their characteristics’ statistical release[1] for the corresponding year.

Of those infant classes with more than 30 pupils, roughly 95% of pupils are in classes of 31 or 32 pupils and larger classes are uncommon.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-school-and-pupil-numbers

The table below summarises Government investment (Flood Defence Grant in Aid or FDGiA) to flood and coastal risk management schemes in the Bury St Edmunds constituency and England between April 2012 and March 2021. Budgets for 2021-22 and beyond have not been set.

The Environment Agency has issued the following number of groundwater activity permits in each of the last five years in (a) Bury St Edmunds constituency and (b) Suffolk:

Leaving the EU and the Common Agricultural Policy gives us an opportunity to transform our agricultural policy into a fairer system that will help farm businesses across all sectors thrive. We are committed to delivering value for money to the taxpayer while supporting British agriculture and the environment. We will publish for consultation a command paper setting out our proposals later this Spring.

The Government’s manifesto commit to provide the same cash total in funding for farm support until the end of this parliament, expected in 2022. This offers a greater level of security and certainty for the UK farming sector than anywhere else in the EU, where funding is only guaranteed until 2020.

We are also committed to improving and simplifying our existing farm support systems. We have recently announced four new Countryside Stewardship offers, including an offer specifically for the arable sector, along with a simplified application process for 2018.

The Secretary of State recently met representatives of the sugar beet industry to hear the industry’s views. The removal of EU sugar beet quotas, which the government pressed for, allows British growers to move towards competing on a level-playing field with other sugar producers around the world, including by opening up export opportunities for beet sugar production.

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The current Forestry Commission England production forecast for the public forest estate is an average annual volume of 1,263,000 cubic metres of softwood timber and 92,000 cubic metres of hardwood timber between 2017 and 2021.

The department recognises the benefits of forest schools for children and young people and the opportunities they provide to develop confidence through hands-on learning in a woodland environment. Proposals for any specific forest school, in Suffolk or elsewhere, would need to be assessed on their merits.