Asked by: Justin Tomlinson (Conservative - North Swindon)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what estimate he has made of potential savings arising from increased data sharing across Whitehall.
Answered by Chris Skidmore
The Government Transformation Strategy, published in February, includes an assessment of how data sharing across Whitehall could be made more efficient. Specific opportunities for improvement identified within the strategy include the development of registers to ensure reference data is easy to maintain and use.
The potential of data sharing to save time and resource in several key areas across Whitehall has been analysed as part of the data sharing measures set out in the Digital Economy Bill. These measures enable easier data sharing to improve the public services and functions we deliver. For example, providing automatic rebates to those in fuel poverty would cost less than £1 per household to deliver, while non-automated methods can cost up to £30 per customer.
Industries outside the public sector will also benefit from cost savings enabled by the Digital Economy Bill: the transformation of data collection practices will lead to reduction, over time, of costs associated with compliance, currently estimated at £24 million annually for UK businesses.
Asked by: Justin Tomlinson (Conservative - North Swindon)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many people under the age of 60 were diagnosed with bowel cancer in each of the last five years.
Answered by Chris Skidmore
The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply.
Asked by: Justin Tomlinson (Conservative - North Swindon)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what research has been undertaken on assisted technologies in conjunction with the use of gov.uk websites.
Answered by Ben Gummer
In May 2016 Government launched an online survey to understand which assistive technologies people use to access GOV.UK. We are using the survey results to help us decide which assistive technologies we will use to test GOV.UK. We will also use the results to help us decide which assistive technologies we will advise other departments to test with.
Details of this research, together with the broader work that GDS is undertaking to ensure that we are building inclusive digital services across GOV.UK, can be found on the GDS accessibility blog (accessibility.blog.gov.uk).
Asked by: Justin Tomlinson (Conservative - North Swindon)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps he is taking to ensure that government departments and executive agencies return people's personal identification documents by secure delivery.
Answered by Ben Gummer
Personal identification documents can be requested by departments to verify an individual’s identity for a service that they provide. It is for each department to determine the most appropriate method for returning these documents to the individual, taking into account the risk of loss and potential for fraud. Departments that regularly handle personal identification documents are expected to have clear procedures in place to return documentation to the owner.
The government has also launched ‘Verify’ on the GOV.uk website. As more government services are provided online and using the Verify service, the need for personal identity documents to be sent in hard copy through the postal network will be reduced.
Asked by: Justin Tomlinson (Conservative - North Swindon)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what total reduction in government spending has been attributed to policies drawn up by the Behavioural Insights Team since 2010.
Answered by Ben Gummer
The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) does not track the cumulative impact of all its work over time, only some of which focus on reducing spending or increasing revenue collection.
However, BIT has now run some 350 trials, each of which shows the impact of different policy interventions in different contexts. These show that the team has helped to save or bring forward hundreds of millions of pounds of revenue and has made efficiency improvements in many different areas of UK Government policy.
This includes:
-changing the messages in letters from HMRC to late tax payers was part of a group of trials that helped bring forward more than £200m of late tax debts;
-changing the messages in letters sent by Local Authorities to late payers of Council Tax is estimated to bring forward an extra £3m in one local authority alone;
-changing the way that Jobcentres support people back to work has been rolled out to some 25,000 Job Advisors and is expected to help hundreds of thousands of people back to work faster.
-informing GPs who overprescribe antibiotics that most practices prescribe fewer antibiotics than theirs reduces the number of unnecessary prescriptions by around 150,000 per year; and
-working with HMCTS to send personalised text messages to people who were delinquent in their court fines. This intervention, which significantly increased payment rates prior to a bailiff intervention, could raise £860,000 per week if rolled out nationally and prevent up to 150,000 bailiff interventions per year.
BIT also works with governments around the world and is seeing similar effects in its work in Australia, Singapore and with cities across the USA.
These findings, and many others, are published once a year in BIT’s Update Report. The next edition of this is due later this month [September 2016].
Asked by: Justin Tomlinson (Conservative - North Swindon)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps he is taking to improve data-sharing (a) across government departments and (b) between government departments and local authorities.
Answered by Ben Gummer
The Cabinet Office has consulted public authorities, academics, civil society organisations and privacy groups to explore how data-sharing can be used to improve public services to better support citizens in need, tackle fraud and debt and inform better policy making through world class research and statistics.
The government has included a number of provisions within the Digital Economy Bill to enable government to share data more effectively, whilst also including a set of principles to strengthen the safeguards around the use of data.
The government has also worked to establish a Centre of Excellence for Information Sharing, supporting public sector organisations and government departments in identifying and overcoming the organisational and cultural issues that limit effective sharing.
Asked by: Justin Tomlinson (Conservative - North Swindon)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what savings the Efficiency and Reform Group has identified in each year since 2010.
Answered by Ben Gummer
Since 2010, the government has announced the following efficiency savings and benefits calculated against a 2009/10 baseline:
For 2010/11 the Government reported savings of £3.75billion.
In 2011/12 the Government reported operational savings of £4.8 billion, and prevention of wasteful spend by major projects and construction of £758million, totalling £5.5billion.
In 2012/13 the Government reported operational savings totalling £8billion, and prevention of wasteful spend by major projects and construction of £2billion, totalling £10billion.
In 2013/14 reported savings of £14.3billion. This consisted of operational savings of £10.6billion, reduction in low value spend by major projects, reduced revenue requirements and construction savings of £3.5billion and receipts from asset sales and new commercial models of £0.1billion.
In 2014/15 reported savings of £18.6billion. This consists of operational savings of £12.4billion, reduction in low value spend by major projects, reduced revenue requirements and constructions savings of £5.1billion, receipts from asset sales and new commercial models of £0.4billion and benefits from tackling fraud, error and debt of £0.7billion.
Asked by: Justin Tomlinson (Conservative - North Swindon)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps he is taking to promote the National Citizen Service scheme in schools.
Answered by Rob Wilson
National Citizen Service (NCS) continues to see impressive year on year growth thanks, in part, to school engagement.
NCS is promoted to senior school leadership through targeted marketing and events. The programme’s local delivery partners also deliver thousands of school assemblies and involve NCS graduates as advocates for the programme. 1,886 schools engaged in NCS in 2013 increasing to 2,630 in 2014.
Asked by: Justin Tomlinson (Conservative - North Swindon)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many schools have engaged with the National Citizen Service scheme in each of the last five years.
Answered by Rob Wilson
National Citizen Service (NCS) continues to see impressive year on year growth thanks, in part, to school engagement.
NCS is promoted to senior school leadership through targeted marketing and events. The programme’s local delivery partners also deliver thousands of school assemblies and involve NCS graduates as advocates for the programme. 1,886 schools engaged in NCS in 2013 increasing to 2,630 in 2014.
Asked by: Justin Tomlinson (Conservative - North Swindon)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many new charities were established (a) in the UK and (b) in Swindon in each of the last five years.
Answered by Rob Wilson
The total number of registrations, along with other key figures, is available through the Charity Commission’s Annual Report which is available both on its website at: http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Showcharity/RegisterOfCharities/registerhomepage.aspx and is also in the House Library.
This holds key information of all 164,000 registered charities in England and Wales. The advanced search function allows the user to search by registration date, operating area, income band, charitable purpose and other key items.