Asked by: Khalid Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Perry Barr)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the total amount of capital spending per capita by Highways England was in (a) Birmingham, (b) the West Midlands Metropolitan County and (c) each region of England from 2009-10 to the most recent financial year for which information is available.
Answered by John Hayes
The majority of the capital investment made by Highways England (and the Highways Agency prior to April 2015) is in large schemes that cross city, county and regional boundaries. Data cannot be meaningfully collected on this basis.
However, for the purpose of national transport statistics, spend is apportioned between regions using an established estimation process and is published up to the financial year 2013/14 at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/transport-statistics-great-britain in the series of tables TSGB0717 / RDE0101.
Asked by: Khalid Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Perry Barr)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many permanent HS2 Ltd employees are based in Birmingham; and what proportion of the total number of HS2 Ltd employees those employees represent.
Answered by Andrew Jones
As at the 1 October 2016 there were 338 permanent HS2 Ltd employees based in Birmingham, representing 37% of the overall HS2 Ltd employee base.
Asked by: Khalid Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Perry Barr)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will publish an updated timetable on the development of the Institute for Apprenticeships.
Answered by Robert Halfon
The Institute for Apprenticeships will come into being in April 2017. We expect to publish further information about how the Institute will operate in due course.
Asked by: Khalid Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Perry Barr)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will provide full financial support and administrative oversight for the relatives of the victims of the Birmingham pub bombings of 1974; and if she will ensure that past and future expenses of those victims relating to investigations into those bombings are reimbursed or paid from the public purse.
Answered by Robert Goodwill
The Prime Minister has received correspondence from the families of the victims of the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings, requesting a special scheme be set up for funding of the families’ legal representation at the newly reopened Coroner’s inquest into the bombings. The Government is carefully considering these requests, and will respond directly to these parties in due course.
Asked by: Khalid Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Perry Barr)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to encourage nurseries to teach early language skills.
Answered by Sam Gyimah
The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) statutory framework sets the standards for the provision of learning, development and care for children from birth to five year olds that all registered early years providers such as maintained nurseries must follow. Within the EYFS, there are several areas of learning and development that shape the educational programme in the early years settings, one of which is communication and language.
The EYFS makes clear that children should be given opportunities to experience a rich language environment to help them develop the confidence and skills they need to express themselves and to speak and listen in a range of situations. The EYFS requires practitioners to ensure all children have the opportunities to learn and develop a good standard of English language to ensure they are ready to benefit from the opportunities available to them when they begin primary school.
We have also worked closely with 4Children to develop the What to Expect, When? guide which illustrates to parents and early years providers the tools they can use to help their children’s language development from birth to five years old, and can be found at: http://www.foundationyears.org.uk/2015/03/what-to-expect-when-a-parents-guide/
The Department for Education has also awarded £5.3 million to voluntary and community sector organisations of which a number are supporting staff to develop strong pedagogical approaches to language development and early literacy.
Asked by: Khalid Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Perry Barr)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will make it her policy to monitor air pollution levels outside schools.
Answered by Rory Stewart
The UK national monitoring network follows strict criteria for the number and location of air quality monitoring sites as set out in Annex III of the ambient air quality Directive.
These do not preclude siting monitoring outside or nearby to schools and some existing monitors are near to schools. To ensure the network meets the Directive requirements, monitoring is undertaken at a range of locations (e.g. urban background, roadside, industrial and rural locations).
Practical factors such as health and safety, access, locality to services, planning, land ownership and cost of monitoring sites are also key in siting new monitoring stations.
Many Local Authorities also conduct air quality monitoring and are free to determine their chosen approach in assessing air pollution based on local circumstances and priorities. Local Authorities are able to use monitoring methods not available to the national network due to the Directive’s requirements.
This means that they are able to design monitoring more suited to the local circumstance. However, when a new national monitoring site is required, Local Authorities will be consulted and where possible, existing sites may be shared or a new site located to meet both national and local needs. This may often mean consideration is given to siting at a local school or at a Local Authority or public building.
Asked by: Khalid Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Perry Barr)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much was spent on tackling gun crime in (a) England and (b) the West Midlands between (i) January 2010 to December 2012 and (ii) January 2013 to December 2015.
Answered by Mike Penning
Information about specific aspects of spending by the police is not held centrally by the Home Office. Birmingham is one of the areas previously supported under the Ending Gang and Youth Violence programme. However, it is not possible to determine what proportion of the total programme budget was spent in this area, and in turn what proportion of this was related to tackling gun crime specifically.
Asked by: Khalid Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Perry Barr)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how much was spent on policing in (a) England and (b) the West Midlands between (i) January 2013 and December 2015 and (ii) January 2010 and December 2012.
Answered by Mike Penning
The police in England and Wales receive funding from two main sources - central Government and the police precept component of council tax.
The table below shows the amount of revenue funding provided by central Government to the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for the West Midlands (formerly the West Midlands Police Authority), and the amount of central Government revenue funding provided by central Government to PCCs (formerly police authorities) and their London equivalents in England from 2009/2010 to 2015/2016. It also shows precept funding for the relevant years.
Overall police spending (central Government funding plus precept) will be protected in real terms over the next Spending Review period. This is an increase of up to £900 million in cash terms by 2019/20.
Police reform is working and, according to the independent Crime Survey for England and Wales, crime has fallen by more than a quarter since 2010. This is the lowest level since the survey began in 1981. In the West Midlands, crime has fallen by 15 per cent compared with 2010.
£m | West Midlands | England | ||||
Year | Government funding* | Precept** | Total | Government funding* | Precept** | Total |
2009-2010 | 529.0 | 77.9 | 606.9 | 8,573.4 | 2,913.7 | 11,487.1 |
2010-2011 | 540.8 | 79.4 | 620.2 | 8,686.2 | 2,982.9 | 11,669.1 |
2011-2012 | 515.8 | 79.7 | 595.4 | 8,292.0 | 3,039.7 | 11,331.7 |
2012-2013 | 484.7 | 80.0 | 564.7 | 7,823.1 | 3,093.2 | 10,916.3 |
2013-2014 | 474.8 | 82.0 | 556.8 | 7,655.0 | 3,128.6 | 10,783.6 |
2014-2015 | 458.9 | 84.4 | 543.3 | 7,385.5 | 3,207.4 | 10,592.9 |
2015-2016 | 435.6 | 87.3 | 522.8 | 7,031.2 | 3,289.8 | 10,321.0 |
*Government funding figures include specific grants that have since been rolled into Police Main Grant (including Rule 2 Grant, the Neighbourhood Policing Fund and, from 2013/14, the Community Safety Fund) in order to provide consistency over the time period.
Since 2011/12, West Midlands and other English force areas have been in receipt of Council Tax Freeze Grants. These amounts are included in the figures, along with National and International City Grants paid to the London forces.
These figures do not include funding for counter-terrorism policing, or additional funding received by the police from other specific grants, the Police Innovation Fund or other sources.
**From 2013/14, West Midlands and other English force areas have also received Local Council Tax Support (LCTS) funding. These amounts are included within the precept totals to assist comparison with previous years.
Asked by: Khalid Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Perry Barr)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to prevent the supply of guns and ammunition at a neighbourhood level.
Answered by Mike Penning
The Government and police work nationally, and with international partners, to reduce the threat to the UK from the criminal use of firearms. In 2013/14, firearms were used in a small proportion of total police recorded crime, 0.2%. The figure for 2009/10 was 0.3%
Figures from the National Ballistics Intelligence Service (NABIS) show that in 2013 and 2014, there were 757 weapons recovered in firearm surrenders undertaken in the Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, Greater Manchester and West Midlands Police Force areas.
Building on the success of these surrenders, NABIS co-ordinated firearms surrenders in the majority of the remaining Police Force areas in England and Wales during 2014 and 2015, resulting in the recovery of 5,468 weapons and over 17,000 items of ammunition. The items recovered included:
The total number of weapons recovered from all forces in England and Wales as a result of these surrenders was 6,225.
Following publication of the Law Commission’s report on firearms law published on 16 December 2015 we will be reviewing options to strengthen the current legislation to ensure it safeguards against abuse by criminals.
Asked by: Khalid Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Perry Barr)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many (a) arrests and (b) convictions have been made in connection with gun-related crime in the West Midlands metropolitan area in each quarter of the last five years.
Answered by Mike Penning
Offences involving firearms recorded by the police at the force area level are published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on a financial year basis. The most recently published figures for the West Midlands and England are 2013/14. These are given in the table and show that between 2009/10 and 2013/14, offences involving firearms (excluding air weapons) fell by 40% in both the West Midlands and in England.
Figures for 2014/15 are due to be published on 11 February 2016 in the ONS publication Focus on: Violent Crime and Sexual Offences 2014/15.
The ONS publish provisional data for England and Wales on the number of offences involving firearms in their quarterly crime statistics releases. The most recently available figures are for the year ending June 2015 and these can be found here: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/crime-stats/crime-statistics/year-ending-june-2015/stb-crime--ye-june-2015.html
The Home Office does not collect data on the number of people arrested in connection with offences involving firearms. The Home Office collects data on arrests by groups of crimes (for example, violence against the person, robbery) but cannot separately identify those that involved a firearm from those that did not.
Convictions data are the responsibility of the Ministry of Justice. The Ministry of Justice has informed the Home Office that they do not hold data on the number of convictions for offences where a firearm was involved.