Asked by: Margot James (Conservative - Stourbridge)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what proportion of people who claimed jobseeker's allowance (JSA) at some point during the year were subject to a JSA sanction in that year in (a) Stourbridge Jobcentre and (b) Stourbridge constituency in each of the last five years.
Answered by Esther McVey - Minister without Portfolio (Cabinet Office)
The information requested is not readily available and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Margot James (Conservative - Stourbridge)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what proportion of pupils in each primary school in Stourbridge constituency met the required standard of phonic decoding in the 2013-14 academic year.
Answered by Nick Gibb
School level performance in the phonics screening check is not published in the performance tables. Schools are not held to account for their performance in this diagnostic check, although they do have to inform parents of their child’s result in the way they think most suitable. The results are available on www.raiseonline.org for schools to use and for local authorities and Ofsted as part of their inspections process.
The overall proportion of pupils attending schools in Stourbridge constituency who met the required standard of phonics decoding by the end of year 1 in the 2013/14 academic year was 77%. Nationally 74% of year 1 pupils met the required standard of phonic decoding in the 2013/14 academic year.
Asked by: Margot James (Conservative - Stourbridge)
Question
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, how many new businesses have opened in Stourbridge constituency in each of the last five years.
Answered by Matt Hancock
The estimated number of business start-ups in the Stourbridge constituency between 2009 and 2013, is shown in the table below.
Year | Estimated number of business start-ups in Stourbridge |
2009 | 610 |
2010 | 640 |
2011 | 590 |
2012 | 550 |
2013 | 550 |
Source: BankSearch: number of new business bank accounts opened. All figures rounded to the nearest 10.
Asked by: Margot James (Conservative - Stourbridge)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many state-funded primary schools whose phonics check results were below the national average have been judged (a) outstanding and (b) good in their most recent Ofsted inspection.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Nationally 74 per cent of year one pupils met the required standard of phonic decoding in the 2013/14 academic year.
Out of 15,658 state-funded primary schools[1] in England, 6,783 had year one phonics checks results that were below the national average. Of these, 780 schools were judged as outstanding and 4,341 were judged as good schools according to their most recent Ofsted inspection [2],[3],[4] on overall effectiveness.
[1] Defined as schools with pupils with highest statutory age below 12.
[2] This covers inspection outcomes of September 2005 to August 2014 published at http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/latest-official-statistics-maintained-schools-and-academies-inspections-and-outcomes. The school type of an institution is as of 31 August 2014, which means that schools may have received their rating under a different school type.
[3] The inspections have taken place before the 2013/14 phonics results were available to Ofsted (late October 2014). As the phonics check was only introduced in 2011/12, the inspections may have taken place before any phonics results were available to Ofsted.
[4] There have been changes in the framework on how schools are inspected and ranked. Prior to September 2012, schools graded 3 were judged as ‘satisfactory’. Since 1 September 2012 they are judged as ‘requires improvement’. From 1 January 2012 inspections of maintained schools have taken place under a new framework, in accordance with sections 5 and 8 of the Education Act 2005. This framework was revised on 1 September 2012 and under the revised framework, schools can be judged as outstanding, good, requires improvement or inadequate.
Asked by: Margot James (Conservative - Stourbridge)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 24 October 2014 to Queston 211886, how many of the co-educational state boarding schools in England are single sex up to sixth form; and how many of those schools accept only (a) boys and (b) girls until sixth form.
Answered by Edward Timpson
This information is not held by the Department for Education. Gender of school details are only collected by the Department at the point of first entry (i.e. age 11 for 11-18 schools). The information requested is held by local authorities or academies in each local authority area.
Asked by: Margot James (Conservative - Stourbridge)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many state boarding schools in England are (a) co-educational, (b) all boys and (c) all girls.
Answered by Edward Timpson
There are 146 co-educational state boarding schools in England. There are 39 all-boys schools, and two all-girls schools, giving a total of 187 state boarding schools currently open.
This data has been taken from the October 2014 ‘Schools in England’[1] publication.
[1] www.gov.uk/government/publications/schools-in-england
Asked by: Margot James (Conservative - Stourbridge)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, how many companies have been prosecuted for not paying minimum wage in each of the last nine years.
Answered by Robert Buckland
Records are available from 2006-07. With the agreement of the Department for Business Innovation and Skills, HMRC started considering prosecution for minimum wage offences from May 2006.
The following table shows the number of employers who have been prosecuted with offences connected with the National Minimum Wage (NMW) since then, and of those prosecutions, the number who have been prosecuted under Section 31(1) “Employer refuses or wilfully neglects to pay NMW” alongside other offences.
Prosecutions started for any NMW offences | Charges of failure/ refusal to pay NMW | |
2006-07 | 1 | 0 |
2007-08 | 1 | 0 |
2008-09 | 5 | 2 |
2009-10 | 1 | 1 |
2010-11 | 0 | 1 |
2011-12 | 1 | 0 |
2012-13 | 0 | 0 |
2013-14 | 0 | 0 |
The majority of employers identified as paying below the NMW pay arrears on receipt of a formal Notice of Underpayment. Where they do not do so, HMRC pursues recovery through the civil courts. For deliberate non-compliance or obstructive behavior HMRC operates a policy of selective and exemplary criminal investigation action to enhance their enforcement strategy. HMRC‘s approach to tackling underpayment of NMW through the civil courts is the best way to ensure that money is paid back to the person underpaid and provides the most effective resolution for tax-payers. Criminal investigations may not result in arrears being paid to workers and are therefore reserved for the most serious cases.
Asked by: Margot James (Conservative - Stourbridge)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many companies have been successfully taken to tribunal by employees for not complying with minimum wage legislation in each of the last nine years.
Answered by Shailesh Vara
HM Courts & Tribunal Service does not collate the information requested. This information could only be provided at a disproportionate cost by manually checking individual tribunal files.
Asked by: Margot James (Conservative - Stourbridge)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, how much the tax gap was in each of the last nine years; and what estimate he has made of the tax gap that was due to tax evasion in each of the last nine years.
Answered by David Gauke
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) publish estimates of the tax gap in Measuring Tax Gaps each year. The 2013 edition presents a time series of tax gaps from 2005-06 to 2011-12, which can be found at the following link:
HMRC has also produced an illustrative breakdown of the tax gap by behaviour, including evasion, for the years 2007-08, 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2011-12. These are not comparable year on year because the data available doesn’t enable estimates to be updated for earlier years. Table 1 below shows the estimates of evasion published in previous HMRC publications for these years.
Table 1: Estimates of evasion previously published
Publication |
Year of estimate |
Amount (£bn) | Percentage of tax gap in year of estimate |
Measuring Tax Gaps 2013 |
2011-12 |
5.1 |
15% |
Measuring Tax Gaps 2012 |
2010-11 |
4 |
14% |
Measuring Tax Gaps 2011 |
2009-10 |
4 |
12% |
Protecting Tax Revenues 2009 |
2007-08 |
7 |
17.5% |
Previous editions of ‘Measuring Tax Gaps’ can be accessed at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/measuring-tax-gaps
The HMRC publication ‘Protecting Tax Revenues 2009’, can be accessed at the following link: (http://irscot.inrev.gov.uk/budget10/pbr/00notices/docs/5450_other.pdf)
The 2014 edition of Measuring Tax Gaps, covering estimates for 2012-13, will be published on 16 October.
Asked by: Margot James (Conservative - Stourbridge)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, how much HM Revenue and Customs spent on dealing with tax evasion in each of the last nine years.
Answered by David Gauke
Since 2010, the Government has been determined to support HMRC in tackling tax evasion, and has invested nearly £1 billion in HMRC’s compliance activities.
It is not possible to say how much HMRC have spent on tackling tax evasion in each of the last nine years as HMRC works on a risk basis tackling behaviours. Work on tax evasion is not confined to one directorate within HMRC. Therefore the information is not held in the format requested and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.