Mark Spencer

While there is clearly some awareness of the legal framework applicable to social media, I nevertheless publish warnings online reminding people of their responsibilities, where appropriate. My office also on occasions sends tweets, warning social media users of the risks of being in contempt.

As far as the criminal law is concerned, the Crown Prosecution Service has issued detailed guidelines on prosecuting cases involving communications sent via social media.

This information is not held centrally. The provision of employee references is the responsibility of each departmental employer.

Information on the accessibility of individual railway stations is collected by the Rail Delivery Group and published as part of the Stations Made Easy facility on the National Rail Enquiries website at:

http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/stations_destinations/default.aspx

No estimate of the Government spend per head of population on ambulance services in Nottinghamshire, the East Midlands and England in each of the last three years will be made.

Commissioning of urgent and emergency care, and therefore the amount of funding allocated, is the responsibility of clinical commissioning groups – this includes ambulance service provision for their local populations.

Nationally, the ambulance service is performing well — arriving on scene in under eight minutes in more than 75% of the most life-threatening cases, but there are still some areas where improvements can be made.

Latest monthly figures for April 2014 show the ambulance service did not meet the Red 2 response time standard:

- Category A8 Red 1 performance was 75.2% (above the 75% standard)

- Category A8 Red 2 performance was 73.6% (below the 75% standard)

- Category A19 performance was 95.8% (above the 95% standard)

Full year figures (April 2013 to March 2014) show the ambulance service nationally achieved two of the response time standards:

- Category A8 Red 1 performance was 75.6% (above the 75% standard)

- Category A8 Red 2 performance was 74.8% (below the 75% standard)

- Category A19 performance was 96.1% (above the 95% standard)

The Urgent and Emergency Care Review, led by Sir Bruce Keogh, is currently considering whole system change to the delivery of urgent and emergency care, including new models of delivery of care for ambulance services.

The first phase of the Review was published last November. We expect NHS England to be publishing further reports later this year.

To the extent that we are able to provide details, the following tables show the number of individual seizures of cigarettes and hand-rolling tobacco (HRT) made in each of the last five years and the total volume of tobacco products seized. This does not include the number of individual overseas seizures, which are not recorded centrally, or the number of individual postal seizures from 2010-11 when a new information system was introduced.

The total spent by HMRC on delivering the Government’s strategy to tackle tobacco smuggling in each of the last five years is as follows:

Border Force cannot provide the information requested without incurring disproportionate costs.

Border Force adopts an intelligence led approach to all of its customs activities, including tackling tobacco smuggling so that its multi-functional resources can be deployed as effectively as possible in line with latest threat assessments.

The refreshed strategy ‘Tackling illicit tobacco: from leaf to light’, published on 24 March 2015, makes it clear that this problem requires collaboration across government. Further details on the establishment of a cross government ministerial group will be released in due course.

The joint HMRC/Border Force strategy to tackle illicit tobacco can be accessed on GOV.UK:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/tackling-illicit-tobacco-from-leaf-to-light

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is not a prosecuting authority. Where cases handled by HMRC do proceed to the criminal courts the prosecution is carried out by the relevant independent prosecuting authority. This is the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in England and Wales, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) in Scotland, and the Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland (PPSNI).

The table shows total core Government funding per head of population provided
to each Police and Crime Commissioner (previously Police Authority) in the
East Midlands region and to England for each of the last three years.

Core Government funding to the police is distributed using the Police
Allocation Formula. The Formula takes into account the relative needs of
individual police force areas, not regions. A composite figure for the East
Midlands region is therefore not shown.

The table below shows local authority expenditure on fire and rescue services, as well as the number of fire incidents attended, over the last decade. It illustrates the significant fall in the number of incidents attended, whilst average spending has remained broadly the same over that long-term period.

^{Sources: Revenue Outturn forms and Office of National Statistic’s mid-year population estimates.}

My Department does not publish statistics by the former Government Office Regions.

Last year, Sir Ken Knight’s independent review of the fire and rescue services found huge variations in the way that local fire and rescue authorities operated. Services continue to spend according to the budget they are given, rather than to the risks they have to manage. Huge variations exist between how the 46 different fire authorities operate, with the cost per head of providing a service almost double in some areas to that of others. This did not seem to be related to whether they are large or small, rural or urban, deprived or affluent.

Sir Ken concluded that there were significant opportunities for sensible savings such as through: sharing of senior staff, reforms to flexible staffing and crewing arrangements, better procurement, shared services, collaboration with emergency services and other organisations on service delivery and estates, sickness management, locally-led mergers and operational collaborations, new fire-fighting technology, preventative approaches and working with local businesses.

The table below shows local authority expenditure on fire and rescue services, as well as the number of fire incidents attended, over the last decade. It illustrates the significant fall in the number of incidents attended, whilst average spending has remained broadly the same over that long-term period.

^{Sources: Revenue Outturn forms and Office of National Statistic’s mid-year population estimates.}

My Department does not publish statistics by the former Government Office Regions.

Last year, Sir Ken Knight’s independent review of the fire and rescue services found huge variations in the way that local fire and rescue authorities operated. Services continue to spend according to the budget they are given, rather than to the risks they have to manage. Huge variations exist between how the 46 different fire authorities operate, with the cost per head of providing a service almost double in some areas to that of others. This did not seem to be related to whether they are large or small, rural or urban, deprived or affluent.

Sir Ken concluded that there were significant opportunities for sensible savings such as through: sharing of senior staff, reforms to flexible staffing and crewing arrangements, better procurement, shared services, collaboration with emergency services and other organisations on service delivery and estates, sickness management, locally-led mergers and operational collaborations, new fire-fighting technology, preventative approaches and working with local businesses.