Asked by: Meg Munn (Labour (Co-op) - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department takes to ensure that third party organisations delegated to undertake children's social care functions of local authorities are of an appropriate standard.
Answered by Michael Gove - Minister for Intergovernmental Relations
The Government's recent consultation seeks to enable local authorities to delegate children's social care functions to broaden the range of approaches available to secure the best outcomes for children in their area. The proposals do not remove responsibilities from local authorities for ensuring their statutory obligations on child protection and children's social care are met, and it remains local authorities' responsibility to ensure the quality of that provision.
Delegated social care function arrangements will continue to be inspected by Ofsted, in the same way as directly delivered local authority social care functions, as part of its local authority inspection framework. In addition, regulations currently govern the fitness of third party providers and require their registration with Ofsted.
Asked by: Meg Munn (Labour (Co-op) - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether he plans to exempt any functions from his proposals to allow further delegation of children's social care functions.
Answered by Michael Gove - Minister for Intergovernmental Relations
Part 1 of the Children and Young Person's Act 2008 currently allows local authorities to delegate social care functions relating to children in care and care leavers. The legislation precludes delegation of independent reviewing officer functions, and of adoption functions, unless the other party to the arrangement is a registered adoption society.
The Government's proposals would not alter those exemptions, but seek to enable local authorities to delegate a wider range of social services functions (if they so wish), to broaden the range of approaches available to secure the best outcomes for children in their area. The recent consultation on the proposals closed on Friday 30 May and responses are being considered.
Asked by: Meg Munn (Labour (Co-op) - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the effects of proposals for further delegation of children's social care functions on the implementation of the recommendations of the Munro Review of child protection.
Answered by Michael Gove - Minister for Intergovernmental Relations
The Government is considering the outcome of its consultation on proposals to enable local authorities to delegate children's social care functions to third parties, to help broaden the range of approaches available to secure the best outcomes for children in their area. The proposals place no obligations on local authorities and do not remove their responsibility for ensuring their statutory obligations on child protection and children's social care are met.
Asked by: Meg Munn (Labour (Co-op) - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, pursuant to the Answer of 6 May 2014, Official Report, column 80W on the Pacific Islands, how much support and under what categories her Department gave directly to Pitcairn Island in 2013-14.
Answered by Alan Duncan
DFID holds a legal obligation to meet the reasonable needs of Pitcairn Island. In 2013/14 DFID provided a total of £2,809,462 to Pitcairn Island to ensure the maintenance of a range of basic public services (e.g. electricity, telecommunications), to ensure continued child safeguarding is in place for the remaining children on Pitcairn, and to support the shipping service that provides the only freight and passenger services to and from the island.
Asked by: Meg Munn (Labour (Co-op) - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, pursuant to the Answer of 28 April 2014, Official Report, columns 568-9W, on Pacific Islands, to Question 196375, how much support and under what categories her Department gave directly to Pacific Island countries in 2013-14.
Answered by Alan Duncan
I refer the Hon. Member to the Oral answer given to her by the Secretary of State for International Development, my Rt. Hon Friend the member for Putney (Justine Greening) on 5 March 2014 (Official Report, column 871).
Asked by: Meg Munn (Labour (Co-op) - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, when he plans to publish on the government website an up-to-date impact assessment for universal credit.
Answered by Esther McVey - Minister without Portfolio (Cabinet Office)
The Government published a detailed Impact Assessment in December 2012 to accompany the laying of the Universal Credit regulations that came into force in April 2013. There are no current plans to publish an update.
Asked by: Meg Munn (Labour (Co-op) - Sheffield, Heeley)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, pursuant to her Answer of 5 March 2014, Official Report, column 871, on Pacific Islands, how much support, and under what categories her Department gave indirectly to Pacific Island countries in 2013-14.
Answered by Alan Duncan
DFID may give aid indirectly to countries in the Pacific region if multilateral organisations in receipt of DFID core contributions give aid to countries there. It is not possible to directly track this funding to individual countries. To provide an indication of the destination of aid, the overall proportions of aid reported by the relevant multilateral agencies are used to impute a DFID contribution. The DFID imputed multilateral shares for the Pacific region in 2011/12 are set out in the table below. Figures for 2013/14 will not be available until autumn 2015.
Pacific Island Countries | £ (thousand) |
Cook Islands | 88 |
Fiji | 0 |
Kiribati | 3,537 |
Marshall Islands | 4 |
Micronesia, Fed. States | 10 |
Nauru | 69 |
Niue | 0 |
Palau | 1 |
Papua New Guinea | 0 |
Pitcairn Islands | 0 |
Samoa | 1,444 |
Solomon Islands | 570 |
Tokelau | 2 |
Tonga | 4,393 |
Tuvalu | 1,399 |
Vanuatu | 264 |
Wallis & Fortuna | 0 |
South Pacific Regional | 0 |
Oceania, regional | 275 |
Total Pacific | 12,055 |