Asked by: Michael Meacher (Labour - Oldham West and Royton)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many asylum seekers the Government plans to resettle in (a) Oldham, (b) Rochdale, (c) all 10 Greater Manchester metropolitan boroughs, (d) London and (e) the South East.
Answered by James Brokenshire
Under the Immigration and Asylum act 1999, asylum seekers who need accommodation are housed in communities across the UK according to an agreed ratio, based on various regional factors. This is reviewed regularly. Within each region, UKVI has established working arrangements with local authorities in order to consider dispersal patterns and numbers. This includes consulting key corporate partners in the local area in order to assess regularly the impact of dispersal policy on a particular community.
The COMPASS contract requires providers to liaise and consult with local authorities to ensure that accommodation provided to asylum seekers does not adversely affect local authority developments or community plans. Providers must also take into account the cultural compatibility of the environment; capacity of local health, education and other support services; concentration of accommodation of service users within particular areas; and the assessment of social tension risks.
Following the expansion of the Government's vulnerable person resettlement scheme, we have established a cross-Government committee to oversee the resettlement of vulnerable refugees. The Local Government Association attended the first meeting of that committee on 11 September, and we are working closely with them and local authorities about future resettlement.
Asked by: Michael Meacher (Labour - Oldham West and Royton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to the allocation of commissioning resources for 2015-16, for what reason the allocation for (a) NHS Oldham is 49 per cent below target, (b) Greater Manchester is two per cent below target, (c) NHS Isle of Wight is 18.02 per cent above target, (d) NHS West London is 31.52 per cent above target and (e) NHS Westminster is 26.24 per cent above target; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Alistair Burt
Decisions on clinical commissioning group (CCG) allocations are taken independently by NHS England, which agreed its approach to allocations for 2015-16 at its board meeting on 17 December 2014. The details of NHS England’s proposals may be found at:
http://www.england.nhs.uk/2014/12/12/board-meet-17-dec14/.
Every CCG in England continues to benefit from stable above-inflation increases in funding for 2015-16. NHS England’s policy has been to maximise funding growth for those CCGs furthest below target, with the aim that no CCG should be more than 5% below target allocation from the beginning of 2017-18.
For comparison, NHS Oldham CCG (which is currently 0.49% below target) received an increase in funding of 2.79% for 2015-16, whilst Greater Manchester CCGs, as a whole, received a 4.14% increase in funding. NHS Isle of Wight CCG, NHS West London CCG and NHS Westminster CCG all received 1.94% increases in funding which is the minimum level of funding increase agreed by NHS England for 2015-16. The number of CCGs more than 5% below target has been halved from 34 to 17 in 2015-16.
Asked by: Michael Meacher (Labour - Oldham West and Royton)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will publish the briefing packs received by John Kerr, Rona Fairhead, Ed Balls and himself at this year's Bilderberg Conference.
Answered by Harriett Baldwin - Shadow Minister (Business and Trade)
The First Secretary of State and Chancellor of the Exchequer attended the 2015 Bilderberg conference in a private capacity.
Asked by: Michael Meacher (Labour - Oldham West and Royton)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to HM Treasury's press release, Chancellor announces £4.5 billion of measures to bring down debt, published on 4 June 2015, what efficiency savings she plans to make to education for 16 to 19 year olds; and how such savings will be applied.
Answered by Sam Gyimah
The savings announced by the Chancellor will come from a variety of measures including expected departmental underspends in demand-led budgets, efficiencies and some small budgetary reductions.
The allocations for the education of 16- to 19-year-olds in the 2015/16 academic year that were announced in March remain in place and we are not planning to change them.
Asked by: Michael Meacher (Labour - Oldham West and Royton)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what the date, amount and reason for being additional is of each item of the £100 billion of compliance revenues secured since April 2010.
Answered by David Gauke
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC)’s compliance performance is measured using internal management information systems. This data is constructed from information derived from individual compliance cases or activities within HMRC.
All items are additional tax revenues raised from compliance activities, hence the term additional.
The additional tax revenues collected from compliance activities by HM Revenue and Customs for each year since May 2010 is as follows.
(£bn) | 2010/11* | 2011/12 | 2012/13 | 2013/14 | 2014/15 |
Outturns | 13.9 | 18.6 | 20.7 | 23.9 | |
Target | 26 |
*Note: the methodology for calculating additional tax revenues from compliance activity changed between 2010/11 and 2011/12, and so the figure of £13.9bn is not directly comparable to later years.
Asked by: Michael Meacher (Labour - Oldham West and Royton)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, how many (a) council houses and (b) affordable housing units have been built in each year since 1985.
Answered by Brandon Lewis
Statistics on additional affordable housing built or acquired in England since 1991-92, including those delivered by local authorities, are published in the Department’s live tables 1000 and 1009, which are available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-affordable-housing-supply
Statistics are not available prior to 1991-92. Affordable housing statistics include housing delivered by local authorities (councils) and Private Registered Providers (housing associations).
Asked by: Michael Meacher (Labour - Oldham West and Royton)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will give a guarantee that in her tenure as Secretary of State for Education there will be no for-profit schools.
Answered by Edward Timpson
All academies must be set up as charitable trusts, which ensures that any income must be spent on their charitable aims. The government has no plans to change these arrangements.
Asked by: Michael Meacher (Labour - Oldham West and Royton)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 26 January 2015 to Question 221196, what the criteria were for selecting the 49 cases relating to the death of a claimant for peer review; what the date and location of death was of the claimant in each case; in how many of the cases the claimant had been sanctioned; what conclusions each review reached on whether his Department could have acted more appropriately or correctly or sympathetically in its dealings with the claimant; and if he will publish the detailed results of each review.
Answered by Esther McVey
Peer Reviews can be requested for any complex case where it is beneficial for it to be analysed with objective scrutiny to ensure all issues have been fully addressed. Peer reviews aim to identify process improvements and contain sensitive information and disclosing the content of these reviews, even in anonymised and summarised form, may still allow individuals to be identified.
Asked by: Michael Meacher (Labour - Oldham West and Royton)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 9 February 2015 to Question 222884, for what reason information that is currently available to his Department on jobseeker's allowance hardship payments between March 2012 and March 2015 will not be published until May 2015.
Answered by Esther McVey
Figures on the number of hardship payments are currently being compiled and will require quality assurance ahead of publication.
Asked by: Michael Meacher (Labour - Oldham West and Royton)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will publish the information his Department holds on how many people received jobseeker's allowance (JSA) hardship payments in each year from March 2012 to date; and how many JSA claimants (a) were sanctioned and (b) received hardship payments in each parliamentary constituency or the nearest proxy for constituencies in each such year.
Answered by Esther McVey
(a) The information requested for the number of JSA sanctions by Parliamentary constituency is published and available at:
https://stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/
Guidance on how to extract the information required can be found at:
https://sw.stat-xplore.dwp.gov.uk/webapi/online-help/Stat-Xplore_User_Guide.htm
(b) The latest published information on hardship awards covers the 12 month period from April 2011 to March 2012 can be found at