Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how much funding he plans to allocate to the ESOL programme in (a) 2020 and (b) each of the next five years.
Answered by Simon Clarke
a The £5.1 million ESOL for Integration Fund is supporting 30 local authorities in 2020 / 21 to deliver English language sessions for residents with little or no English helping them to integrate more widely with the people, places and amenities in their local area.
Through the Integration Area Programme we continue to fund Integration Areas to deliver English language classes in innovative ways to address local integration challenges – this is supporting communities to better integrate, participate fully in society and access the opportunities that life in modern Britain provides.
Additionally, MHCLG funded resources to support organisations and individuals seeking to provide volunteer led English language clubs were recently published via the Learning and Work Institute website.
b Subject to the Department’s future funding settlement we will explore how MHCLG funds ESOL provision beyond 20/21 at that point.
Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how much funding his Department has allocated from the public purse towards improving support for victims of racially and religiously motivated hatred in the most recent period for which such information is available.
Answered by Luke Hall - Minister of State (Education)
My Department has so far allocated £890,000 for hate crime reporting and support of victims for the financial year 2020/21. We are also considering applications to our £2,000,000 Faith, Race and Hate Crime Grant Scheme which closed to applications in May and is to support projects seeking to tackle religiously and racially motivated hate crime as well as social integration.
Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether his Department plans to allocate similar levels of funding as previously allocated through the Integrated Communities Innovation Fund to new projects related to community integration.
Answered by Luke Hall - Minister of State (Education)
This Government remains committed to ensuring equality of opportunity for all and continues to provide funding to help build strong, integrated communities.
We have launched the new ESOL for Integration Fund that will take a localised approach to boosting the English language skills of those residents with little or no English language, who may also be isolated or disconnected from services and the wider area. Up to £6.5 million has been made available in 2020/21 to support successful local authority proposals.
We have also launched the Faith, Race and Hate Crime grant scheme, which will support organisations that are working to bring different faith and ethnic groups together and tackle racially and religiously motivated hate crime to create integrated communities. Up to £2 million has been made available to support this work.
Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, when he plans to publish the results of his findings into the projects funded by the Integrated Communities Innovation Fund.
Answered by Luke Hall - Minister of State (Education)
Our 16 trailblazing projects funded through the Integrated Communities Innovation Fund have engaged 70,000 people in a range of settings to stimulate and test innovative approaches to integration.
A national evaluator is currently compiling evidence on the effectiveness of each intervention. Although the coronavirus outbreak has meant that some of our funded projects have had to temporarily pause activity, our findings will be shared in due course and used to inform future policy.
Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what criteria he plans to use to assess applications to his Department for grants for projects aimed at tackling hate crime.
Answered by Luke Hall - Minister of State (Education)
Applications for projects tackling religiously and racially motivated hate crime are currently being considered under the Faith, Race and Hate Crime Grant Scheme. Proposals are expected to demonstrate how successful projects will work towards one or both of the following aims: i. To promote shared values among people of all backgrounds through sustainable social integration and meaningful civic participation and/or ii. To effectively tackle and prevent religiously and racially discriminatory behaviour and those acting against others because of their faith or race. Further detail on the application and assessment criteria has been set out in guidance for applicants which was published in April 2020.
Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to the recommendations made in the Integrated Communities Strategy green paper published by his Department on 14 March 2018 on social mixing for children from different backgrounds, what steps he is taking to improve social mixing between pupils of different ethnicities in schools in line with those recommendations.
Answered by Luke Hall - Minister of State (Education)
We set out an ambitious programme of actions in our Integrated Communities Action Plan to support the education sector to drive forward integration, as part of a cross-government commitment to building strong integrated communities
We recognise the important role that young people play in this agenda and the significance of forging meaningful connections and relationships with people from different backgrounds.
As part of this, we committed to working with the National Citizen Service Trust and DCMS to support social mixing opportunities for young people in areas of high segregation. We are also continuing to work with DfE to support the National Schools Linking Programme.
Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what plans he has to maintain the programmes linked to the Hate Crime Action Plan beyond 2020.
Answered by Luke Hall - Minister of State (Education)
The Government is committed to preventing and tackling hate crime and with the participation of our civil society partners we are considering a range of options to tackle hate crime beyond the current action plan. In the interim we have ensured that key hate crime projects remain funded and we have launched a competitive grant scheme for 2020-21 to support projects related to our hate crime objectives with funds worth up to £2 million.
Asked by: Naz Shah (Labour - Bradford West)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether he has plans to extend the Integrated Communities Innovation Fund beyond 2020.
Answered by Luke Hall - Minister of State (Education)
We know that the causes of poor integration are complex and we have to admit that it will take generational change to truly deliver the well-integrated communities that we want to see. But first we need to know what works.
The Integrated Communities Innovation Fund (2019/20) supported 16 projects to test innovative approaches to integration and generate important learning on how to bridge divides and bring communities together.
The purpose of the Innovation Fund was to trial new approaches and address this evidence gap. In order to understand which interventions have been effective, we now need to review the findings. A national evaluator will compile this evidence, which will be shared widely and used to inform future policy.