Asked by: Philip Davies (Conservative - Shipley)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many civil servants in his Department have a criminal conviction.
Answered by Mike Freer
As of September 2023, there were 101,276[1] (FTE) staff in post across the Ministry of Justice (MoJ).
To provide the quantitative base to answer this PQ, this could only be obtained at a disproportionate cost. This would require manually entering each individual record to extract the data and engaging with all workplaces across England and Wales to ascertain locally managed/ recorded information.
All Ministry of Justice staff are held to high levels of professional and personal conduct and are subject to pre-employment vetting checks to ensure suitability for employment into post. Across the MoJ, all directly employed roles require a minimum of Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) level to enter the organisation and this includes a request of criminal conviction history. For any roles requiring a higher security level, roles may require an enhanced DBS check or be subject to National Security Vetting (NSV) checks which are carried out externally by UK Security Vetting (UKSV).
Across the MoJ, we must act in accordance with the high expectations that the Government and members of the public expect from us to ensure we drive our vision to deliver a world-class justice system that works for everyone. People are at the heart of what we do, and security and safety considerations are paramount in ensuring we welcome the right people to come to work for us to deliver our objectives. This might mean that some people may not ever be considered suitable to hold employment with us because of their background. Criminal conviction history of the applicant, including offence type and length of time since conviction will be assessed during vetting decision making to assess suitability for the role applied.
[1] Workforce management information: MOJ - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Asked by: Philip Davies (Conservative - Shipley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 26 February 2024 to Question 13942 on UK Health Security Agency: Finance, if she will break down the (a) sources and (b) amounts of the Other customers section.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
The UK Health Security Agency is unable to provide the information requested because it is commercially sensitive.
Asked by: Philip Davies (Conservative - Shipley)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment she has made of the educational attainment of white working class boys.
Answered by Damian Hinds
‘Working class’ is not a characteristic used by the department in monitoring pupil attainment. Disaggregated data at a national level for Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 4 is available for pupil characteristics by gender, disadvantage, free school meal eligibility, ethnicity, special educational need status and month of birth.
The latest Key Stage 2 data is available at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/key-stage-2-attainment.
The latest Key Stage 4 data is available at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/key-stage-4-performance.
The government has long-standing programmes designed to close the educational attainment gap and improve the education of all children and young people, whatever their background or circumstance.
Asked by: Philip Davies (Conservative - Shipley)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, with reference to his Department's consultation entitled Modern leasehold: restricting ground rent for existing leases, which closed on 17 January 2024, if he will make an assessment of the potential cost to the public purse of providing compensation to freeholders under those proposals.
Answered by Lee Rowley
Government has consulted on a range of options to restrict ground rent in existing leases and asked questions about the effects of these proposals. We received a significant number of responses from a variety of sources. A consultation impact assessment has been published and can be found at: Consultation impact assessment - modern leasehold: restricting ground rent for existing leases.
That consultation closed on 17 January, and Government is currently analysing the responses before taking a decision on how to restrict ground rents through the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill.
In line with the practice of successive administrations details of internal discussions are not normally disclosed.
Asked by: Philip Davies (Conservative - Shipley)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps he is taking to assess the risk of legal challenge to proposed policies in the consultation entitled Modern leasehold: restricting ground rent for existing leases.
Answered by Lee Rowley
Government has consulted on a range of options to restrict ground rent in existing leases and asked questions about the effects of these proposals. We received a significant number of responses from a variety of sources. A consultation impact assessment has been published and can be found at: Consultation impact assessment - modern leasehold: restricting ground rent for existing leases.
That consultation closed on 17 January, and Government is currently analysing the responses before taking a decision on how to restrict ground rents through the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill.
In line with the practice of successive administrations details of internal discussions are not normally disclosed.
Asked by: Philip Davies (Conservative - Shipley)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, with reference to para 1.12 of his Department's consultation entitled Modern leasehold: restricting ground rent for existing leases, which closed on 17 January 2024, whether he has made an assessment of the potential impact of capping ground rents at a peppercorn on the pensions industry.
Answered by Lee Rowley
Government has consulted on a range of options to restrict ground rent in existing leases and asked questions about the effects of these proposals. We received a significant number of responses from a variety of sources. A consultation impact assessment has been published and can be found at: Consultation impact assessment - modern leasehold: restricting ground rent for existing leases.
That consultation closed on 17 January, and Government is currently analysing the responses before taking a decision on how to restrict ground rents through the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill.
In line with the practice of successive administrations details of internal discussions are not normally disclosed.
Asked by: Philip Davies (Conservative - Shipley)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, with reference to his Department's consultation entitled Modern leasehold: restricting ground rent for existing leases, which closed on 17 January 2024, whether he has has had discussions with colleagues on the compliance of those proposals with human rights law.
Answered by Lee Rowley
Government has consulted on a range of options to restrict ground rent in existing leases and asked questions about the effects of these proposals. We received a significant number of responses from a variety of sources. A consultation impact assessment has been published and can be found at: Consultation impact assessment - modern leasehold: restricting ground rent for existing leases.
That consultation closed on 17 January, and Government is currently analysing the responses before taking a decision on how to restrict ground rents through the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill.
In line with the practice of successive administrations details of internal discussions are not normally disclosed.
Asked by: Philip Davies (Conservative - Shipley)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, whether he has made an assessment of the potential impact of the proposals in the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill on pensioners whose income comes partly from ground rent.
Answered by Lee Rowley
Government has consulted on a range of options to restrict ground rent in existing leases and asked questions about the effects of these proposals. We received a significant number of responses from a variety of sources. A consultation impact assessment has been published and can be found at: Consultation impact assessment - modern leasehold: restricting ground rent for existing leases.
That consultation closed on 17 January, and Government is currently analysing the responses before taking a decision on how to restrict ground rents through the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill.
In line with the practice of successive administrations details of internal discussions are not normally disclosed.
Asked by: Philip Davies (Conservative - Shipley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 22 January 2024 to Question 9342 on UK Health Security Agency: Finance, if she will publish a breakdown of the source of the vaccines income.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
The vaccine income within the annual report and accounts for the UK Health Security Agency breaks down between devolved administrations, alongside a small amount of income from third parties.
Asked by: Philip Davies (Conservative - Shipley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when the Minister for Mental Health and Women’s Health Strategy plans to reply to the letter of the hon. Member for Shipley dated 3 November 2023.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
I replied to the hon. Member on 31 January 2024.