Stephen Phillips

All export licence applications are rigorously assessed on a case-by-case basis against the Consolidated EU and National Arms Export Licensing Criteria, including the risk of diversion to undesirable end-users or undesirable end-use. A licence will not be granted unless the tests in the criteria are met. The risk of diversion is an important factor in deciding whether or not to grant an export licence and the assessment takes full account of the conditions prevailing in the destination and region.

We have proposed that onshore wind projects wishing to access the grace period allowing them entry to the Renewables Obligation beyond our propose closure date of 1 April 2016 will, by 18 June 2015, have to have planning consent, a grid connection offer and acceptance, and evidence of land rights for the site on which their project will be built. The precise grace period eligibility requirements will be determined through the legislative process and are subject to approval by Parliament. It will be for the developer of each individual project to determine whether they meet those eligibility requirements.

We have proposed that onshore wind projects wishing to access the grace period allowing them entry to the Renewables Obligation beyond our propose closure date of 1 April 2016 will, by 18 June 2015, have to have planning consent, a grid connection offer and acceptance, and evidence of land rights for the site on which their project will be built. The precise grace period eligibility requirements will be determined through the legislative process and are subject to approval by Parliament. It will be for the developer of each individual project to determine whether they meet those eligibility requirements.

We have proposed that onshore wind projects wishing to access the grace period allowing them entry to the Renewables Obligation beyond our propose closure date of 1 April 2016 will, by 18 June 2015, have to have planning consent, a grid connection offer and acceptance, and evidence of land rights for the site on which their project will be built. The precise grace period eligibility requirements will be determined through the legislative process and are subject to approval by Parliament. It will be for the developer of each individual project to determine whether they meet those eligibility requirements.

We have proposed that onshore wind projects wishing to access the grace period allowing them entry to the Renewables Obligation beyond our propose closure date of 1 April 2016 will, by 18 June 2015, have to have planning consent, a grid connection offer and acceptance, and evidence of land rights for the site on which their project will be built. The precise grace period eligibility requirements will be determined through the legislative process and are subject to approval by Parliament. It will be for the developer of each individual project to determine whether they meet those eligibility requirements.

The proportion of the budget that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) spent on (a) premises, (b) administration, (c) staff, (d) external suppliers other than external Counsel, (e) external Counsel and (f) other costs in each of the years 2010 to 2015 is given below.

Note: The figures for the years 2010/11, 2011/12 and 2012/13 do not sum to 100% because in each of these years the CPS reported a small underspend against its budget.

The number of full-time equivalent staff who are qualified (a) barristers and (b) solicitors who were employed by the Crown Prosecution Service in each year from 2010 to 2015 is shown in the table below

Notes: Data extracted from the CPS HR Database iTrent as at the 31^st March in each year Data may be subject to change due to retrospective changes in the HR database Data may differ from previously published data due to differing specifications

The number of full-time equivalent people employed on the Crown Prosecution Service’s staff in each of the years from 2010 to 2015 is shown below.

The Crown Prosecution Service publishes its casework statistics on a financial year basis. The number of criminal prosecutions finalised between April 2010 and March 2015 are as follows:

No notifications have been received.

The Department for Business Innovation & Skills was notified of 16 breaches by employees of companies processing data on behalf of the Department in 2014 and 4 breaches in 2015. The last breach reported by an employee of a company processing our data was in April 2015.

My department is encouraging sustainable tourism in England through its Arms length body, VisitEngland. VisitEngland champions the independent Green Tourism Business Scheme and provides a range of toolkits and guidance notes to support tourism businesses, including their Good Practice Sustainability Guides, which provide businesses with easy and practical tips on how to reduce waste, save energy and engage customers.

VisitEngland works closely with a network of National Tourism Organisations through the National Tourism Board Forum. Members include Ireland, Germany, Switzerland, France, Malta, Denmark, Austria, Montenegro and Belgium. Activities of the forum include: regular meetings, sharing insights and best practice and marketing development.

The Department was notified by a third party of a breach of document retention or security policy relating to confidential or secure materials on two occasions during 2014.

No other notifications were received during the period.

We've been in correspondence on this issue and theHon. Memberis aware that the management of financial services to schools is the devolved responsibility of the local authority.

The local authority has confirmed they are aware of the problem. They have put in place an emergency project board, and are processing payments manually where necessary. Schools concerned about urgent payments should contact the local authority who will intervene and make an emergency payment.

The Department for Education funds local authorities through the Dedicated Schools Grant for delivering the early years entitlement. In consultation with their Schools Forum, local authorities are then responsible for deciding how best to distribute this funding across their locality and they set their own local rates of funding for early years providers. The DSG allocations for three- and four-year-olds for each local authority are available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dedicated-schools-grant-dsg-2015-to-2016

The allocations table includes the Early Years Block Unit of Funding that local authorities receive from the DfE for each child. Local authorities are then responsible for funding early years providers to secure the Government-funded hours.

The Department collects funding information from all local authorities through section 251 financial returns, including information on funding for early years. To aid transparency, the early years data is published in the form of a benchmarking tool, on the rates that each local authority pays to its providers. The funding benchmarking tool is published here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/early-years-benchmarking-tool

The Department for Education does not collect information on the closure of departments within schools.

Design and technology is compulsory in the national curriculum at key stages 1 to 3. The new national curriculum, which came into force from September 2014, is more challenging, with a focus on the process of design and strengthened technical knowledge. GCSEs and A levels in design and technology are being developed, for first teaching from 2017, to be more rigorous and build on the new curriculum. Academies are not required to deliver the national curriculum, however, they must offer a broad and balanced curriculum and publish their curriculum provision and content online.

The UK has played a leading role in galvanising international action to combat the illegal wildlife trade, including the illegal trade in ivory. We hosted the London Conference on the Illegal Wildlife Trade in February 2014 and actively supported the Government of Botswana in its hosting of a follow-up Conference in Kasane in March 2015. The UK has also supported the Elephant Protection Initiative, of which nine African elephant range states are now members and which is designed to help them to secure and maintain healthy elephant populations.

The UK is committed to maintaining the current global ban on any new international trade in ivory, established under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). In addition, the UK does not permit trade in raw ivory tusks of any age and we are pressing for this approach to be taken across the whole of the European Union.

We have committed £13 million to support projects around the world to tackle the illegal wildlife trade. These projects seek to reduce demand, strengthen law enforcement and develop sustainable livelihoods for communities affected by illegal wildlife trade, principally through Defra’s Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund. A second round of the Challenge Fund was launched on 5 August.

The UK has taken a lead in establishing a compliance mechanism, and is attending the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture’s sixth Governing Body in October 2015 which will consider further work to support implementation of, and compliance with, the Plant Treaty. This includes the development of online reporting tools. The UK is prepared to nominate an expert for the Plant Treaty’s Compliance Committee for the 2016-19 term.

The UK’s Darwin initiative is aimed at funding projects to help developing countries implement biodiversity conventions. Supporting the implementation of the Plant Treaty by developing countries is identified as a priority area for Darwin funding and we are now funding such projects, including one on the “Mutually supportive implementation of the Nagoya Protocol and Plant Treaty”.

The Non-Native Species Framework Strategy for Great Britain sets out our mechanism for addressing non-native species, including plants. The strategy includes a comprehensive risk assessment mechanism to assess the potential negative impacts of non-native species, including threats to the environment. To date 126 risk assessments have been completed or are in progress. Of these, 58 are plant species.

As set out in DFID’s settlement letter from HM Treasury, over the Spending Review period, DFID plans to transfer the amounts referred to in table 2.7 of the Spending Review and Autumn Statement 2015 to the following government departments and cross-government funds:

Conflict, Stability & Security Fund

Department for Business, Innovation & Skills

Department for Culture, Media & Sport

Department of Energy & Climate Change

Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs

Department of Health

Foreign & Commonwealth Office

Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs

Home Office

Office for National Statistics

Prosperity Fund

DFID is not aware of any notifications from external consultants, or other third parties, of breaches to its Information Security Management Controls in the past two years.

The economic empowerment of women is a top priority for my Department. In September 2015 at the UN General Assembly and Post-2015 Summit, the UK and UNWomen hosted the event Transforming Economies: Empowering Women and Girls. The Call to Action launched at this event secured over 150 commitments to action from governments, development institutions, civil society and the private sector. These will all help deliver the Global Goal targets for women’s economic empowerment.

We support a wide range of programmes to increase women’s opportunities for employment, ownership and control over economic assets and ability to start and run businesses. Since 2011, DFID have helped 2.5m women to improve their land and property rights and 35m women to access financial services.

The Ministry of Defence did not spend any Official Development Assistance during the years 2006-2010. Figures for 2011-2014 are shown in the table below.

*2014 data is provisional. Final figures for 2014 will be published on the DFID website on Thursday 3^rd December 2015.

In countries affected by the Ebola virus, DFID is committed to building resilient health systems and to ensuring we learn the lessons from the crisis.

The World Health Organisation declared Sierra Leone ‘Ebola free’ on 7 November 2015. The UK’s objective is to maintain the vigilance necessary to prevent any future outbreaks from growing into epidemics. The UK has announced a two-year £240 million package of support to Sierra Leone’s long term recovery, which includes boosting capability to respond to future Ebola outbreaks, and improving basic services including, vitally, healthcare. DFID will also support Liberia’s Health Pooled fund with £6 million to help ensure that health system is resilient to future shocks.

Beyond Sierra Leone and Liberia, DFID is providing £17 million through its Regional Preparedness Programme, which aims to prevent the transmission and spread of the Ebola in at-risk countries in West Africa; and to strengthen national capacities to accelerate preparedness measures and improve readiness to detect and act to contain disease outbreaks.

In doing this, as well as through wider health programmes across West Africa, we are helping countries to have better health systems for normal times – as well as in case of emergency.

Of the eight breaches reported pursuant to the answer of 28 January 2016 to Question 23487 none of them concerned documents prior to April 2014

Since April 2014;

• 6 cases concerned OFFICIAL or OFFICIAL-SENSITIVE documents
• 2 cases did not involve documents

2 cases were reported by Shared Services Arvato

2 cases were reported by GBGroup plc

2 cases were reported by Pearson

1 case was reported by Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA)

1 case was reported by Civil Service Resourcing who reported non-receipt of documents from the sender.

The Department does not hold a comprehensive central record of the information requested. From records in the central Department and each of its executive agencies, the following number of breaches were notified by external consultants or other third parties:

• 2014 – 3
• 2015 – 5

The Department for Transport is not aware of any occasion since 2010 on which the government of the People's Republic of China has sought to limit or exclude civilian aircraft registered in the UK from flying over any area of the South China Sea.

The Department’s Security and Business Continuity team does not collect this information centrally and therefore does not hold this information.

The Department includes terms and conditions in its contracts that require suppliers to inform us of any such breaches that may have taken place. Any occurrences would have to be reported directly to all local contract owners and to identify these would require trawling across all the Department’s branches that would incur a disproportionate cost.

We are investing the additional £8 billion the National Health Service has said it needs to implement its own future plan, on top of the extra £2 billion we have given the service. However, additional spending is not the only answer to these financial challenges. The NHS must now put in place cost-control measures we have introduced, like clamping down on rip-off staffing agencies, while we continue to work with hospitals on ways to improve productivity and reduce waste.

NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) - the United Kingdom organ donation organisation responsible for matching and allocating donated organs - actively participates and is involved in European Union initiatives to increase organ donation. This includes two current major European organ donation projects: the ACCORD (Achieving Comprehensive Coordination in Organ Donation) and FOEDUS (Facilitating the Exchange of Organs Donated in EU Member States) projects. NHSBT was also a collaborating partner for the completed ODEQUS (European Organ Donation Quality System) project.

The UK drew heavily on evidence of world-wide success, such as Spain, for the development and implementation of the Organ Donation Taskforce recommendations published in 2008, which saw donor rates rise by 50% in five years. A number of international experts from the Unites States of America, Germany and The Netherlands also contributed to the development of the UK's new strategy published in 2013 Taking Organ Transplantation to 2020. A number of measures will be used to track improvements in performance in organ donation and transplantation to compare with international benchmarks, in order to try and match the best performing programmes in the world.

The third party suppliers responsible were BAE Systems, Daisy, Computacenter, Vodafone and Capgemini.

The figures quoted in my answer of 28 January to written question 23481 referred only to the period since April 2014. The information on breaches prior to April 2014 are not held centrally and could be collated only at disproportionate cost. The number of breaches from April 2014 onwards are as follows:

Classification:
Top Secret

Number:
1

Comment:
There was no loss of data related to this breach.

Classification:
Secret

Number:
0

Classification:
Confidential

Number:
12

Comment:
The Confidential classification pre-dates the introduction of the Government Security Classifications (GSCs).

Classification:
Official-Sensitive

Number:
43

Comment:
Official - Sensitive is not a classification under GSC and is a caveat. Materials designated Official or Official-Sensitive does have a level of protection; however loss of its control does not warrant a breach as per existing Cabinet Office guidelines.

Classification:
Official

Number:
1

Our records show 57 breaches by commercial third party suppliers in handling secure materials for the years in question. This is broken down by year as follows:

2014/15 - 47

2015/16 - 10

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has rigorous formal procedures for reporting, investigating and monitoring any incidents involving the loss or compromise of sensitive data for which it is responsible. Our policies and procedures are designed to ensure that we are compliant with the Data Protection Act 1998 and HMG’s Security Policy Framework. Responsibility for this compliance is shared with Suppliers through appropriate contract terms and conditions.

The UK has consistently called on all parties to clarify the legal basis for their claims in the South China Sea. We continue to urge all parties to pursue their claims peacefully in accordance with international law, in particular the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr Hammond), raised the situation in the South China Sea with China during his recent visit to Beijing on 5 January.

The UK is not party to the case of Philippines v China before the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and is therefore not entitled to be formally represented before the PCA in this case.