Asked by: Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat - Carshalton and Wallington)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and Minister for the Cabinet Office, with reference to Operation Yellowhammer, what his Department's base case planning assumptions were before that document was published.
Answered by Kevin Foster
Yellowhammer has always considered the reasonable worst case scenario and never a ‘base’ or ‘central’ scenario. This was confirmed in the NAO report, published in March 2019, which said that in Operation Yellowhammer “Departments are working on the basis of a reasonable worst case scenario.” Some iterations of the Reasonable worst case scenario planning assumptions have used the words ‘base scenario’ as a subtitle for the contextual assumptions, outlining the background to a no-deal brexit.
Yellowhammer reasonable worst case planning assumptions are kept under review and updated planning assumptions for exiting the European Union without a deal will be published in due course.
Asked by: Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat - Carshalton and Wallington)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what preparations his Department is making for the UK leaving the EU without an agreement; and how much funding has been allocated to those preparations.
Answered by David Lidington
As a responsible Government, we have been preparing to minimise any disruption in the event of no deal for nearly three years. The Government is putting in place a range of mitigations for such a scenario. The Cabinet Office is playing its part by, amongst other things, putting in place arrangements to deploy expertise to departments.
The Cabinet Office has allocated £58.8m in 2019/20 for EU Exit activity. The costs for each scenario cannot be readily separated, given the significant overlap in plans in many cases.
Asked by: Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat - Carshalton and Wallington)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment he has made of whether the Government's management of the 2019 European elections breached EU law.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Government took all the legal steps necessary to prepare for the European Parliamentary
elections and put in place all the legislative and funding elements to enable Returning Officers to
make their preparations required for the polls on 23 May. The Government worked with Returning
Officers and the Electoral Commission and other agencies such as the Society of Local Authority
Chief Executives (SOLACE) and the Association of Electoral Administrators (AEA) to support the
smooth running of the polls.
Asked by: Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat - Carshalton and Wallington)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many and what proportion of officials in his Department took sick leave for reasons relating to stress in the last 12 months; what proportion that leave was of total sick leave taken in his Department; and what the cost was to his Department of officials taking sick leave over that period.
Answered by Oliver Dowden - Shadow Deputy Prime Minister
The number of employees in Cabinet Office from 1 April 2018 to 31 March 2019 who were
absent for stress related reasons was 48. This represented 0.64% of the total workforce
The proportion of sickness absence related to stress related reasons was 11.35% of the
overall sickness absence for the department for the same time period
The estimated cost to the department from 1 April 2018 to 31 March 2019 for employees
taking stress related reasons, is estimated at £199,634
Cabinet Office sickness absence data is published regularly, and is available up to
December 2018 here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cabinet-office-absence-
data
The Cabinet Office wellbeing action plan enables support for all staff’s health and
wellbeing. Key initiatives include: running leadership wellbeing training for all Senior Civil
Servants, updating line manager training to ensure wellbeing is included in all
conversations, embedding wellbeing into the Senior Civil Service leadership objective and
including wellbeing in performance management monthly conversation tools
There are a number of support services available in Cabinet Office that provide support or
advice to all employees. These include the Cabinet Office alumni network, the Cabinet
Office listening service and the employee assistance programme.
Asked by: Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat - Carshalton and Wallington)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many and what proportion of officials in the Prime Minister's office took sick leave for reasons relating to stress in the last 12 months; what proportion that leave was of total sick leave taken in her Department; and what the cost was to her Department of officials taking sick leave over that period.
Answered by Oliver Dowden - Shadow Deputy Prime Minister
The number of employees in Cabinet Office from 1 April 2018 to 31 March 2019 who were
absent for stress related reasons was 48. This represented 0.64% of the total workforce
The proportion of sickness absence related to stress related reasons was 11.35% of the
overall sickness absence for the department for the same time period
The estimated cost to the department from 1 April 2018 to 31 March 2019 for employees
taking stress related reasons, is estimated at £199,634
Cabinet Office sickness absence data is published regularly, and is available up to
December 2018 here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cabinet-office-absence-
data
The Cabinet Office wellbeing action plan enables support for all staff’s health and
wellbeing. Key initiatives include: running leadership wellbeing training for all Senior Civil
Servants, updating line manager training to ensure wellbeing is included in all
conversations, embedding wellbeing into the Senior Civil Service leadership objective and
including wellbeing in performance management monthly conversation tools
There are a number of support services available in Cabinet Office that provide support or
advice to all employees. These include the Cabinet Office alumni network, the Cabinet
Office listening service and the employee assistance programme.
Asked by: Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat - Carshalton and Wallington)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many staff in his Department who were transferred or seconded to work (a) in other departments or (b) on other departmental briefs on preparations for the UK to leave the EU, have since returned to his Department.
Answered by David Lidington
Twelve civil servants from my Department have been seconded or transferred to work (a) in other departments or (b) on other departmental briefs on preparations for the UK to leave the EU. So far, 3 have returned.
EU Exit is an all-of-government operation. The Department for Exiting the European Union is responsible for overseeing negotiations to leave the EU and establishing the future relationship between the UK and EU. The Department for International Trade works to secure UK and global prosperity by promoting and financing international trade and investment, and championing free trade.
Departments continually review workforce plans, reprioritise and assess changing needs, which includes identification and cessation of non-priority work where appropriate. We have accelerated our plans, and at the same time, the Civil Service as a whole is working to ensure that EU Exit Implementation is carried out to high quality without impacting public service delivery across the whole of government.
Asked by: Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat - Carshalton and Wallington)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, pursuant to the Answer of 25 April to Written Question 246007, if he will make an assessment of the shortest possible timeframe for legislating for a confirmatory referendum on the EU Withdrawal Agreement, in accordance with the process described in that Answer.
Answered by David Lidington
Primary Legislation would be necessary. The length of time a Bill would take to get through Parliament would be a matter for Parliament. The government has no plans to hold another referendum on EU membership.
Asked by: Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat - Carshalton and Wallington)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of enabling EU citizens to present European Parliament Voter registration forms at polling stations on 23 May 2019 to ensure that they are not disfranchised following the time taken to announce the holding of European elections.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The latest date in which an EU citizen can submit a European Parliament Voter Registration Form to register as an elector in the European Parliament elections is 12 working days before the date of the election. The 12 working day deadline is based on two provisions relating to the application process and the publication of, and alterations to, the register before the election. The provisions are contained in section 13B of the Representation of the People Act 1983 and regulation 29 of the Representation of the People (England and Wales) Regulations 2001; and the equivalent provisions in the Representation of the People (Scotland) Regulations 2001 and Representation of the People (Northern Ireland) Regulations 2008 as applied by Schedule 001 of the European Parliamentary Elections (Franchise of Relevant Citizens of the Union) Regulations 2001.
Council Directive 93/109/EC requires all Member States to send the details of any EU citizens’ declarations to their Home State to ensure an EU citizen does not vote twice, both here and in another EU country. The Council Directive specifies that this has to be done “sufficiently in advance of polling day”
Asked by: Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat - Carshalton and Wallington)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many and what proportion of EU nationals living in the UK registered to vote in European Parliament elections in (a) 2014 and (b) 2019.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Cabinet Office does not hold information on the numbers of eligible electors nor information on the number of European nationals resident in the UK who register to vote in European Parliamentary elections.
Estimates of the number of eligible people on the registers for electoral events are published by the Electoral Commission following each poll, but do not include a breakdown of the numbers of EU citizens eligible to vote. The report on the 2014 European Parliamentary elections was produced by the Electoral Commission in July 2014 and is available online at: www.electoralcommission.org.uk.
Each Electoral Registration Officer maintains a register for their own local area. Some headline registration statistics by area are collated and published annually by the Office for National Statistics, however, this does not include a breakdown of the numbers of EU citizens registered to vote.
The latest bulletin is available at: www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/elections/electoralregistration.
Asked by: Tom Brake (Liberal Democrat - Carshalton and Wallington)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what recent estimate he has made of the cost to his Department of preparations for the UK leaving the EU without a deal.
Answered by David Lidington
HM Treasury has allocated over £4.2 billion of additional funding to departments and the Devolved Administrations for EU exit preparations so far.
This funding is to cover all exit scenarios, and is in addition to departmental efforts to reprioritise from business as usual toward preparations for the UK’s departure from the EU.
Work on no-deal exit preparations cannot be readily separated from other EU exit work. The Department is preparing for all eventualities and the resources available to support preparations are kept under constant review.
This expenditure breaks down as: