Asked by: Trudy Harrison (Conservative - Copeland)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department is taking to improve rural broadband.
Answered by Margot James
The Government’s policy is to ensure world-class broadband and mobile connectivity across the UK. We are currently implementing a number of policies to achieve this in rural areas.
£1.8 billion of public money is being invested to support vital improvements in superfast broadband coverage across the UK, including in rural areas. In December 2017, we met our target to extend superfast coverage to 95% of UK premises, and we expect to reach at least 97% by 2020.
DCMS has also put in place legislation to create a new Universal Service Obligation (USO) giving every household and business the right to request a broadband connection of at least 10 Megabits per second (Mbps) by 2020, to ensure access to decent connectivity. Ofcom are now responsible for implementing the USO. Further details, including how to apply are expected to be announced in the summer. In addition, the Better Broadband Scheme provides voucher funding to UK premises that do not have access to affordable broadband service delivering at least 2Mbps.
DEFRA has allocated £75 million of grant funding from the Rural Development Programme for England, targeted at helping to connect businesses with superfast broadband in hard to reach rural areas.
Looking forward, we want to provide world class digital connectivity that is gigabit-capable, reliable, long-lasting and widely available across the UK. We have set ambitious targets - for 15 million premises to be connected to full fibre by 2025, with nationwide coverage by 2033. In the Future Telecoms Infrastructure Review, we set out our long term national strategy to meet these targets, and to ensure that rural and remote areas are not left behind. Critical to delivering this ambition, is the “outside-in” approach set out in the review, which seeks to ensure that the harder to reach, mostly rural areas which are not viable for commercial investment - are addressed at the same pace as the rest of the country.
Asked by: Trudy Harrison (Conservative - Copeland)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department is taking to support tourism action zones.
Answered by Michael Ellis
We are working closely with the tourism industry on the proposed Sector Deal for tourism. One of the proposals put forward by the industry is the creation of Tourism Action Zones in order to take a targeted and focused approach to tackle issues, such as improving productivity and extending the tourism season. We are looking at this proposal and considering it as part of our work.
Asked by: Trudy Harrison (Conservative - Copeland)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to support maternity services.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
Our programme of transformation in maternity services will make the National Health Service one of the best places in the world to give birth by supporting maternity services to deliver safer more personalised care for mothers and babies.
The NHS Long Term Plan built on the progress to implement the findings of the national maternity review set out in ‘Better Births’ in 2016, and commits us to continue to work with midwives, mothers and their families to implement the ‘continuity of carer’ recommendation. This will mean that, by March 2021, most women will receive continuity of the person caring for them during pregnancy, during birth and postnatally. Within this, 75% of women from black and minority ethnic groups and disadvantaged communities will have continuity of carer by the end of 2023-24, as the evidence suggests that it particularly improves outcomes for this group.
We also aim to improve safety by rolling out the Saving Babies’ Lives Care Bundle to every maternity unit in England in 2019. The Bundle supports services in reducing still births, with a new focus on preventing pre-term birth. Every trust in England with a maternity and neonatal service is now part of the National Maternal and Neonatal Health Safety Collaborative, which is supporting practical improvements to make care safer in all maternity units. Through this, we are supporting a culture of multidisciplinary team working and learning, vital for safe, high-quality maternity care. By 2022-23 pre-term birth clinics, Fetal Medicine Services and Maternal Medicine Networks will be rolled out nationally to provide access to more specialist expertise to women, babies and the clinicians caring for them.
To underpin the improvements to care, the NHS Long Term Plan committed to the digitisation of maternity information so that by 2023-24 all women will be able to access their maternity notes and information through their smart phones or other devices.
In March 2018, the Department announced plans to train more than 3,000 extra midwives over four years. The Government is providing extra funding for clinical placement costs for 650 students in 2019-20 with planned increases of 1,000 in the subsequent years. The Maternity Workforce Strategy was published in March 2019 by Health Education England to outline how the requirements of Better Births and the ambition to halve stillbirths, neonatal and maternal deaths by 50% by 2025, would be met. This will be achieved through retaining experienced and skilled maternity staff, as well as supporting employers to upskill and develop their workforces through new roles and new ways of working. This includes rolling out the ‘Maternity Support Worker’ role with a national competency, education and career framework; and new routes to becoming a registered midwife, including via apprenticeships.
Asked by: Trudy Harrison (Conservative - Copeland)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to support the nuclear industry.
Answered by Chris Skidmore
This Government continues to believe that nuclear has an important role to play in our future energy mix as long as it provides value for money for taxpayers and consumers. Our commitment is demonstrated in us giving the go ahead for the first new nuclear power station in a generation at Hinkley Point C. The landmark Nuclear Sector Deal, worth over £200m, was launched last June is a demonstration of the strong partnership between government and industry. Support provided by this Government through the Deal includes up to £56m for the development of advanced nuclear technologies, up to £20m for an advanced manufacturing and construction programme, and £86m for a fusion programme at Culham in Oxfordshire.
Asked by: Trudy Harrison (Conservative - Copeland)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will make an estimate of the number of workers in Copeland that have benefited from the recent living wage update.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
Through the National Living Wage (NLW) and National Minimum Wage (NMW), the Government ensures that the lowest paid in our society are fairly rewarded for their work. April 2019’s increase to the NLW will see nearly 1.8 million workers in the UK receive a 4.9% pay rise. In the North West, 222,000 workers will directly benefit from this increase in the NLW. A full-time worker on the NLW will now be more than £2,750 better off over the year compared to when it was first announced in 2015.
The most recent available data shows an estimated 3,500 workers in Copeland who were on the NLW or NMW.
Asked by: Trudy Harrison (Conservative - Copeland)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to prevent the potential extinction of red squirrels in the UK.
Answered by Thérèse Coffey
This is devolved matter and the below information relates to England only.
The Government is committed to protecting and expanding red squirrel populations and tackling the threats that grey squirrels pose to them. The Forestry Commission works with Natural England and other conservation organisations and projects to help protect red squirrel enclaves and to allow the populations to expand.
The Forestry Commission also undertakes a number of actions to protect red squirrels from the impact of grey squirrels as outlined in the grey squirrel action plan for England. These actions include Countryside Stewardship funding for landowners who choose to help protect red squirrels within designated reserves.
Defra, in partnership with the United Kingdom Squirrel Accord, has also provided funding for work by the Animal and Plant Health Agency for the development of a fertility control method for grey squirrels. This research continues to show promise as one potentially effective and humane method to control grey squirrel numbers in the longer term.
Asked by: Trudy Harrison (Conservative - Copeland)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to provide support for victims of domestic violence.
Answered by Edward Argar - Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
This Government is absolutely committed to supporting victims of domestic abuse.
The Ministry of Justice provides £68m in funding each year to Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) to provide support services to victims of crime. Of this, PCCs reported spending approximately £23.5 million in 2017/18 on services for victims of domestic abuse; these include tailored specialist support and advocacy through trained Independent Domestic Violence Advisors as well as practical and emotional support, risk assessment and safety planning.
In the Victims Strategy, published in September 2018, we committed to developing a new delivery model for victim support services, including services for domestic abuse victims, to increase availability of victim services through more joined up and sustainable funding.
Compensation also plays an important part in providing end-to-end support for victims of violent crime, including victims of domestic abuse. The Government funded Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme exists to compensate victims who suffer serious physical or mental injury as a direct result of a violent crime.
The Ministry of Justice is also working jointly with the Home Office on the Domestic Abuse Bill which was published in draft on 21 January 2019, alongside an accompanying package of over 120 non-legislative measures. Improving support for victims sits at the heart of this work and we have also provided an additional £20 million to support organisations working to combat domestic abuse and to support victims.
Asked by: Trudy Harrison (Conservative - Copeland)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the Regulated Asset Base model and its potential for the nuclear sector.
Answered by Chris Skidmore
We are continuing to review the viability of a Regulated Asset Base model as a sustainable mechanism for financing new nuclear projects. My rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State set out to the House on 17 January that we intend to publish our assessment of that method by the summer.
Asked by: Trudy Harrison (Conservative - Copeland)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the prospects of UK farmers as a result of the UK's withdrawal from the EU.
Answered by Robert Goodwill
As part of our preparations to leave the EU, we have carried out a rigorous programme of analytical work that has assessed the impact of various EU withdrawal scenarios on the UK farming sector.
Part of that programme has included modelling work co-funded between the four UK agricultural departments. In August 2017 FAPRI-UK published this analysis in the report “Impacts of Alternative post-brexit trade agreements on UK agriculture: sector analyses using the FAPRI-UK model”. It considers the impact of different trading scenarios on many farming commodity sectors. The full report is available on Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute website –
In addition, the Evidence and Analysis Paper, which accompanied the publication of the Agriculture Bill, provides analysis of the various ways farmers are likely to be affected by the movement from the area-based payments of the Common Agricultural Policy to being rewarded for the public goods they produce under Environmental Land Management (ELM). Further information can be found here –
This analysis only applies to England, as agricultural policy in the UK is devolved, and it is for each administration to decide its approach and what measures it should adopt according to its evaluation of the situation which pertains to its area. For details relating to the rest of the UK, please contact the relevant devolved administration.
Asked by: Trudy Harrison (Conservative - Copeland)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to support businesses and entrepreneurs in (a) Copeland constituency and (b) the North West.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
The Government is committed to supporting all entrepreneurs to start and grow a business, it is a key aspect of our ambitious Industrial Strategy. We want to make the UK the best place to start and grow a business, to create jobs and spread prosperity.
We already provide support to businesses through the www.gov.uk website. We also offer support through our Business Support Helpline (0300 456 3565). Last year we helped c.31,500 businesses, 65% were entrepreneurs and start-ups.
Businesses can also access local support through anyone of the 38 Growth Hubs across England which join up local and national business support. Details of Local Growth Hubs can be found on the following webpage: www.lepnetwork.net/growth-hubs
The Start-Up Loans programme, now part of the British Business Bank (BBB), has supported nearly 61,000 entrepreneurs with loans totalling over £468m, and was extended in the autumn budget to April 2021 to enable an additional 10,000 loans to be made.
BBB programmes are currently supporting £954,419 of finance for SMEs in Copeland across 23 businesses and £1,842,918,743 of finance for SMEs in the North West across 12,484 businesses (as at September 2018).
As of February 2019, since the BBB-owned Start-Up Loans programme launched, 24 loans have been made, totalling £256,600 in Copeland and 7,561 loans have been made totalling £56,967,713 in the North West.