Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what information her Department holds on the amount of R&D spend by the (a) Government, (b) higher education sector, (b) charity sector and (c) private sector in each region in each year since 1997.
Answered by Andrew Griffith - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The amount of R&D spend by sector and region is published annually by the Office for National Statistics.
The most recent release of these R&D spending breakdowns can be downloaded from: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/researchanddevelopmentexpenditure/bulletins/ukgrossdomesticexpenditureonresearchanddevelopment/2021
Asked by: Rachel Maclean (Conservative - Redditch)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether he has had discussions with the National Statistics Authority on the use of the term bad nerves as a reason for (a) economic inactivity and (b) long term sickness absence.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Statistical definitions and data collection are the responsibility of the independent Office for National Statistics (ONS). The Department has an ongoing relationship with the ONS however there has been no discussion on the use of the term ‘bad nerves.’
As part of the Labour Force Survey (LFS) people, both in and out of work, are asked about any long-term health conditions they may have. The term ‘bad nerves’ is used as part of the option ‘depression, bad nerves and anxiety.’
The LFS only asks people for their main reason for economic inactivity. This can include long term sickness, but they are not asked which specific health condition this relates to. Therefore, the LFS does not capture if any health condition is the reason for economic inactivity or long-term sickness. There are often complex and interacting factors related to someone being economically inactive.
The LFS is currently undergoing a transformation with latest update from the ONS showing that the option for ‘depression, bad nerves and anxiety’ will be removed in favour of the following questions on mental health - ‘Do you have any of the following? Depression or anxiety’ and ‘Do you have any of the following? Mental illness, phobias, panics or other nervous disorders.’.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of trends in the level of funding for schools in (a) Newcastle upon Tyne Central constituency, (b) Newcastle upon Tyne and (c) the North East since 2010.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
This government is committed to providing a world class education system for all children and has invested significantly in education to achieve that.
Including the additional funding for teachers’ pay and pensions, funding for both mainstream schools and high needs nationally is £2.9 billion higher in 2024/25, compared to 2023/24. The overall core school budget will total £60.7 billion in 2024/25, the highest ever level in real terms per pupil. This means school funding is set to have risen by £11 billion by 2024/25, compared to 2021/22.
The department cannot provide funding comparisons for the Newcastle upon Tyne Central constituency, Newcastle upon Tyne, or the North East back to 2010, as comparable data is not available. However, at national level, school funding will be 5.5% higher in real terms per pupil in 2024/25 compared to 2010/11 when using the GDP deflator measure of inflation which is based on independent Office for National Statistics and Office for Budget Responsibility data, the routine measure of public spending. The additional 2024/25 pensions funding is provided on top of that.
Mainstream schools in Newcastle upon Tyne Central Constituency are attracting an extra £3.8 million in 2024/25 compared to 2023/24 through the schools national funding formula (NFF), an increase of 2.2% per pupil in their pupil-led funding. As a result, schools in the Newcastle upon Tyne Central Constituency will attract over £89.9 million, based on the schools NFF. Constituency figures are based on an aggregation of school-level allocations through the NFF.
Through the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG), Newcastle upon Tyne local authority is receiving an extra £7.1 million for mainstream schools in 2024/25 compared to 2023/24, taking total school funding to over £228.7 million. This represents an increase of 2.1% per pupil compared to 2023/24 and an increase of 15.1% per pupil compared to 2021/22 (excluding growth funding).
Through the DSG, the North East is receiving an extra £45.7 million for mainstream schools in 2024/25 compared to 2023/24, taking total school funding to over £2.0 billion. This represents an increase of 2.1% per pupil compared to 2023/24 and an increase of 14.8% per pupil compared to 2021/22 (excluding growth funding).
All schools will receive additional funding through the Teachers’ Pay Additional Grant and Teachers' Pension Employer Contribution Grant 2024 in the 2024/25 financial year.
The precise funding that individual schools in Newcastle upon Tyne Central constituency, Newcastle upon Tyne and the North East will receive year-on-year will depend on each school’s unique circumstances, and the decisions that local authorities have made about how to deploy funding. The national funding formula is designed to fund each school according to its relative needs and is updated annually to reflect how those needs change over time.
Asked by: Lord Birt (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what percentage of annual vehicle theft in the UK is accomplished by offenders cloning the signal from the vehicle owner’s remote locking device.
Answered by Baroness Neville-Rolfe - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.
Please see the letter attached from the National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority.
The Lord Birt
House of Lords
London
SW1A 0PW
9 May 2024
Dear Lord Birt,
As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking what percentage of annual vehicle theft in the UK is accomplished by offenders cloning the signal from the vehicle owner’s remote locking device (HL4379).
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publish figures on the levels and trends of crime in England and Wales primarily based on two sets of crime statistics: the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) and police recorded crime data. The CSEW provides estimates of the prevalence of crime and different crime types as experienced by victims, which may not always be reported to the police.
Table 1 shows an estimate of the percentage of households who have experienced theft of a vehicle, where the method of entry into the vehicle was through manipulation of the signal from the remote locking device. This is taken from our Nature of crime: vehicle-related theft tables for the year ending March 2023 published on 3 April 2024. Due to the suspension of the CSEW during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, data are not available for the year ending March 2021 and the year ending March 2022.
Unfortunately, we do not hold any information from police-recorded crime which shows what percentage of annual vehicle theft in England and Wales is accomplished by offenders cloning the signal from the vehicle owner’s remote locking device.
Crime and justice statistics for Scotland can be found on the Scottish Government website and for more information please contact Justice_Analysts@gov.scot. The Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) are responsible for producing crime and justice statistics for Northern Ireland and can be contacted at statistics.research@justice-ni.x.gsi.gov.uk.
Yours sincerely,
Professor Sir Ian Diamond
Table 1: Estimated percentage of theft of vehicles where method of entry was through manipulation of the signal from remote locking device, year ending March 2019 to year ending March 2023 CSEW
England and Wales - household incidents, percentages | |||
| Apr’18 to Mar’19 | Apr’19 to Mar’20 | Apr’22 to Mar’23 [1] |
Entry to vehicle through manipulation of signal from remote locking device[2] | 13 | 36 | 40 |
Unweighted base – number of incidents[3] | 46 | 50 | 51 |
Source: Office for National Statistics – Crime Survey for England and Wales
[1]CSEW estimates for the year ending March 2023 have been temporarily suspended of their National Statistics status. Caution should be taken when interpreting these estimates because of the impact of lower response rates, and reduced interviewer numbers on the quality of the estimates.
[2]This category was added into the survey from the year ending March 2019.
[3]Estimates that are based on fewer than 50 respondents should be interpreted with caution.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate he has made of the number of arrests for online harassment in the last 12 months.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office collects and publishes data on arrests as part of the annual ‘Police Powers and Procedures’ statistical bulletin. The most recent data up to the year ending March 2023 is available here: Police powers and procedures England and Wales statistics - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
However, the data is collected by broader offence group e.g. “violence against the person”, therefore data on more specific offences such as online harassment is not available.
The number of harassment and stalking offences reported to police which were flagged as online crime is available in table F11 of the ‘Crime in England and Wales: Other related tables’ dataset:
Crime in England and Wales: Other related tables - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)
Asked by: Damien Moore (Conservative - Southport)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to the Office for National Statistics' report entitled GDP first quarterly estimate, UK: January to March 2024, published on 10 May 2024, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of the growth figures in that report on towns and cities in the North West.
Answered by Gareth Davies - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
The economy has performed better than expected in the face of unprecedented shocks, and the plan is working. The economy grew by 0.6% in the first quarter of 2024, the fastest quarterly growth rate in over two years, and growth is forecast to pick up both this year and next.
Subnational GDP figures over the same period are not yet available therefore no assessment has been made of the latest UK GDP growth figure on towns and cities in the North West.
The North West continues to benefit from over £15bn of local growth funding announced since 2019, including over £52m going to the Liverpool City Region through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.
Asked by: Lord Farmer (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they have any more recent statistics on suicide other than the Office of National Statistics data for 2022, published on 19 December 2023.
Answered by Baroness Neville-Rolfe - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.
Please see the letter attached from the National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority.
The Lord Farmer
House of Lords
London
SW1A 0AA
8 May 2024
Dear Lord Farmer,
As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question of 3 May 2024, asking whether His Majesty’s Government have any more recent statistics on suicide other than the Office of National Statistics data for 2022, published on 19 December 2023. (HL4326)
In addition to our annual suicide statistics, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) also publish provisional quarterly suicide statistics for England. The latest statistics provide provisional suicide registrations for 2023. These statistics are derived from the information provided when deaths are certified and registered. Finalised 2023 suicide registrations for England and Wales will be published later in 2024. This will be forwarded to you once released.
The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities also publish near to real-time suspected suicide surveillance (nRTSSS) data for England. This data has been collected from Police Forces in England and provides an early indication of changes in suicide trends. The latest data was published on 25th April 2024 and covers November 2022 to January 2024.
Yours sincerely,
Professor Sir Ian Diamond
Asked by: Wes Streeting (Labour - Ilford North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reason there was an increase in death rates among 20-44 year olds in 2023 from 2019.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Data published by the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities provides recent estimates of excess mortality in England by age group. Estimates for 20 to 44 year olds are not available, but data are published for those aged 25 to 49. These show that in 2023, deaths in this age group were 3% lower than expected. The number of expected deaths is based on the trend in mortality rates for this age group in the 5 years before 2023. This baseline excludes periods with particularly high numbers of deaths from COVID-19.
This estimate for excess mortality in 2023 reflects, in part, an increase in mortality for this age group over the preceding 5 years. However, official estimates of mortality rates for this age group have not been published. The Office for National Statistics have also not yet released final mortality data or mid-year population estimates for 2023.
Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham, Deptford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what progress his Department has made on the Health Transformation Programme.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Government is committed to continuously improving support for disabled people and people with health conditions, including through the Health Transformation Programme which is modernising Health and Disability benefit services to create a more efficient service and a improved claimant experience, reducing the time it takes to process a claim and improving trust in our services and decisions.
The department has started to publish HTP management information (MI). On 19 December 2023, the department published the first in a new series; publication of this MI will continue quarterly in line with the PIP Official Statistics release schedule. This can be found here.
The Programme published its Evaluation Strategy on 25th May 2023 here.
The National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee published reports in 2023 on the Health Transformation Programme.
Transforming health assessments for disability benefits (nao.org.uk)
Revising health assessments for disability benefits (parliament.uk)
Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to (a) evaluate and (b) review the violence against women and girls strategy.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
The ambitious cross-Government Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Strategy set out a series of measures to help ensure that women and girls are safe everywhere - at home, online, at work and in public. This was followed by a complementary Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan, published in March 2022. So far, we have completed 69% of the commitments across both strategy documents.
Delivery is overseen by a cross-Government VAWG Ministerial Steering Group (VAWG MSG). The last VAWG MSG took place on 1st May and was chaired by the Home Secretary. Part of the meeting focused on accelerating delivery of the remaining strategy commitments.
Many of our interventions are funded through grants awarded to third parties. These grants are actively monitored with recipients providing regular monitoring and end of financial year reports.
We are assessing the overall impact of measures set out in the strategies against the ambition to increase support to victims and survivors and bring more perpetrators to justice.
Our long-term ambition is to reduce the prevalence of violence against women. This is monitored via the published crime statistics, which include police recorded crime and Crime Survey for England and Wales data, as well as via other published criminal justice agency data. The latest data can be found here: Crime in England and Wales - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk).
Estimates from the 2022/23 CSEW showed that 5.1% of adults aged 16 to 59 years experienced domestic abuse in the previous year (Domestic abuse prevalence and victim characteristics - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)). This was a statistically significant decrease compared with the year ending March 2020 (6.1%), a year largely unaffected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the same period, the prevalence of sexual assault and stalking has remained stable with no statistically significant changes.