Asked by: Shabana Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Ladywood)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what estimate her Department has made of the number of applications for medical cannabis licences made by pharmacies in each of the last 12 months.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
The Home Office Drugs and Firearms Licensing Unit (DFLU) issue controlled drug licences to possess, produce or supply drugs; they are company, site and activity specific. Separate licences may be issued to import or export controlled drugs. Pharmacies would ordinarily obtain their supplies of controlled drugs from licensed pharmaceutical wholesalers and, generally speaking would not require licensing by the DFLU.
This means that the data provided in response to this question will not give an insight into UK-based medicinal cannabis patients nor the pharmacies via which they receive their prescriptions. Instead, UK pharmacies would generally only require a DFLU licence where they are involved in exporting medicinal cannabis overseas, primarily to the Channel Islands and other Crown Dependencies with whom we have established licensing processes enabling the supply of controlled drugs.
Individual consignment export licences have been issued by DFLU to companies who supply Cannabis-Based Products for Medicinal use in Humans (CBPMs) to patients resident in Crown Dependencies. Some of those applications will have been made by General Pharmaceutical Council- registered ‘pharmacies’.
The number of applications for CBPM licences made by pharmacies in each the last 12 months in England are as follows:
|
|
May-21 | 95 |
Jun-21 | 136 |
Jul-21 | 124 |
Aug-21 | 95 |
Sep-21 | 99 |
Oct-21 | 99 |
Nov-21 | 59 |
Dec-21 | 34 |
Jan-22 | 34 |
Feb-22 | 40 |
Mar-22 | 29 |
Apr-22 | 10 |
May-22 (to 17 May) | 18 |
|
|
No licences were issued over this period to companies based in the West Midlands, inclusive of Birmingham Ladywood.
Asked by: Shabana Mahmood (Labour - Birmingham, Ladywood)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many medical cannabis licences have been granted to pharmacies in (a) Birmingham, Ladywood constituency, (b) the West Midlands and (c) England in each of the last 12 months.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
The Home Office Drugs and Firearms Licensing Unit (DFLU) issue controlled drug licences to possess, produce or supply drugs; they are company, site and activity specific. Separate licences may be issued to import or export controlled drugs. Pharmacies would ordinarily obtain their supplies of controlled drugs from licensed pharmaceutical wholesalers and, generally speaking would not require licensing by the DFLU.
This means that the data provided in response to this question will not give an insight into UK-based medicinal cannabis patients nor the pharmacies via which they receive their prescriptions. Instead, UK pharmacies would generally only require a DFLU licence where they are involved in exporting medicinal cannabis overseas, primarily to the Channel Islands and other Crown Dependencies with whom we have established licensing processes enabling the supply of controlled drugs.
Individual consignment export licences have been issued by DFLU to companies who supply Cannabis-Based Products for Medicinal use in Humans (CBPMs) to patients resident in Crown Dependencies. Some of those applications will have been made by General Pharmaceutical Council- registered ‘pharmacies’.
The number of applications for CBPM licences made by pharmacies in each the last 12 months in England are as follows:
|
|
May-21 | 95 |
Jun-21 | 136 |
Jul-21 | 124 |
Aug-21 | 95 |
Sep-21 | 99 |
Oct-21 | 99 |
Nov-21 | 59 |
Dec-21 | 34 |
Jan-22 | 34 |
Feb-22 | 40 |
Mar-22 | 29 |
Apr-22 | 10 |
May-22 (to 17 May) | 18 |
|
|
No licences were issued over this period to companies based in the West Midlands, inclusive of Birmingham Ladywood.
Asked by: Colleen Fletcher (Labour - Coventry North East)
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 impact of the increases in the cost of living on the number of households in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England that have fallen into arrears with their water supplier.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
All water companies offer WaterSure and social tariffs to help reduce bills for households who struggle to pay their bills in full. Water companies also offer a range of financial support measures to assist households to better manage their budgets and provide flexible payments including payment holidays, payment matching, benefit entitlement checks and money/debt advice referral arrangements. The Government expects water companies to continue to actively engage with households and inform them of support measures they offer. The Consumer Council for Water (CCW) works with water companies and Defra to monitor the uptake of affordability measures.
My officials are working with CCW, Ofwat, charities and water companies to explore the recommendations from CCW's Affordability Review, to further support households who are struggling to pay their water bills.
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether the contracts for (a) Chiltern Railways, (b) Cross Country Trains, (c) Greater Anglia, (d) East Midlands Railway, (e) c2c, (f) Great Western Railway, (g) South Western Railway, (h) GTR, (i) Transpennine Express, (j) Avanti West Coast and (k) West Midlands Trains permit the operators to receive indemnification from his Department in respect of revenue losses incurred as a result of industrial action.
Answered by Wendy Morton
The 11 train operating companies referred to are under a mixture of National Rail Contracts and Emergency Recovery Measures Agreements to deliver passenger services. Where the train operating company complies with its contractual obligations, including on industrial action, revenue risks are borne by Her Majesty’s Government.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps she is taking to invest in the regional film industry.
Answered by Julia Lopez - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
My department continues to work closely with the British Film Institute (BFI) and the Devolved Administrations to ensure a wide range of funding and initiatives are available to support the film industry across the UK. This includes the UK-wide screen sector tax reliefs, the £500 million Production Restart Scheme, and the UK Global Screen Fund which will invest nearly £30 million in the international growth of independent screen companies across the UK.
The BFI has invested £64 million of National Lottery funding outside of London and the South East region between 2017/18 and 2021/22 across the UK. This support ranges from audience and talent development programmes, run in conjunction with regional Film Hubs and national screen agencies across the UK, through to the National Cluster Growth Fund, which supports the development of high potential screen clusters outside of London and the South East - such as Screen Yorkshire and Create Central in the West Midlands. The BFI is currently developing its National Lottery strategy for the next ten years and is consulting stakeholders and the public as it develops its objectives, outcomes, and programmes to ensure it delivers maximum impact for both audiences and industry across the UK.
The Government also works closely with the British Film Commission (BFC), a national body predominantly funded by DCMS, which also supports and promotes UK-wide film and high-end television production and works in close partnership with the national and regional screen agencies.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Croydon North)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many hours of community service given as part of community sentences have offenders completed in each (a) local justice area and (b) region in England and Wales in each of the last five years.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
Community Payback is a term used to describe any work done as part of an unpaid work requirement made by the courts. Prior to 26th June 2021, Community Rehabilitation Companies were responsible for the delivery of unpaid work. Since then, the new unified probation service has assumed responsibility for community payback delivery. This provides an opportunity to re-energise our work, drive up completion rates and deliver better outcomes. This Government has committed to invest an additional £93million in community payback over the next three years. This is so that we ramp up delivery to 8million hours per year, focussing on outdoor projects that help to improve public spaces, ensuring that people can see justice being done.
A significant dip in performance can be seen in years 2019/20 and 2020/21, which is attributed to the pandemic. Community Payback was severely affected by projects, and organisations that provided them, being closed along with the social distancing rules making it difficult for delivery to continue as normal.
Alongside the additional investment, other measures being taken include ; an increase in reporting directly to site to mitigate the reliance on restricted probation transport, increases to independent working projects, and educational online training.
We are unable to provide data segmented by Local Justice Areas as HMPPS report all data based on the probation service region where the person on probation has been allocated, not by criminal justice area.
Please find the data below in response to part b in England and Wales in the last five years. Where possible the data has been mapped to the new Probation Service regions that came into being in 2021. In cases where this was not possible it has been attributed to ‘unknown’.
Unpaid Work Hours Completed | |||||
Region | 2016/2017 | 2017/2018 | 2018/2019 | 2019/2020 | 2020/2021 |
East Midlands | 350,743 | 364,784 | 362,224 | 343,598 | 53,204 |
East of England | 585,447 | 626,417 | 598,237 | 561,479 | 333,990 |
Greater Manchester | 343,824 | 329,494 | 292,432 | 273,089 | 53,643 |
Kent Surrey Sussex | 363,817 | 396,187 | 379,879 | 223,899 | 108,536 |
London | 784,657 | 849,456 | 848,044 | 730,593 | 153,917 |
North East | 197,914 | 190,688 | 197,153 | 194,296 | 59,546 |
North West | 387,368 | 498,787 | 511,721 | 473,152 | 100,766 |
South Central | 321,110 | 305,893 | 298,835 | 281,182 | 89,032 |
South West | 376,013 | 333,668 | 353,762 | 326,969 | 87,749 |
Unknown | 311,460 | 17,287 | 31,176 | 116,035 | 19,435 |
Wales | 423,975 | 370,010 | 404,983 | 374,075 | 107,223 |
West Midlands | 566,772 | 548,595 | 515,484 | 479,075 | 90,318 |
Yorkshire and The Humber | 569,343 | 550,905 | 516,595 | 491,548 | 98,704 |
National Total | 5,582,445 | 5,382,173 | 5,310,526 | 4,868,990 | 1,356,061 |
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Croydon North)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many offenders have completed community sentences in each local justice area in each of the last five years.
Answered by Kit Malthouse
It is not possible to map offenders who have completed community sentences to local justice areas. However, the number of offenders who have completed community sentences (Community Orders, Youth Rehabilitation Orders, and Supervision Default Orders) in each of the seven probation regions in place for the period the data refers to can be found in the table below. This data does not include Suspended Sentence Orders, given they are classified as a custodial sentence.
During 2020, the number of court order completions was substantially reduced as a result of operational restrictions put in place in response to the pandemic.
In June 2021 we successfully created the new unified Probation Service, with a permanent uplift of £155m extra investment - a 15% increase on 2019-20 funding. This means that the Probation Service now has the responsibility for supervising offenders of all levels of risk, together with the timely delivery of community payback and rehabilitative programmes, which were previously the responsibility of the Community Rehabilitations Companies. As part of these changes, the Probation Service is now organised under twelve regions across England and Wales.
We are committed to using our programme of reform to drive up overall performance standards. Our new performance framework for the unified Service will be tracking the key elements of probation delivery, and whether offenders are complying with them to ensure sentences are successfully completed. This will ensure a greater focus on quality and outcomes, including the timeliness of sentence delivery.
Number of offenders that completed a community sentence in each year between 2016 and 2020, by region, England and Wales (1), (2)
Region(3) | 2016(4) | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020(5) |
|
|
|
|
|
|
North East | .. | 14,336 | 13,807 | 13,775 | 10,613 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
North West | .. | 11,326 | 10,519 | 10,758 | 8,546 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Midlands | .. | 12,970 | 11,604 | 10,846 | 8,793 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
London | .. | 9,289 | 10,302 | 10,202 | 7,952 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
South East and Eastern | .. | 12,842 | 11,620 | 11,776 | 9,037 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
South West | .. | 11,478 | 10,373 | 10,473 | 8,628 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Wales | .. | 5,190 | 4,774 | 4,867 | 3,786 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
England and Wales | .. | 77,431 | 72,999 | 72,697 | 57,355 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
.. Not available
(1) Community sentences include community orders, pre-Criminal Justice Act 2003 orders, Youth Rehabilitation Orders, and Supervision Default Orders.
(2) The figures include all terminations of community sentences in each year, including multiple terminations of the same type of supervision (e.g. two periods of community order supervision terminating in the same year would be included in the figures).
(3) The region in which the termination of an order is deemed to have taken place is determined from the Community Rehabilitation Company or National Probation Service division associated with the Order Manager allocated to the Event on the date of termination. Where a transfer between Order Managers is recorded on this day, the latest Order Manager record is to be taken.
(4) Due to an issue with the archived data, figures for 2016 cannot be provided.
(5) In this period, the number of court order completions was substantially reduced as a result of the operational restrictions that were put in place on 23 March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Asked by: Colleen Fletcher (Labour - Coventry North East)
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 impact of food price rises on household budgets in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
The Government monitors consumer food prices using the Consumer Prices Index including Housing costs (CPIH). Food prices are traditionally impacted by a wide range of domestic and international factors – from local manufacturing costs to global commodity prices. Given strong competition in the UK food retail sector, retailers normally try to absorb short term cost pressures for a period of time. In any given year, food prices tend to go up and down. Food prices are set individually by businesses and it is not for the UK Government to set retail food prices nor to comment on day-to-day commercial decisions by companies.
Defra analysis suggests that a 1% increase in food prices costs the average household an additional £33 per year. The Government has put in place measures to support vulnerable and low-income households, including the £500 million Household Support Fund. Coventry City Council has been allocated £3,224,222.30 from this fund to support residents with the cost of food, utilities and wider essentials over the coming months.
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, pursuant to his oral Answer of 11 January 2022, Official Report, column 413, that the life science sector has grown, in terms of private investment, by 1,000 per cent in the last ten years and is creating jobs all around the UK, in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, what the evidential basis is for that answer.
Answered by George Freeman
Analysis conducted by the Office for Life Sciences using data from S&P Capital IQ showed that in the first 10 months of 2021, UK Life Sciences companies raised a total of £6.6bn in equity finance. This is an increase of 1,000% since 2012 when the equivalent figure was £0.6bn. These figures include public and private investment and cover the sectors of Biotechnology, Pharmaceuticals, Life Sciences Tools and Services, Health Care Equipment and Supplies and Health Care Technology. They were set out in the press release accompanying the recent Biopharmaceutical CEO Roundtable, held on 2 December 2021.
The 2020 Biosciences and Health Sector Statistics publication shows that net employment in the UK life sciences industry increased by 31,500 between 2011 and 2020, and that during that period, net employment increased in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Annex: Supporting Data
Region | Net change in employment between 2011 and 2020 |
London | 8,200 |
East of England | 4,900 |
South East | 4,500 |
Yorkshire and the Humber | 4,000 |
North West | 2,500 |
Northern Ireland | 2,200 |
Wales | 1,700 |
North East | 1,700 |
South West | 1,500 |
East Midlands | 800 |
Scotland | 400 |
West Midlands | -800 |
Total | 31,500 |
Source: Office for Life Sciences: Bioscience and Health Technology Statistics 2020
Asked by: Chi Onwurah (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne Central)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how many applications for the Future Fund were (a) successful and (b) unsuccessful in each region of the UK, and what steps his Department has taken to help ensure equal distribution of funding across the UK.
Answered by Paul Scully
A total of 1,190 Future Fund applications were successfully completed. The number of Convertible Loan Agreements (CLAs) issued in each region of the UK is provided in the table below. A total of 655 applications for the Future Fund were unsuccessful. A regional breakdown of these applications is not available as the information has not been verified.
The location of Future Fund applicants broadly reflects the distribution of equity investment across the UK. The British Business Bank addresses regional disparities in access to finance through its regional investment funds and the Regional Angels Programme, both of which were extended at the recent Spending Review.
Region | CLAs issued |
East Midlands | 21 |
East of England | 90 |
London | 649 |
North East | 30 |
Northern Ireland | 13 |
North West | 84 |
Scotland | 23 |
South East | 134 |
South West | 43 |
Wales | 25 |
West Midlands | 30 |
Yorkshire and the Humber | 32 |
Other | 16 |
Total | 1,190 |
Note: The ‘Other’ category includes companies based in the Channel Islands and companies that participated in an accelerator programme that mandated incorporation of the ultimate parent company in a non-UK jurisdiction.