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29 Mar 2010 : Column 744W—continued
The total project cost includes all elements that go into the construction of a school building. This includes: the cost of the building; the fixed and loose furniture and equipment; cost incurred to the building beyond the designer's control; external works; contractor's preliminaries; professional fees; overheads and profit; inflation during the construction period; and contingencies.
Patrick Hall: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what guidance his Department has issued to local authorities on the geographical location of subcontractors tendering for work under the Building Schools for the Future programme. [324081]
Mr. Coaker: The Department has issued no guidance to local authorities on the geographical location of subcontractors tendering for work under the Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme. It is for each local authority in the BSF programme to determine its own approach to the use of local contractors bearing in mind local employment initiatives and ensuring that that the local authority acts in compliance with its obligations under procurement law.
Children: Abuse
Mr. Sheerman: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families whether he plans to bring forward proposals for the protection of children in suspected cases of domestic violence. [322832]
Ms Diana R. Johnson: Keeping children safe from all forms of abuse is a top priority for the Government. The Government recognise the strong links between safeguarding concerns and domestic violence. All professionals working with or who come into contact with children and their families, including those working in health or education, have a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. If they have reason to believe that a child is at risk from harm as a result of domestic violence, they should follow the same steps to raise this concern as they would for any other child at risk of abuse. 'Working Together to Safeguard Children' (2010) and 'What To Do If You're Worried a Child Is Being Abused' (2006) provide guidance for professionals on the impact of domestic violence on children and stress the need for awareness of those links.
The National Safeguarding Delivery Unit and the National Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference Steering Group chaired by the Home Office will be working with key partners over the next few months to develop guidance for local MARAC partnerships to ensure that the cases of children which are most at risk of harm in families affected by domestic violence are indentified and prioritised.
John Mann: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what his Department's policy is on helping children affected by domestic abuse through (a) training professionals to consider the needs of the children involved and (b) provision of support services for children and families affected. [322918]
Ms Diana R. Johnson: Keeping children safe from all forms of harm, including the effects of domestic violence, is a top priority for the Government.
Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) have a responsibility to ensure that single-agency and inter-agency training on safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is provided in order to meet local needs. LSCBs should also evaluate the quality of the training, ensuring that relevant training is provided by individual organisations and checking that the training is reaching the relevant staff within organisations.
The Government are providing over £170 million for 2009-11 for local authorities, working with partners, to implement Think Family reforms and projects to secure better outcomes for children and families with additional needs, including those affected by domestic violence. Key to these reforms and projects is co-ordinating the support these families receive from children, adult and family services. In particular, family intervention projects are working intensively with families with complex needs, including those affected by domestic violence, through key workers and multi-agency whole family support plans. The Government have committed to expand family intervention projects to 10,000 families a year from 2012-13.
Children: Social Services
Lorely Burt: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what steps his Department plans to take under the new burdens commitment to fund local authorities to implement recommendations made following investigations of the circumstances surrounding the death of Baby P. [320741]
Dawn Primarolo [holding answer 5 March 2010]: Following the tragic case of Baby Peter, Ministers asked Lord Laming to prepare an independent report on progress nationally on child protection. Lord Laming published his report in March 2009 and the Government accepted all his recommendations. We announced a new £58 million Social Work Transformation Fund to provide an immediate boost for social work training, support, recruitment and retention. This is in addition to the £73 million for the children and families' social work workforce already allocated from 2008 to 2011 and the £100 million each year to fund social worker initial training, bursaries and practice placements.
Following consultation, we will shortly be publishing revised statutory guidance "Working Together to Safeguard Children" to reflect Lord Laming's recommendations, recognise changes in the policy landscape, and help clarify roles and responsibilities between organisations and agencies. Local areas should already be delivering effective arrangements to safeguard and protect the welfare of children, and the revisions to the guidance will re-emphasise the need for the consistent application of effective practice.
Tim Loughton: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how many times the Government office for Yorkshire and the Humber approved an extension of the deadline for the publication of the serious case review into the death of Child BO5 in Doncaster; and for what reasons on each occasion. [323264]
Ms Diana R. Johnson [holding answer 22 March 2010]: Child BO5 died in October 2004 and the serious case review was initiated in November 2005. No procedure existed at that time whereby Local Safeguarding Children Boards were expected to discuss the proposed extension of deadlines for the completion of serious case reviews with Government offices for the regions. Accordingly, the Government office for Yorkshire and the Humber played no part in extending of the deadline for the Child BO5 serious case review.
Departmental Official Cars
Norman Baker: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what estimate he has made of the cost to his Department of providing official cars for the use of (a) Ministers and (b) officials in the last 12 months. [301187]
Ms Diana R. Johnson: I refer the hon. Member to the written ministerial statement about the cost of ministerial cars made by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Gillingham (Paul Clark) on 16 July 2009, Official Report, columns 79-80WS.
For the cost of cars to officials, I refer the hon. Member to the answer given by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport, the hon. Member for Gillingham (Paul Clark) on 2 December 2009, Official Report, column 762W.
Departmental Public Expenditure
Mr. Laws: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how much his Department has spent on (a) consultants, (b) advertising, (c) publishing, (d) public relations, (e) professional training and (f) other activities for each programme campaign (i) run by the Department and (ii) commissioned from other organisations in (A) 2005-06, (B) 2006-07, (C) 2007-08 and (D) 2008-09; and which organisations ran each campaign which was not run by his Department. [306825]
Ms Diana R. Johnson: Promotional campaigns, including those using advertising, are funded from the Department's central Advertising and Publicity Budget and from individual programme budgets held by policy directorates. It is therefore not possible to establish a definitive figure for all advertising and promotion, except at disproportionate cost.
Advertising is part of a full integrated promotional campaign. We are able to separate the Department's spend on campaign advertising, as this is centrally placed through the Central Office of Information. These figures are media total and exclude production, fees and VAT and are outlined in Table A.
Public relations agencies are employed for specific communications tasks, most commonly working alongside our press office to provide campaign support in local, regional and specialist media. The Department's expenditure on public relations is outlined in Table B.
There has been no professional training undertaken for campaigns in the four years in question.
The nature and diversity of consultancy streams that may have been used since 2005 means that a full survey of spend would be possible only at disproportionate cost.
Information relating to publications and other activities cannot be supplied without incurring disproportionate cost.
| Table A: Advertising | |
| Total spend (£) | |
| Table B: Public relations | |
| Total spend (£) | |
Departmental Written Questions
Mr. Stephen O'Brien: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families what methodology his Department used to determine whether answers to questions in the formulation "if he will set out with statistical information related as directly as possible to the tabling hon. Member's constituency the effects on that constituency of his Department's policies since 1997" could be provided without incurring disproportionate cost; and if he will make a statement. [323858]
Mr. Coaker [holding answer 23 March 2010]: The Department seeks to answer all parliamentary questions that do not incur disproportionate cost. The methodology used to determine whether answers to these questions could be provided without incurring disproportionate cost was the Department's guidance on the "Calculation of the Disproportionate Cost threshold for answering PQs" which is based on the guidance published on the Cabinet Office's website at:
Officials in the Department have concluded that answering these questions in full would exceed the current disproportionate cost threshold of £800 as announced in Parliament by the Treasury on the 20 January 2010. These questions are very broad in scope covering all of the Department's policies over a number of years. To identify the effects of all policies on an individual constituency, collate all of the data and carry out the necessary quality assurance would require a considerable amount of resource, far in excess of the threshold. The round robin guidance issued by the Treasury for these questions advised directing questioners to the Neighbourhood Statistics Service website. However, while the Department has placed considerable amounts of data on this website, it is not at constituency level. My officials, in line with Cabinet Office guidance, decided to answer the questions by providing the requested information which was readily available and provided readily available attainment data at constituency level and a link to the Department's "In Your Area" website
where the Department publishes further local level data including data at parliamentary constituency level. It would only be possible for the Department to provide additional information by exceeding the disproportionate cost threshold.
Education: Birmingham
Richard Burden: To ask the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families how much funding has been provided by his Department (a) for education maintenance allowances, (b) under the Entry to Employment programme and (c) under the Behaviour Improvement programme since the introduction of each such scheme; and how many people in Birmingham have received assistance under each of those schemes. [321573]
Mr. Iain Wright: Investment in education maintenance allowance (EMA), Entry to Employment (E2E) and the Behaviour Improvement programme (BIP) provision since the introduction of the schemes is shown for each year in the following tables:
| EMA | |
| £ million | |
| E2E Funding | |
| £ | |
| BIP | |||||
| £ | |||||
| 2002-03 | 2003-04 | 2004-05 | 2005-06 | Total | |
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