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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Baroness Thornton): My honourable friend the Minister of State, Department of Health (Phil Hope) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
I am today placing in the Library Valuing People Now: Delivery plan for 2010-11 which was published on 31 March 2010, to support the implementation of Valuing People Now, a new three year strategy for people with learning disabilities published in January 2009.
The delivery plan sets out the progress made in the first year. It also recognises that there is still more to do to improve the lives of people with learning disabilities and their family carers. The delivery plan sets out the key priorities for 2010-11, in particular, to improve employment and housing opportunities and better health outcomes for people with learning disabilities and their family carers.
Other materials, including Person-centred planning guidance, Valuing Older Family Carers Now, the Valuing People Now Housing Delivery Plan and a range of housing resources are available at www.valuing people.gov.uk/dynamic/valuingpeople6.jsp
Copies of the Valuing People Now: Delivery plan 2010-11 are available to honourable Members from the Vote Office.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Davies of Oldham): My right honourable friend the Minister for Culture, Media and Sport (Margaret Hodge) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
I would like to thank the Legal Deposit Advisory Panel (LDAP) for its recommendations on digital legal deposit and thank everyone who took the time to respond to the consultation.
My department has received 57 responses to the consultation from a broad range of stakeholders. This shows how important digital legal deposit is. The consultation, as you may have expected, has brought up many interesting and varying views and ideas on what the regulations should cover.
Since the close of the consultation, LDAP has provided me with its next set of recommendations on UK commercial and protected online publications.
I will now be considering all the responses we have received and LDAP's latest recommendations with a view to going out to consultation in September on draft regulations and on UK commercial and protected online publications content.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Department for Work and Pensions (Lord McKenzie of Luton): My honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Barbara Follett) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
The Government are grateful for the Communities and Local Government Committee's second report of Session 2009-10, Local authority investments: the role of the Financial Services Authority.
The committee's primary recommendation is that, "the Government bring forward the necessary legislative changes to place within the remit of the Financial Services Authority the provision of advice or information relating to deposit taking" (paragraph 16).
Having carefully considered the recommendation, the Government are not persuaded that such a course would be appropriate. The Department for Communities and Local Government has issued revised statutory guidance on investments which came into force on 1 April 2010. This includes a new recommendation that authorities' investment strategies should comment on their use of treasury management advisers. This will encourage officers to make explicit their procedures for using advisers and will give elected Members the opportunity to scrutinise those arrangements.
The revised Guidance on Local Government Investments is available at http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents /localgovernment/pdf/1501971.pdf.
Copies of the guidance have been placed in the Library of the House.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Department for Work and Pensions (Lord McKenzie of Luton): My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (John Denham) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
I am today updating the House on progress the Government have made in implementing the Sustainable Communities Act 2007.
The Government remain committed to the Sustainable Communities Act. Local authorities put forward proposals to improve their local area to the Local Government Association (LGA), in its capacity as the selector, last
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In the mean time, I am pleased to inform the House that the Government will be taking action to make progress with the following proposals:
The London Borough of Islington asked the Government to make it compulsory for owners of empty business premises (mainly shops) to talk to councils about the possibility of premises being used by the community, if they have been empty for six months. In response we will carry out a consultation, involving Islington and other relevant stakeholders, looking at the challenges behind engaging with landlords and owners.
Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council and South Hams District Council asked for communities to have the right to buy privately or publicly owned assets put up for sale in order to develop opportunities for communities to buy redundant buildings and land for community benefit. The Government will undertake an investigation into the challenges and barriers that a community right-to-buy approach would solve and what other solutions would help.
The London Borough of Redbridge, which suggested relaxing the rules on the illumination of some road signs to reduce costs of installation, maintenance, energy consumption and light pollution. The Government are now considering further relaxations to lighting requirements beyond those made in the 2002 review on this matter and will be undertaking further research into lighting through the national traffic signs policy review to assess the relative performances of lit and unlit signs in a number of environments.
Brighton and Hove City Council put forward a proposal requesting a freedom that would allow surplus produce from allotments to be sold to local markets and shops. In response the Government have been able to clarify that there are no legal restrictions on allotment holders selling genuinely surplus produce. This clarification was made on 3 March within a package of measures that set out the Government's support for gardeners and growing food in the community. This package also provided clarification to the London Borough of Waltham Forest, Birmingham and Sheffield City Councils, which have also put forward proposals about allotments under the Act, highlighting existing powers around allotments and the opportunity offered by new meanwhile
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Newcastle City Council, Ryedale District Council, and Darlington Borough Council wanted action to address the problem of large pub and retail companies imposing restrictive covenants on pubs preventing them from operating as pubs when sold. The Ministry of Justice will consult on removing the right of pub owners to impose such restrictions that are leading to pub closure.
Kettering Borough Council and Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council asked for changes to rules that would allow the council's Community Protection Officer Service to carry out civil and crime related duties in a combined manner without fear of legal challenge and to improve the efficiency and quality of services provided. They want to change the statutory guidance to allow local authorities to employ single teams of wardens capable of dealing with all civil enforcement issues. The Government recognise this issue and the potential benefits of this request and have committed to undertaking a review of the current rules and any changes that may be needed to allow this idea to move forward.
Kent County Council asked for recourse to government funding to build a lorry park with 3,000 parking places to address lorry traffic problems locally which arise when the Kent police implement Operation Stack which enables them to close the M20 in order to hold large volumes of freight traffic.
The Department for Transport and the Highways Agency are currently reviewing the existing policy (Circular 01/2008) on motorway service areas and other roadside facilities on motorways and all-purpose trunk roads and trying to find ways to remove barriers to the development and use of lorry park facilities, rest facilities and improved signing to existing lorry parks. A public consultation on the revised policy is expected to be published within the next few months.
The Government are also looking to review their approach to the use of powers under Section 238 of the Highways Act 1980 to promote new roadside facilities for motorists and, in particular, provision for lorry drivers where appropriate to do so. Whilst this will not directly fund developments such as the one proposed by Kent, the approach would help to overcome the hurdle of securing planning approval. Use of these powers would provide an alternative means of securing site approvals. The delivery of the facilities could then be franchised to private operators on a competitive basis which will represent the best outcome for the taxpayer in terms of value for money.
There were a number of councils which put forward proposals pressing the Government to focus on improving energy efficiency and incentivising the development of renewable energy within communities. On 2 March, we published Warm Homes, Greener Homes: A Strategy for Household Energy, which addresses many of the issues raised by the proposals under the SCA. The introduction by the Government of feed-in tariffs in April this year and the launch next April of the Renewable Heat Incentive will also help to address these critical issues.
West Devon Borough Council, Herefordshire County Council and a number of other councils asked for a much wider role for post offices in communities including banking and financial services. In response the Prime Minister has already committed to do just that, and as a result we carried out a consultation to find out what people think about existing products and services offered through the Post Office, and our proposals for the future of the Post Office banking. In response to the consultation the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills made an announcement on 29 March about the sort of services that post offices will be offering in the future.
Wiltshire County Council asked for the Sustainable Communities Act process to be ongoing or annual. The existing Sustainable Communities Act requires that the process should not be a one-off. CLG officials have, however, been working closely with local works on the development of the Sustainable Communities (Amendment) Bill. The Government wholeheartedly support the current draft of the Bill which, if passed by Parliament, will provide a date for the next invitation for proposals to be issued and will enable the process of submitting and considering proposals to be improved.
The Government continue to assess the 199 proposals on the shortlist submitted by the Local Government Association. I intend to make a formal decision on which proposals the Government believe should be implemented alongside the associated actions the Government will take, later this year.
The Secretary of State for Transport (Lord Adonis): My honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Paul Clark) has made the following Ministerial Statement.
I am pleased to announce the targets for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) for 2010-11.
maintain the quality of maritime emergency co-ordination and response by the coastguard;helicopters tasked to respond to incidents will be airborne within 15 minutes during daylight hours and 45 minutes at night in at least 98 per cent of cases;at each MCA search and rescue helicopter base, a helicopter will be available at least 98 per cent of the contracted time to respond to incidents;meet the internationally required targets to inspect foreign vessels in UK ports under port state control arrangements, with an increasing emphasis on inspecting available ships judged to be high risk;maintain the quality of the UK Ship Register by reducing the level of deficiencies recorded on UK ships inspected abroad, and maintain a position on the Paris MOU White List which is comparable to registers of a similar size and reputation;as a category 1 responder, continue to meet the provisions of the Civil Contingencies Act including engagement with Local Resilience Forums (LRF); andThe MCA will also continue with its programme of work covering the following safety themes:
seafarer fatigue-working with the shipping industry and seafarer unions on a coherent strategy to reduce seafarer fatigue;fishing vessel safety-working with the fishing industry to improve the safety of small fishing vessels (under 15m); recreational safety-working with the agency's partner organisations (including the Royal National Lifeboat Institute and the Royal Yachting Association), to promote the wearing of lifejackets within the leisure sector and recreational safety more generally; and vessel traffic management-identifying the future requirements of sea space management and the role the agency may perform.The agency will also monitor its performance through a range of service standards and measured outcomes which will be reported in its published annual report and accounts.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Department for Work and Pensions (Lord McKenzie of Luton): My right honourable friend the Minister for Housing and Planning (John Healey) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
I am today publishing the Government's response to the consultation conducted last year on housing and planning delivery grant (HPDG) which closed on 23 June 2009. The document sets out a summary of the responses received and also confirms both the amount available for HPDG in 2010-11 and the allocation mechanism for 2010-11, which has been considered in the light of the comments received.
The amount available for local authorities through HPDG will be £146 million, an increase from £135 million paid out in 2009-10. This reflects the importance the Government place on increasing housing supply and increasing the capacity of local authorities to support this by delivering viable land and an efficient planning service. The grant provides a direct incentive for councils to work with partners in the public and private sector to ensure that new homes are built where they are needed. It is additional to mainstream funding and councils have the freedom to decide how best to spend it locally.
In changes to the distribution mechanism we are reducing the threshold of net additional homes needed to qualify for the housing element in recognition of the more challenging conditions in the housing market. We are also introducing additional eligibility requirements for demonstrating land for housing in order to reinforce existing requirements in Planning Policy Statement 3
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I have placed a copy of the Government's response to the consultation document has been placed in the Library of the House. This will also be available on the Communities and Local Government website.
The Secretary of State for Transport (Lord Adonis): My honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Mole) has made the following Ministerial Statement.
I am today publishing a consultation document seeking views on revisions to Department for Transport (DfT) circular 01/2008 on service areas and other roadside facilities on motorways and all-purpose trunk roads in England.
This circular sets out the department's policy on the provision, standards and signing of roadside facilities on the strategic road network (SRN), including motorway service areas (MSAs), motorway rest areas (MRAs), truckstops, and services and lay-bys on all-purpose trunk roads (APTRs).
The department is now reviewing these policies and as part of this process needs to better understand the views and experiences of those that are affected by them.
The consultation document proposes making a number of changes to existing policy, such as allowing new dedicated lorry parking facilities to be located directly off motorways and requiring roadside facilities to provide recharging facilities for electric vehicles. The responses received during the consultation will inform the consideration of the policy options.
Copies of the consultation have been placed in the Libraries of the House.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Baroness Thornton): My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health (Andy Burnham) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.
I have previously undertaken to update the House on the negotiations concerning the orders placed by the Government for H1N1 vaccine, at their conclusion. I am pleased to be able to inform the House that we have now reached a mutually satisfactory agreement with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to limit the department's orders of swine flu vaccine, and that this settlement will result in savings of around a third of the original value of the total orders with GSK.
I am confident that the negotiated settlement both protects the public purse by obtaining full value for payments made without incurring a cancellation fee and ensures that the United Kingdom remains at the
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In addition, the department will purchase H5N1 "bird flu" vaccine and courses of the antiviral Relenza (to replace the amount of Relenza made available during the response to the swine flu pandemic) as part of the agreement. The probability of a more severe influenza pandemic has not diminished following the swine flu pandemic, and taking measures such as these now will help protect the population in the event of a future pandemic. However, as with other contracts, further details of the agreement are commercially confidential.
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