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1130972

	registered interest
	date	10/06/2019
	answering body	Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	answering dept id	201
	answering dept short name	Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	answering dept sort name	Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	hansard heading	Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage
	house id	1
	legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
	question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent steps the Government has taken to promote carbon capture, utilisation and storage technologies.
	tabling member constituency	Newcastle-under-Lyme
	tabling member printed	Paul Farrelly
	uin	262267
	answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 13/06/2019 answer text <p>The Government believes that carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) has the potential to play an important role in meeting the UK’s climate targets. CCUS can add value to the economy and help tackle hard to decarbonise sectors.</p><p>The Government published its CCUS Action Plan in November 2018, designed to progress CCUS in the UK, including enabling the UK’s first CCUS facility to be operational from the mid-2020s. The Government is investing over £50 million in CCUS innovation support between 2017 and March 2021.</p><p>CCUS is also likely to play an important role in achieving our Industrial Clusters Mission, creating the world’s first net-zero industrial cluster by 2040. This is supported by up to £170 million from the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund to support the deployment of low carbon technologies and enabling infrastructure in one or more clusters. In addition, through our Industrial Energy Transformation Fund we are investing £315 million to support businesses with high energy use to cut their bills and emissions through increased energy efficiency and transition to a low carbon future through the use of lower carbon energy and processes. This may support CCUS projects.</p><p>In March this year, the Government launched the CCUS Advisory Group. Backed by government and industry support, the Group will provide advice on the potential incentives and regulations needed for the development of a new UK market in CCUS.</p><p>The Government is also working with other governments to promote the development of CCUS internationally. We hosted, with the International Energy Agency, the Global CCUS Summit in Edinburgh last November which brought together world energy leaders from governments and industry to accelerate the global progress of CCUS and co-lead the CCUS initiatives under both Mission Innovation and the Clean Energy Ministerial.</p><p> </p> answering member constituency Kingswood answering member printed Chris Skidmore question first answered 13/06/2019 16:36:08 answering member 4021 label Biography information for Chris Skidmore
	tabling member	1436 label Biography information for Paul Farrelly

1128871

	registered interest
	date	03/06/2019
	answering body	Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	answering dept id	201
	answering dept short name	Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	answering dept sort name	Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	hansard heading	Short Time Working: Climate Change
	house id	1
	legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
	question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment he has made of the merits of working shorter hours to tackle climate change.
	tabling member constituency	Newcastle-under-Lyme
	tabling member printed	Paul Farrelly
	uin	259032
	answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 06/06/2019 answer text <p>The UK is a world leader in cutting emissions while creating wealth. Between 1990 and 2017, the UK reduced its emissions by over 40 per cent while growing the economy by more than two thirds. The Clean Growth Strategy sets out our plans to build on our progress in decarbonising the power sector, while looking further across the whole of the economy and the country. It includes ambitious proposals on housing, business, transport, the natural environment and green finance. We have not made any assessment of the impact of working shorter hours on climate change.</p><p> </p><p>The Government does, though, continue to support flexible working practices, as part of our commitment to ensuring that everyone can access fair and decent work as set out in the Good Work Plan. For example, all employees with 26 weeks’ continuous service with their employer have the right to request Flexible Working. We have also committed to consult on a new duty on employers to consider when a job can be done flexibly, and make that clear when advertising.</p> answering member constituency Rochester and Strood answering member printed Kelly Tolhurst question first answered 06/06/2019 15:49:59 answering member 4487 label Biography information for Kelly Tolhurst
	tabling member	1436 label Biography information for Paul Farrelly

1128898

	registered interest
	date	03/06/2019
	answering body	Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	answering dept id	201
	answering dept short name	Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	answering dept sort name	Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	hansard heading	Iron and Steel: Recycling
	house id	1
	legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
	question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of creating a more sustainable steel industry with a focus on recycling steel.
	tabling member constituency	Newcastle-under-Lyme
	tabling member printed	Paul Farrelly
	uin	259037
	answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 11/06/2019 answer text <p>We are working with the sector, the unions and devolved administrations to support the UK steel industry to develop a long-term sustainable solution for the UK steel industry. The Department commissioned independent research to identify high value opportunities for UK steel, worth up to £3.8 billion a year by 2030.</p><p> </p><p>In the 2018 Budget, my rt. hon. Friend Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer announced an Industrial Energy Transformation Fund with investment of £315 million to help businesses with high energy use to cut their bills and transition UK industry to a low carbon future. Through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, we are also providing up to £66 million, subject to industry co-funding, to transform foundation industries which includes steel, to develop radical new technologies and establish innovation centres of excellence in these sectors.</p> answering member constituency Pendle answering member printed Andrew Stephenson question first answered 11/06/2019 15:54:14 answering member 4044 label Biography information for Andrew Stephenson
	tabling member	1436 label Biography information for Paul Farrelly

1129131

	registered interest
	date	03/06/2019
	answering body	Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	answering dept id	201
	answering dept short name	Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	answering dept sort name	Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	hansard heading	Hydroelectric Power: Capital Investment
	house id	1
	legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
	question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent assessment he has made of the potential merits of increasing investment in pumped hydro storage facilities.
	tabling member constituency	Newcastle-under-Lyme
	tabling member printed	Paul Farrelly
	uin	259048
	answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 11/06/2019 answer text <p>We recognise that electricity storage technologies, including pumped hydro storage, provide an important source of flexibility to our energy system. We currently have around 3GW of storage capacity on our system, of which the vast majority is pumped hydro storage. The Electricity System Operator outlines that, by 2050, there could be 12-29 GW of total storage capacity on our system.</p><p> </p><p>In our Smart Systems and Flexibility Plan, published in July 2017 (and updated in October 2018), Government and Ofgem set out a range of actions to remove barriers to electricity storage. Our work seeks to enable fair access to energy markets in order to create a best in class regulatory framework for the sector and includes several important reforms to our electricity market, including to the balancing mechanism, capacity market and balancing services, which serve to sharpen incentives to invest in storage.</p><p> </p><p>We will continue to engage with storage developers, including those of pumped hydro projects, to understand how to facilitate these technologies whilst ensuring best value for consumers and fair competition between different flexibility technologies.</p> answering member constituency Kingswood answering member printed Chris Skidmore question first answered 11/06/2019 15:54:28 answering member 4021 label Biography information for Chris Skidmore
	tabling member	1436 label Biography information for Paul Farrelly

1129247

	registered interest
	date	03/06/2019
	answering body	Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	answering dept id	201
	answering dept short name	Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	answering dept sort name	Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	hansard heading	Renewable Energy: Job Creation
	house id	1
	legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
	question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to create more jobs in the renewable energy sector.
	tabling member constituency	Newcastle-under-Lyme
	tabling member printed	Paul Farrelly
	uin	259056
	answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 11/06/2019 answer text <p>Clean Growth is at the heart of this Government’s modern Industrial Strategy. There are currently 400,000 jobs in the low carbon economy, with the ambition to have 2 million by 2030.</p><p> </p><p>We’ve injected £2.5 billion into low-carbon innovation and earlier this year struck a deal with the offshore wind industry, which will see up to £40 billion worth of infrastructure investment in the UK, creating clean, green electricity, good jobs and sustained growth across the UK. Under the Offshore Wind Sector Deal, industry aims to more than triple the number of ‘green collar’ jobs in the sector to 27,000 by 2030, up from the current figure of 7,200.</p> answering member constituency Kingswood answering member printed Chris Skidmore question first answered 11/06/2019 15:54:37 answering member 4021 label Biography information for Chris Skidmore
	tabling member	1436 label Biography information for Paul Farrelly

1127650

	registered interest
	date	20/05/2019
	answering body	Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	answering dept id	201
	answering dept short name	Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	answering dept sort name	Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	hansard heading	Unpaid Work
	house id	1
	legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
	question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent steps he has taken to ensure that interns are paid at least (a) the national minimum wage and (b) the national living wage.
	tabling member constituency	Newcastle-under-Lyme
	tabling member printed	Paul Farrelly
	uin	256245
	answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 23/05/2019 answer text <p>The law is clear that any individual performing work is entitled to receive the National Minimum and National Living Wage (NMW). The Government is committed to enforcing this right. In 2018/19 HM Revenue &amp; Customs (HMRC) identified a record £24.4 million in arrears for over 220,000 workers and issued over £17 million in penalties to non-compliant employers. The budget to enforce the NMW stands at its highest ever.</p><p> </p><p>HMRC have contacted over 2,000 employers found to be advertising unpaid internships online to ensure they are compliant with the law. They have also issued over 15,000 letters to employers in industries where internships are common to remind them of their responsibilities.</p><p> </p><p>Earlier this month my hon Friend the Minister of State (Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport) (Digital Policy) (Margot James) and I co-hosted a roundtable on internships with employers and organisations in the creative industries. Discussion focused on how Government can work better with employers to raise the profile of existing rules and ensure that interns are paid in accordance with NMW law. The event provided important insight which will be used to improve compliance with the law across all sectors.</p><p> </p><p>Anyone who feels they are being underpaid the NMW should contact Acas for free impartial advice or make a complaint directly to HMRC through their online form. HMRC follow up on every worker complaint received, even those which are anonymous.</p> answering member constituency Rochester and Strood answering member printed Kelly Tolhurst question first answered 23/05/2019 13:54:49 answering member 4487 label Biography information for Kelly Tolhurst
	tabling member	1436 label Biography information for Paul Farrelly

1127077

	registered interest
	date	16/05/2019
	answering body	Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	answering dept id	201
	answering dept short name	Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	answering dept sort name	Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	hansard heading	Consumers: Internet
	house id	1
	legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
	question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, pursuant to the Answer of 30 April 2019 to Question 245672 on Consumers: Internet, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 are fully enforced.
	tabling member constituency	Newcastle-under-Lyme
	tabling member printed	Paul Farrelly
	uin	255292
	answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 21/05/2019 answer text <p>Part 8 of the Enterprise Act 2008 provides for a number of enforcers, such as Trading Standards and the Competition and Markets Authority, to enforce consumer protection legislation, including the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008. Alleged breaches of legislation should be reported in the first instance through the Citizens Advice consumer service on 03454 04 05 06 (<a href="http://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/" target="_blank">www.citizensadvice.org.uk/</a>). The helpline will refer on alleged breaches of legislation to the relevant authority for appropriate enforcement action.</p> answering member constituency Rochester and Strood answering member printed Kelly Tolhurst question first answered 21/05/2019 14:54:53 answering member 4487 label Biography information for Kelly Tolhurst
	tabling member	1436 label Biography information for Paul Farrelly

1125901

	registered interest
	date	10/05/2019
	answering body	Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	answering dept id	201
	answering dept short name	Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	answering dept sort name	Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	hansard heading	Minimum Wage
	house id	1
	legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
	question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent steps his Department has taken to ensure that the national minimum wage is enforced.
	tabling member constituency	Newcastle-under-Lyme
	tabling member printed	Paul Farrelly
	uin	252839
	answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 15/05/2019 answer text <p>Enforcement of the National Minimum and National Living Wage (NMW) is a priority for the Government. Since 2015 we have doubled the budget to enforce the NMW and we are taking tough action against the minority of employers who underpay. In 2018/19 HM Revenue &amp; Customs (HMRC) identified a record £24.4 million in arrears for over 220,000 workers and issued over £17 million in penalties to non-compliant employers.</p><p> </p><p>HMRC proactively investigates employers where they identify a risk of non-compliance; this work accounts for around half of all investigations undertaken. In addition, HMRC responds to every worker complaint regarding NMW payment including those made anonymously.</p><p> </p><p>Government is committed to helping employers comply with NMW rules first time; in April we launched a £1 million communications campaign to raise awareness and understanding of NMW rules among both workers and employers.</p><p> </p> answering member constituency Rochester and Strood answering member printed Kelly Tolhurst question first answered 15/05/2019 13:42:13 answering member 4487 label Biography information for Kelly Tolhurst
	tabling member	1436 label Biography information for Paul Farrelly

1125789

	registered interest
	date	09/05/2019
	answering body	Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	answering dept id	201
	answering dept short name	Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	answering dept sort name	Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	hansard heading	Foreign Companies: Assets
	house id	1
	legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
	question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether he plans to require companies to disclose the proportion of their assets under management originating from countries with a poor record of human rights.
	tabling member constituency	Newcastle-under-Lyme
	tabling member printed	Paul Farrelly
	uin	252519
	answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 14/05/2019 answer text <p>Companies registered in the UK are required to report the value of their global assets within their annual accounts but there are no plans to introduce requirements to report on their assets in relation to human rights.</p><p> </p><p>Government has introduced other requirements on companies in relation to human rights Quoted companies are required to report on human rights issues, as they relate to the company, within the narrative part of their annual report. Companies must include a description of their business model and of their policies, in relation to human rights, and the effectiveness of those policies. The information provided must be to the extent necessary for an understanding of the development, performance or position of the company’s business and the impact of its activities.</p><p> </p><p>These requirements are enhanced by voluntary guidance and standards, including the UN’s Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) and the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs).</p> answering member constituency Rochester and Strood answering member printed Kelly Tolhurst question first answered 14/05/2019 12:32:55 answering member 4487 label Biography information for Kelly Tolhurst
	tabling member	1436 label Biography information for Paul Farrelly

1124741

	registered interest
	date	03/05/2019
	answering body	Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	answering dept id	201
	answering dept short name	Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	answering dept sort name	Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
	hansard heading	Migrant Workers: Conditions of Employment
	house id	1
	legislature	25259 pref label House of Commons
	question text	To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he is taking to ensure that non-EU migrants working in the (a) cleaning and (b) hospitality industry receive the statutory rights they are entitled to under UK law.
	tabling member constituency	Newcastle-under-Lyme
	tabling member printed	Paul Farrelly
	uin	250794
	answer	answer is ministerial correction date of answer 13/05/2019 answer text <p>Non-EU migrants working legally in the UK are entitled to the same workplace statutory protections as any other worker. Fair and effective enforcement is central to the Good Work Plan, which sets out the biggest upgrade of employment rights in a generation. Building on existing minimum wage and agency worker enforcement, we are expanding state enforcement to cover holiday payments for the most vulnerable workers and intermediary companies that operate in the agency worker market.</p><p>Government has taken concrete measures to increase the number of labour market inspectors and extend their coverage.</p><p> </p><ul><li>Government has increased funding for HMRC’s enforcement of the National Minimum and Living Wage (NMW) to a record high of £26.3 million for 2018/19.</li><li>Funding for the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA) has also risen in the last two years to reflect the expansion of its remit to tackle labour exploitation. The GLAA now receives over £7m per year in funding, up from £4.5m in 2016/17.</li><li>The Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate has seen its funding increase from £0.5m in 2016/17 to £0.725m in 2018/19.</li></ul><p> </p><p> </p><p>These three enforcement bodies continue to ensure workers receive the protections they are entitled to. As well as responding to every complaint they receive, all three undertake proactive, intelligence-led enforcement, targeting employers and sectors where the risks of non-compliance are highest, including in the cleaning and hospitality sectors.</p><p> </p><p>Government is also exploring options for a single labour market enforcement body – we will publish proposals on this for consultation shortly. More recently we announced that this consultation will consider extending the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority’s licensing scheme to further sectors and that we will ensure trade unions and businesses are consulted on the strategic direction of labour market enforcement.</p> answering member constituency Rochester and Strood answering member printed Kelly Tolhurst question first answered 13/05/2019 13:29:18 answering member 4487 label Biography information for Kelly Tolhurst
	tabling member	1436 label Biography information for Paul Farrelly