We use ONS wellbeing statistics to inform Health and Wellbeing policy within the Civil Service. The Home Office also measures personal wellbeing through the annual Civil Service People Survey using the same national statistics that the Office for National statistics (ONS) use for the UK population as a whole.

The total number of fire safety audits and the number of unsuccessful audits carried out by fire and rescue services (FRSs) in each year since 2010/11 are available in table FIRE1202 (link below). Information prior to 2010/11 is not available on a consistent basis.

This summer for the first time the Home Office collected information on the number of staff employed by FRSs for fire safety activities. The information can be found in FS10 in FIRE1204 (link below). This showed that in England on 31 March 2019 there were 72 fire engineers (Full Time Equivalent) employed by FRSs, 503 staff competent to carry out a short audit, 951 competent to carry out an audit, 597 competent to serve an enforcement notice and 407 competent to serve a prohibition notice. As FRS staff are likely to be competent to carry out more than one of these activities, the categories are not mutually exclusive.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/fire-statistics-data-tables#fire-prevention-and-protection

The Home Office does not collect information on the number of automated fire suppression systems installed by fire and rescue services.

The total number of fire safety audits and the number of unsuccessful audits carried out by fire and rescue services (FRSs) in each year since 2010/11 are available in table FIRE1202 (link below). Information prior to 2010/11 is not available on a consistent basis.

This summer for the first time the Home Office collected information on the number of staff employed by FRSs for fire safety activities. The information can be found in FS10 in FIRE1204 (link below). This showed that in England on 31 March 2019 there were 72 fire engineers (Full Time Equivalent) employed by FRSs, 503 staff competent to carry out a short audit, 951 competent to carry out an audit, 597 competent to serve an enforcement notice and 407 competent to serve a prohibition notice. As FRS staff are likely to be competent to carry out more than one of these activities, the categories are not mutually exclusive.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/fire-statistics-data-tables#fire-prevention-and-protection

The Home Office does not collect information on the number of automated fire suppression systems installed by fire and rescue services.

The total number of fire safety audits and the number of unsuccessful audits carried out by fire and rescue services (FRSs) in each year since 2010/11 are available in table FIRE1202 (link below). Information prior to 2010/11 is not available on a consistent basis.

This summer for the first time the Home Office collected information on the number of staff employed by FRSs for fire safety activities. The information can be found in FS10 in FIRE1204 (link below). This showed that in England on 31 March 2019 there were 72 fire engineers (Full Time Equivalent) employed by FRSs, 503 staff competent to carry out a short audit, 951 competent to carry out an audit, 597 competent to serve an enforcement notice and 407 competent to serve a prohibition notice. As FRS staff are likely to be competent to carry out more than one of these activities, the categories are not mutually exclusive.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/fire-statistics-data-tables#fire-prevention-and-protection

The Home Office does not collect information on the number of automated fire suppression systems installed by fire and rescue services.

The total number of fire safety audits and the number of unsuccessful audits carried out by fire and rescue services (FRSs) in each year since 2010/11 are available in table FIRE1202 (link below). Information prior to 2010/11 is not available on a consistent basis.

This summer for the first time the Home Office collected information on the number of staff employed by FRSs for fire safety activities. The information can be found in FS10 in FIRE1204 (link below). This showed that in England on 31 March 2019 there were 72 fire engineers (Full Time Equivalent) employed by FRSs, 503 staff competent to carry out a short audit, 951 competent to carry out an audit, 597 competent to serve an enforcement notice and 407 competent to serve a prohibition notice. As FRS staff are likely to be competent to carry out more than one of these activities, the categories are not mutually exclusive.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/fire-statistics-data-tables#fire-prevention-and-protection

The Home Office does not collect information on the number of automated fire suppression systems installed by fire and rescue services.

It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Dissolution.

Statistics on average weekly earnings growth are published by the independent Office for National Statistics.

In August 2010, real (total) pay fell by 0.5%. In August 2019 the real (total) pay growth was 1.9% - an increase in the rate of real wage growth of 2.4 percentage points.

The highest real (total) pay growth, between Aug 10 – Aug 19, was in Aug 15 (2.6%).

Under the Triple Lock the basic State Pension and the full rate of the new State Pension will be raised the highest of: the rise in prices, the rise in earnings or 2.5%. The relevant measure for earnings is the year-on-year change in Average Weekly Earnings (AWE) from May to July published by the ONS in October, standing at 3.9%

It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Dissolution.

The independent Office for National Statistics (ONS) use the Labour Force Survey (LFS) to provide estimates for the number of people in employment on contracts that do not guarantee minimum hours (known as ‘zero hours’ contracts’). This data is available for the Oct-Dec quarter only for each year from 2010 to 2018 and is set out in the table below.

Table: Level and rate of people aged 16 and over on zero-hours contracts October to December each year

ONS advise that the increased media coverage of zero-hours’ contracts arrangements in the latter half of 2013 may have affected the response to this question by raising awareness of this existing type of contractual arrangement. The ONS therefore advise not to compare pre- and post-2013 data.

Data for England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales and the English regions has been published every six months by ONS for since 2016. However, because the data is drawn from a survey, many of these sub-UK breakdowns are considered too unreliable for practical purposes. Regional data and guidance on its reliability can be found in tab 4 of table EMP17 published here:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/datasets/emp17peopleinemploymentonzerohourscontracts/current

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority. I have therefore asked the Authority to respond.

This information is not available in the format requested.

I refer the Hon Member to the answer given to PQ 4936 in which I give details, published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), of the number of people whose usual weekly hours are less than six hours, and between 6 and 15 hours. Details are not available for the number of people working less than 16 hours who wanted to work more in each of the last 10 years.

ONS does publish some related data: 1) the number of people in employment who want to work more hours, are available for work and are currently working below the hours threshold (40 hours a week for those under 18, 48 hours a week for those aged 18 or over), and 2) people working part-time who gave the reason as “could not find full-time job” as reason for working part-time. The tables below give extracts from the ONS published data, however, both these data series will include both those working less than, and more than, 16 hours a week.

Table 1: The number of people in employment who want to work more hours, are available for work and are currently working below the hours threshold

Source: Table EMP16, ONS, Labour Force Survey

Table 2: Part-time workers who gave the reason as “could not find full-time job” as reason for working part-time

Source: Table EMP01NSA, ONS, Labour Force Survey

At UK level people in full-time work have made up over three quarters of the overall increase in employment since 2010.

Hardship payments provide financial protection for claimants whose benefit is reduced by a Fraud Loss of Benefit penalty or a Benefit Sanction.

For a) and b), the information requested is not readily available at a country or constituency level and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.

For c) the requested data is provided for Great Britain in the following two tables for Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) and Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) respectively. Please note, figures supplied are derived from data which has not been quality assured to Official Statistics publication standard. These results can change retrospectively as further information is received. They should therefore be treated with caution. Figures have been rounded to the nearest 1,000.

For Universal Credit, the data cannot be disaggregated to identify the hardship payments that have been directly attributed to the application of a benefit sanction from those resulting from a fraud penalty.

Fuel poverty is a devolved issue, with each nation in the UK having its own fuel poverty definition, targets and policies to tackle the issue.

The number of households in fuel poverty in England between 2003 and 2017 (latest data) can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fuel-poverty-trends-2019.

For Scotland, data from 2011 to 2017 (latest data) can be found here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-house-condition-survey-2017-key-findings/pages/6/

ForWales, latest published data (for 2018) can be found here: https://gov.wales/fuel-poverty-estimates-wales-2018

For Northern Ireland, data for 2006, 2009 and 2011 can be found here: https://www.ninis2.nisra.gov.uk/public/SearchResults.aspx?sk=fuel;poverty; Latest available figures (for 2016) can be found here: https://www.nihe.gov.uk/getmedia/1f9e55a1-66c2-46b7-bf92-9ee192ce355f/estimates-of-fuel-poverty-northern-ireland-2017-and-2018-revised.pdf.aspx?ext=.pdf

The number of households in fuel poverty for each region in England can be found in Table 4 here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/fuel-poverty-trends-2019.

Please note that due to both definition and methodological differences, the figures should not be combined.

The Home Office and key partners continue to build understanding of the drivers of hate crime through research and evaluation of hate crime programmes, and consultation with subject matter experts including the Independent Advisory Group and local practitioners. Alongside the Hate Crime Action Plan refresh in October 2018 the Government published a thematic review of the current evidence base – this can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hate-crime-action-plan-2016.

Since 18 September 2017, data on Sure Start children’s centres has been supplied by local authorities via the department’s Get Information about Schools database portal at: https://www.get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/.

Based on information supplied by local authorities as at end June 2019, the number of children’s centres open to families and children each year and the number of children’s centres closed each year since 2010 is set out in the attached table[1]:

[1]Figures in the table are based on information supplied by local authorities as at end June 2019. Since local authorities can update historical data at any time, figures may be different to previous answers, and are likely to change again in future. (Closures reported since June 2019 have not been included in the table to enable consistency with a statistical publication with further analysis of children’s centre numbers, which is due to be published on 7 November – for completeness a total of 9 closures have not been included in the table.) The department holds some of its information on children’s centre numbers for previous years manually. The numbers of children’s centres open each year have been treated as estimates and rounded to the nearest 10.

The independent Office for National Statistics (ONS) uses the Labour Force Survey (LFS) to provide estimates for the usual weekly hours of work for people. The table below sets out data ONS publishes on those working fewer than 6 hours, and between 6 and 15 hours. Breakdowns for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and regional breakdowns, are not provided because of small sample sizes. Estimates are based on the number of people who report the numbers of hours worked.

Table: People working fewer than 6 hours, and 6 to 15 hours for April to June each year

Source: Table HOUR02NSA, ONS, Labour Force Survey

At UK level people in full-time work have made up over three quarters of the overall increase in employment since 2010.

Prisoners set to be released within 6 years have been eligible for tuition fee loans with the consent of the prison authorities. There are no plans to change this policy.

The UK REACH IT system ‘Comply with UK-REACH’ will be ready to launch on Day 1 of the UK’s exit from the EU.

‘Comply with UK-REACH’ is being built in a phased approach, so that all features necessary for Day 1 are ready. This will include the ability to register existing UK-held registrations (‘grandfathering’), submit downstream user import notifications (DUIN) for those currently benefitting from EU held registrations, and submit new substance registrations and product and process-oriented research and development (PPORD) notifications.

Automatic enrolment has achieved a quiet revolution through getting employees into the habit of pension saving, and reversing the decline in workplace pension participation in the decade prior to these reforms. Since automatic enrolment started in 2012 participation rates have been transformed with 87% of eligible employees saving into a workplace pension in 2018, up from 55% in 2012.

The Department does not hold data for individual constituencies in relation to opt outs or the number of individuals who have saved above the automatic enrolment minimum contribution level. However, we do know that overall around 9% of automatically enrolled workers have chosen to opt out which is significantly below original estimates; and our latest evaluation report shows that, in April 2017, approximately 5.9 million eligible employees were already meeting the April 2019 minimum contribution rates¹.

I am providing the following information about the impact of automatic enrolment in your constituency, as at end of September 2019²:

In the Vale of Clwyd constituency since 2012, approximately 6,000 eligible jobholders have been automatically enrolled and 1,410 employers have met their duties.

¹Automatic Enrolment Evaluation Report 2018, available via the following weblink: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/764964/Automatic_Enrolment_Evaluation_Report_2018.pdf.

²The Pensions Regulator’s data on Automatic enrolment declaration of compliance by constituency, available via the following weblink:

https://www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/en/document-library/research-and-analysis/data-requests