Ensuring that everyone who is eligible to vote is on the register and can exercise that right has been a priority of the Government throughout the transition to IER. We have made £500,000 available to the National Union of Students to run a programme to register students to vote. We are also working with universities so that they can provide data to local authorities, which can then chase up students not on the register to get them on to the register.

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Simon Stevens’s analysis of the financial needs of the NHS specified that by the end of the next Parliament there would be an £8 billion funding gap. That is not some sort of easy throwaway figure; it was identified on the basis of certain assumptions about considerable continued savings in the NHS. The Liberal Democrats have specified how we would find that £8 billion. It is now for other parties in the House to come clean on how they would find the money identified by Simon Stevens.

The Government has taken a variety of significant steps to promote stewardship and engagement on the part of institutional investors. A key focus has been to work closely with the investment industry on initiatives involving both institutional investors and asset managers, acknowledging that while some institutional investors engage directly with companies, many others delegate to asset managers to engage on their behalf.

Specific achievements include:

• a strengthening of the Stewardship Code to emphasise engagement on companies’ long-term strategy;
• the creation of an Investor Forum to improve the amount and effectiveness of collective engagement by key institutional investors;
• the development, by the National Association of Pension Funds, of a new Stewardship Disclosure Framework to encourage asset managers to report on their activities and to enable investors to hold them to account.

The Government has comprehensively reformed the legislative framework for corporate reporting to boost transparency on company directors’ remuneration and ensure annual reports are more focused on long-term company strategy. In this way we are encouraging companies to report the information which is relevant to long-term stewardship investors.

The Law Commission’s report on the fiduciary duties of investment intermediaries, commissioned by the Government, concluded that fiduciary investors such as pension scheme trustees should consider whether and how to engage with companies to promote their long-term success, either directly or through their investment managers. The Government is now taking forward the Law Commission’s recommendations in a number of areas, including by consulting currently on whether the Occupational Pension Schemes (Investment) Regulations 2005 should be amended to require trustees to state their policy on stewardship with reference to the Stewardship Code.

This work has been part of a broader commitment – in response to the Kay Review of equity markets - to address the longstanding concern that short-termism has impeded the creation of sustainable value by British companies. The Government published a comprehensive progress report on the implementation of the Review in October 2014. This is available online at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/367070/bis-14-1157-implementation-of-the-kay-review-progress-report.pdf

The Government is now undertaking further work in a number of areas, including:

• supporting the work of the Financial Reporting Council to monitor how signatories to the Stewardship Code are delivering against their commitment;
• supporting the work of the Association of Member Nominated Trustees (AMNT) to develop “Red Line Voting” – an initiative which will enable pension schemes and other investors to adopt common voting positions on a range of governance issues; and research to examine how shares are held by institutional and individual investors – to provide an insight into how the Government can encourage greater investment engagement.

The Government believes that tax reliefs are an important part of the tax system and play a significant role in defining the scope of tax. In particular they can help create a fairer, simpler system which reflects the needs of a wide range of individuals and businesses.

The government outlines the rationale for, and expected impacts of, any tax policy changes, including new tax reliefs, in published Tax Information and Impact Notes (TIINs). TIINs also set out the government’s intentions with regard to monitoring and evaluating tax measures.

While tax reliefs can be used to pursue specific policy objectives, all reliefs reflect policy choices about the distribution of the tax burden, proposed by the government and agreed by Parliament.

The government is transparent about both the costs of existing reliefs and the costs and likely impacts of new reliefs. HMRC annually publishes information on the Exchequer cost of around 180 existing tax reliefs on its website. The independent Office for Budget Responsibility certifies the cost of all new tax reliefs or changes to existing reliefs.

We are currently consulting on potential changes to the Occupational Pension Schemes (Investment) Regulations 2005 which will support and encourage trustees of both defined benefit and defined contribution pension schemes to consider their approach to stewardship. This forms part of our consultation, entitled “Consultation on changes to the Investment Regulations following the Law Commission’s report ‘Fiduciary Duties of Investment Intermediaries’” which was published on 26th February 2015. The consultation period ends on 20th April 2015 and it is the intention that a Government response will be published later this year.

The following table shows the annual expenditure for the contracted prisons for each of the last three financial years 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14 for which information is available.

Expenditure between prisons and years is not directly comparable, as this may vary due to a number of factors, including inflation uplift, contract variations, new prisons becoming operational or prisons transferring between the public and private sector, and additional prison places being commissioned or decommissioned.

The Department is committed to delivering prison capacity changes designed to modernise the prison estate and, where possible, reduce prison costs, whilst maintaining a high quality service.

From the financial years 2009-10 to 2013-14 there was a real terms reduction of 17% in the overall average cost for each prisoner in England and Wales, with a reduction of 5% achieved during the last financial year 2013-14.

The Department routinely publishes annual net resource expenditure for individual prisons in England and Wales each year alongside the management information addendums to the NOMS Annual Report and Accounts. The most recently published figures for financial year 2013-14, can be accessed by the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/prison-and-probation-trusts-performance-statistics-201314

The published expenditure figures for 2012-13, and restated figures for 2011-12 can be accessed by the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/prison-and-probation-trusts-performance-statistics-201213

Expenditure for financial year 2014-15 is not yet finalised and will be published in due course after the end of this financial period.

By April 2015 this Government's increases in the personal allowance (for those born after 5 April 1948) are estimated to have taken 3.2 million individuals out of the income tax system altogether. 287,000 of these individuals live in the East of England region, which includes the Parliamentary Constituency of Cambridge.

These estimates are based on the 2012-13 Survey of Personal Incomes, projected to 2015-16 using economic assumptions consistent with the Office for Budget Responsibility’s December 2014 economic and fiscal outlook.

HM Treasury does not publish this information at constituency level.

I am aware that, like me, the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman, the hon. Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker), was recently admitted to Gaza. Such visits do involve bureaucratic obfuscation, and we will continue to make representations in that regard.

I can give my hon. Friend good news on that front. Under this Government we have rolled out the liaison and diversion service—only last week, I visited the excellent scheme up in Wakefield—which is going to cover 50% of the country. It has made very good progress and is an excellent example of partnership working, and I look to seeing it expanded further.

By April 2015 this Government's increases in the personal allowance (for those born after 5 April 1948) are estimated to have reduced the income tax liability of 26.7 million individuals in the UK. 2.6 million of them live in the East of England region, which includes the Parliamentary Constituency of Cambridge.

These estimates are based on the 2012-13 Survey of Personal Incomes, projected to 2015-16 using economic assumptions consistent with the Office for Budget Responsibility’s December 2014 economic and fiscal outlook.

HM Treasury does not publish this information at constituency level.

I refer my hon. Friend to my answer to the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) of 5 January 2015 (PQ 218898).

Decisions on support for tuition and living costs support are taken on an annual basis.

The Government announced in a Written Ministerial Statement on 12 March 2014 the Maintenance Grant for academic year 15/16 would be maintained at 14/15 levels. Maximum loans for living costs for new and continuing full-time students will be increased by forecast inflation for 2015/16, 3.34%. The student support package for 16/17 will be announced in due course.

The Department has reviewed its procedures for notifying hospital admissions when the customer is incapacitated and unable to contact us themselves.

We have taken account of the fact that there is no reduction in the Benefit paid for the first twenty eight days following admission, where there has been no previous hospitalisation within the preceding twenty eight days. Also, measures are in place so that the report of the hospital admission may be taken from another person, on the customer’s behalf. We have concluded that the procedures already in place are satisfactory.

The information requested covers a broad range of case types and is not held
centrally for in country cases. It could only be obtained at a disproportionate
cost. For international appeals the average time for allowed appeals to be
implemented from January to December 2014 was 43 calendar days. Since 2006,
the average time has been 69 days with a peak of 92 days in 2009.

The Home Office has 14 calendar days to consider whether to appeal an allowed
First-tier or Upper Tribunal decision (although this can be longer in some
Upper Tribunal decisions where the last avenue to appeal is direct to the Court
of Appeal) for in country cases and 28 calendar days for international (out of
country) cases. The relevant unit responsible for implementation will be
notified once a decision has been made not to appeal.

The European framework for licensing of medicines is designed to ensure medicines that are placed on the market have been tested for safety, quality and efficacy and the system confers important benefits for patients and the healthcare system. Avastin is not licensed for the treatment of eye conditions and has not been assessed by the regulatory authorities for the treatment of eye conditions. However, clinicians may decide to use an off label or unlicensed medicine in cases where there is not a licensed medicine available to meet the clinical needs of an individual patient. There are no plans at this time to review the regulations that apply to licensing of medicines.

We do not hold the information requested verified to the standards set by the UK Statistics Authority.

In 2013, the Home Office paid £2.87 million for the cost of police training in
relation to G8 Summit, and this included training of English and Welsh police
officers to be deployed alongside water cannon.

All other decisions and assessments relating to the training of police officers
in the use of water cannon would be an operational decision for Chief
Constables.