This Government is working to help Gillingham and the wider Medway area thrive. Gilligham has received £20m of Pride in Place funding, out of £60m given to Medway Council. This comes alongside £1.5m of Pride in Place Impact Funding to support high street regeneration in Gillingham and Chatham.

The Government will bring forward a High Streets Strategy later this year backed by £301m, which includes funding for the Pride in Place Community Right to Buy Fund and High Street Rental Auctions. This will empower communities to take control of local assets and bring vacant properties back into use.

Either I or one of my junior Ministers will join my hon. Friend in Gillingham.

Levelling up is about levelling up all parts of the United Kingdom—north, south, east and west, including areas that did not get levelling-up funding in rounds 1 or 2 or the recent announcements, such as Gillingham town

centre. Will the Secretary of State visit Gillingham with me and ensure that we get our fair share and allocation of resources?

Will the Minister welcome the new apprentice teaching sports assistants coach programme put on by Gillingham football club in my constituency, which is working with primary schools to get more sports coaches into primary schools?

I can do that. It is always encouraging to hear of programmes such as that being run by Gillingham football club, which bring the expertise of community sports clubs into schools. The quality of expertise that coaches provide in schools is of paramount importance, and it will be supported by our physical education and sport premium—£150 million that goes direct to primary schools every year to make sure that every child gets the best possible PE and sport on offer.

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply.

Small businesses are vital to our economy and our small business owners have driven this economic recovery. The Gillingham and Rainham constituency has benefitted from a number of support schemes. The Business Bank’s Start-Up Loan programme has already provided 15 loans, with a value of £88,800 to people starting a business in Gillingham and Rainham. And since May 2010, the Enterprise Finance Guarantee Scheme has supported 10 loans in the area with a total value of £1.06m.

We are committed to making Britain the best place in the world to start and grow a business, and are doing this in a number of ways, including:

• £10 billion of financing will be unlocked for smaller business over the next 5 years by our British Business Bank;
• Government grants of up to £3,000 for better internet connectivity are available to small businesses;

· The Business Support Helpline is available to provide bespoke information and advice;

· £2,000 cut from the National Insurance bills of small firms from the new Employment Allowance; and

· The Growth Accelerator scheme has supported over 19,800 firms and is on track to create 55,000 jobs and deliver £2.2 billion of economic growth by March 2015.

Small businesses are vital to our economy and our small business owners have driven this economic recovery. The Gillingham and Rainham constituency has benefitted from a number of support schemes. The Business Bank’s Start-Up Loan programme has already provided 15 loans, with a value of £88,800 to people starting a business in Gillingham and Rainham. And since May 2010, the Enterprise Finance Guarantee Scheme has supported 10 loans in the area with a total value of £1.06m.

We are committed to making Britain the best place in the world to start and grow a business, and are doing this in a number of ways, including:

• £10 billion of financing will be unlocked for smaller business over the next 5 years by our British Business Bank;
• Government grants of up to £3,000 for better internet connectivity are available to small businesses;

· The Business Support Helpline is available to provide bespoke information and advice;

· £2,000 cut from the National Insurance bills of small firms from the new Employment Allowance; and

· The Growth Accelerator scheme has supported over 19,800 firms and is on track to create 55,000 jobs and deliver £2.2 billion of economic growth by March 2015.

Data is available from September 2008 to August 2013 and is available only at the old primary care trust (PCT) level. The constituency of Gillingham and Rainham falls within the boundaries of Medway PCT.

Since September 2008, at least 10,426 girls were reported from Medway PCT to have received the completed course of three doses of human papillomavirus vaccine. This figure will be an underestimate due to some girls receiving their vaccine after the data submission date.

The Department published data for the last five years for achievements at level 4 or above in English in Medway local authority within table 22 of the ‘National curriculum assessments at key stage 2 in England: academic year 2011 to 2012’ statistical first release, which can be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-curriculum-assessments-at-key-stage-2-in-england-academic-year-2011-to-2012

Table 22 can be found within the ‘Local authority tables: SFR33/2012’ link, with figures for all pupils shown in the right-most column. Different years' data can be selected using the drop down menus, located in the top right of the table.

The data requested for Gillingham and Rainham parliamentary constituency have been provided in the following table:

Information showing the number of pupils by first language for England, Medway local authority and Gillingham and Rainham constituency is shown in the table.

A first language other than English is recorded where a child was exposed to the language during early

development and continues to be exposed to this language in their home or community. If a child was exposed to more than one language (which may include English)

during early development the language other than English is recorded, irrespective of the child's proficiency in English.

Information on the number of apprenticeship starts by parliamentary constituency, local education authority and sector subject area are published in a supplementary table to a quarterly Statistical First Release (SFR).

http://www.thedataservice.org.uk/NR/rdonlyres/65659B53-3E92-4E0E-AB62-E106C41B5277/0/Mar2012_Apprenticeships_SSA_Geography_Starts.xls

http://www.thedataservice.org.uk/Statistics/fe_data_library/Apprenticeships/

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the authority to reply.

Letter from Glen Watson dated March 2013:

As Director General for the Office for National Statistics (ONS), I have been asked to reply to your Parliamentary Question asking, what proportion of people were employed in (a) public sector, (b) private sector and (c) third sector organisations in Gillingham and Rainham constituency in each of the last five years for which figures are available. (147214)

Employment statistics for local areas are calculated from the Annual Population Survey (APS). Estimates of people employed in the third sector are currently not available from APS. Individuals employed in voluntary organisations, charities and trusts are included in private sector estimates.

Individuals in the APS are classified to the public or private sector according to their responses to the survey. In the APS the distinction between public and private sector is based on respondents' views about the organisation for which they work. The public sector estimates provided do not correspond to official Public Sector Employment estimates. Those are derived directly from employers and are based on a National Accounts' definition and are not available for areas smaller than regions.

The tables show the number and percentage of people aged 16 to 64 years, who were employed in the public or private sector along with those who were unemployed or inactive, resident in Gillingham and Rainham constituency. These estimates are compiled from APS interviews held during the period October 2011 to September 2012, the latest period available, and the 12 month periods ending in December from 2008 to 2011. It should also be noted that the estimates also include people who were employed but have not provided enough information to be accurately included in either the public or private sectors.

As with any sample survey, estimates from the APS are subject to a margin of uncertainty. A guide to the quality of the estimates is given in the table.

National and local area estimates for many labour market statistics, including employment, unemployment and claimant count are available on the NOMIS website at:

http://www.nomisweb.co.uk

The information requested is shown in the following tables. NHS Blood and Transplant only hold waiting list figures going back to the end of 2005 and are not able to provide the full 10 years of data requested.

This information is not held by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in the manner requested.

DCMS provides grant in aid funding to public bodies that help deliver our strategic aims and objectives for sport. The grant in aid allocated to the Department's sporting bodies since 2005, can be found in the Department's annual reports, and more recently, in funding allocation letters, which can be found at the following links:

http://www.culture.gov.uk/about_us/our_annual_report/1052.aspx

http://www.culture.gov.uk/images/publications/Annual_Report_and_Accounts_2010_11.pdf

and

http://www.culture.gov.uk/publications/9020.aspx

The information we hold on lottery funding for sport in the Gillingham and Rainham constituency and in Medway, is not broken down by type of sport. The DCMS lottery grants database, searchable by constituency and local authority, at:

www.lottery.culture.gov.uk

uses information on lottery grants supplied by the sport lottery distributors, as well as the grants made by the Big Lottery Fund and its predecessor bodies to a wide range of community and grassroots sports projects.

Sport England also publishes details of the exchequer and lottery funding that they have allocated to grassroots sport, since 2007, by constituency and local authority on its website, at the following link:

http://www.sportengland.org/funding/local_spending_data.aspx

UK Sport is responsible for investing exchequer and lottery funds in Britain's best Olympic and Paralympic sports and athletes, this is not region specific.

Between 2004 and 2010, exchequer funding was provided by DCMS towards School Sports Partnerships, which was distributed by the Department for Education (then Department for Children, Schools and Families).

Tables 4A and 4B of the Office for National Statistics release “Internet Access Quarterly Update, 2012 Q2” included the figure that 41,000 adults (aged 16 or over) in the Medway council area had never used the internet, corresponding to 20.1% of the total. Further details are available at:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/rdit2/internet-access-quarterly-update/2012-q2/index.html

Proven reoffending statistics for England and Wales are published quarterly, most recently for the period January to December 2010. These statistics provide proven reoffending rates at the national, regional, probation trust and local authority level, but not at the constituency level.

Table 1 presents the number of offenders in Kent and Medway local authorities who were released from custody, received a non-custodial conviction at court, received a caution, reprimand, warning or tested positive for opiates

or cocaine in each of the years, 2006 to 2010; and the proportion that committed a proven reoffence within a one-year follow-up period.

Proven reoffending is defined as any offence committed in a one-year follow-up period and receiving a court conviction, caution, reprimand or warning in the one-year follow-up period or a further six-month waiting period to allow cases to progress through the courts.