We take the health and safety of our staff in the UK and overseas seriously. We are working with partners in all of the affected countries to maintain adequate health facilities and medical evacuation provision for staff. We keep this under constant review. In some cases we have removed dependents from Posts because of the impact of ebola on local health infrastructure. There are checks and information for all passengers leaving affected countries. Our staff understand the ebola symptoms and to contact a medical professional immediately if necessary.

I refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave earlier today to my hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) and my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine).

Iran continues to support the Assad regime through the provision of Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) Qods Force personnel, weaponry and billions of dollars of financial support. In June 2011, the following senior IRGC commanders were sanctioned under EU Syria sanctions: Brigadier Commander Mohammad Ali Jafari, General Commander, IRGC; Major General Qassem Suleimani, Commander of Special Forces, IRGC Qods; and Hossein Taeb, Deputy IRGC Commander for Intelligence. We continue to monitor Iranian activity in Syria.

The most recent official statistics (for 2009-10) show that 9 million parking fines are issued a year by local authorities in England. From 1997-98 to 2010-11, local authority total income in England from parking rose from £608 million to £1.3 billion; net profits from parking rose from £223 million to £512 million in the same period. A recent survey by LV= car insurance has estimated that councils now hand out 10.7 million fines a year across the UK, and British motorists pay out over £30 million each month in parking fines

Councils in England are forecast to make £635 million net profit from parking charges fines in 2013-14. Yet legislation passed by Parliament is clear that parking charges and fines should not be used to raise general revenue. However, some councils are raising money illegally from parking.

In July, the High Court ruled that one London borough had illegally hiked parking charges to raise general revenue. The BBC television programme, Inside Out, has also drawn to my attention parking contracts signed by local authorities where outsourced parking wardens are rewarded for issuing more fines—in flagrant breach of the Government's operational guidance to councils. The Local Government Association's own participatory budgeting tool has also encouraged councils to raise parking charges and fines as a source of general revenue.

Such practices are a breach of fundamental constitutional principles from Magna Carta, the Petition of Right and the Bill of Rights: taxes should not be levied without recourse to Parliament, and the justice system should not be corrupted to raise money.

Unreasonable parking charges and fines push up hard-working people's cost of living. If parking is too expensive or difficult, shoppers will drive to out of town supermarkets or just shop online, undermining the vitality of town centres and leading to ‘ghost town’ high streets.

Higher parking charges and more parking fines were the explicit policy of the last Government. Labour DCLG Ministers called for councils to charge for more services, including parking, bemoaned that: ‘Only one in five councils are using charging to the full potential... [such as for] reducing congestion’ (Speech to the Local Government Association, 2 July 2008). Planning guidance issued by the Labour Government in 2001 (so-called PPG13) told councils to hike parking charges and adopt aggressive enforcement to discourage drivers.

By contrast, this Government has already:

Scrapped the Whitehall policy that pressured councils to hike car parking charges as a ‘demand management measure’ to discourage car use (PPG13).

Removed Whitehall restrictions which restricted the provision of off-street parking spaces;

Abolished the Whitehall policy which inhibited parking charge competition between council areas, and instead introduced a new policy that says parking charges should not undermine the vitality of town centres;

Introduced a policy that parking enforcement should be proportionate;

Issued new planning practice guidance on removing street clutter and encouraging the provision of shopper-friendly parking space provision; and

Introduced the local retention of business rates, which means that councils benefit from business and retail growth in town centres, rather than just hiking parking charges.

In December, the Government published proposals for consultation to reform parking rules further including:

Stopping CCTV being used for on-street parking enforcement;

Supporting local shops by updating parking enforcement guidance;

Tackling wrongly-issued fines and removing disincentives for appeals;

Stopping unacceptable parking fine collection practices;

Reviewing unnecessary yellow lines and the scope for residents' reviews;

Reviewing the grace period for parking offences; and

Freezing parking penalty charges.

The Government is also updating the local government Transparency Code to increase information about local parking charges and the number of parking spaces.

To further facilitate public scrutiny on parking fines, I am today placing in the Library of the House, a table showing the amount of money raised in parking fines in each local authority in England. I hope this illustrates the need for the further reforms we have proposed.

All exclusions from school must be lawful, reasonable and fair. Statutory guidance sets out schools' responsibilities in relation to exclusion and there is no excuse for schools not to adhere to the correct process. Ofsted would take seriously any evidence that a school had acted unlawfully in excluding a pupil.

The Department for Education is funding the National Autistic Society at £440,000 over two years. Part of this funding is being used to employ an exclusions adviser who can give advice to parents and professionals to help prevent unlawful exclusion and reduce the need for formal exclusion from school.

Officials from the Department are due to meet Ambitious about Autism to discuss the Ruled Out report and will continue to work with them and other autism groups to improve provision for children and young people with autism.

Decision-making regarding the equipment in ambulances is an operational issue and is therefore a matter for the local ambulance trust.

The Ministry of Defence routinely deploys a Royal Navy frigate or destroyer and a Royal Fleet Auxiliary vessel to the Caribbean under the Atlantic Patrol Task (North). These vessels conduct anti-smuggling operations in close co-operation with international partners as part of their wider tasking in the region. These deployments are supplemented with other Royal Navy ships as they transit through the area en-route to, or from, other operational deployments. We will seek to continue these commitments where resources and availability of ships permit.

We are also working to improve our co-operation with regional partners. For example, we have recently concluded an agreement with the US Coast Guard to allow their helicopters to operate from a RFA vessel. On 22 January 2014 a US Coast Guard helicopter

operating from RFA Wave Knight participated in a counter-narcotics operation resulting in a seizure of 1.3 metric tonnes of cocaine with an estimated wholesale value of £60 million.

Through our platform of diplomatic missions in the Caribbean, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) supports wider British Government efforts to tackle drug trafficking and organised crime in the region. These efforts include National Crime Agency-led operational activity to disrupt the flow of drugs en route to the UK (particularly cocaine) and capacity building work with Caribbean law enforcement agencies and criminal justice systems. We enjoy good levels of co-operation from and co-ordination with Caribbean Governments, which is an integral part of our work in this area. As such, British high commissioners and ambassadors are regularly in touch with Caribbean Governments at the highest level and FCO Ministers with their Caribbean counterparts.

My Department is taking the following steps to support community pubs:

The Assets of Community Value Regulations implementing the Community Right to Bid provisions of the Localism Act 2011 are giving communities a fairer chance to bid to take over local assets of community value, including pubs.

Research by the Campaign for Real Ale shows that 300 pubs are now listed as assets of community value.

A £19 million support programme to help eligible community organisations to take on the community ownership and management of assets that are important to them, including pubs, is in place.

We are providing funding for business partners, such as Pub is the Hub and the Plunkett Foundation, to expand their work in helping communities to bring their pubs into community ownership and to diversify or innovate their provision of services.

The National Planning Policy Framework makes clear that to deliver the social, recreational and cultural facilities that communities need, planning policies and decisions should provide for the use of such facilities, including pubs, and guard against their unnecessary loss.

In the autumn statement on 5 December 2013 we announced a range of business rates measures to help small businesses such as community pubs, including extending the doubling of small business rate relief by a further year, until April 2015, and a £1,000 discount in 2014-15 and 2015-16 for premises with a rateable value of under £50,000.

We have set up a cross-Whitehall Ministerial Group on Pubs to consider and co-ordinate Government policies effecting pubs.

In addition, the Government has not only scrapped the last Administration's plans for a 10% rise in cider duties (the so-called cider tax), but at Budget 2013 we cut beer duty, amounting to a pint of average strength beer being reduced by 1p, and scrapped the beer escalator which would have further increased beer duty by 3p. This move has been warmly welcomed across the pub and brewing industry.

Pubs have also benefited from action the Government has taken to reduce red tape affecting the pub sector. For example, we have provided greater flexibility on weights and measures, allowing beer and wine to be sold in different sizes than was previously allowed by regulations, and have made it easier for pubs to play live music.

Government is keen to encourage the widest possible interest and engagement in the first world war centenary, including that of young people. There is lots of material available online from the National Archives to the BBC In addition, the dedicated centenary pages on GOV.UK website provide links to key partners—such as Imperial War Museums, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and the Institute of Education—who are delivering lots of WW1 educational resources for young people.

Over 60 UK companies have secured contracts relating to the Sochi Olympic Winter Games, many of which have received support from UK Trade & Investment (UKTI).

During Games time in Sochi, UKTI will host a business networking event and a programme of meetings and briefings to expose UK companies to future sporting events organising and bid committees and other stakeholders. This activity will allow UK companies to directly engage with senior individuals overseeing the procurement of products and services for large budget major sports events.

Efforts on Sochi form part of UKTI's ongoing Olympic Legacy Strategy maximising the opportunity of major events to promote UK capability and attract investment. The programme has delivered £11.06 billion benefit to the UK economy to date.

Ministry of Defence (MOD) Ministers hold regular discussions with officials and Cabinet colleagues on a range of land and property matters, including the possible disposal of surplus MOD property.

The Information Economy Strategy, published in June 2013, showed employers from all sectors face difficulties finding people with the right IT skills. The Information Economy sector council has set up an industry-led working group to agree concrete actions by the spring to address gaps in digital skills.

The Government has already taken steps to address this issue. To ensure young people have a strong grounding in computational thinking and programming skills we are introducing a new computing curriculum into schools in September which is more rigorous than existing ICT learning. We have also recently announced £40 million funding over 2014-15 and 2015-16 for 20,000 more Higher Apprenticeships, more than doubling current volumes. This includes the IT Higher Apprenticeship, developed as an alternative route into the sector for young people with A-Levels or equivalent qualifications.

We have set up the UK Israel Tech Hub at our embassy in Tel Aviv to build on strengths and complementarities between the UK and Israel in technology, innovation and business. The Hub promotes collaboration between Israeli and British entrepreneurs, companies and investors in key sectors including digital tech, life sciences, cleantech, financial technology and the Arab tech sector.

We recently appointed an experienced and highly successful UK entrepreneur, Mr Saul Klein, to be the UK's first Tech Envoy and, because of its tremendous advances in technology, we chose Israel to be the country on which to focus to promote the tech relationship with the UK.

Our UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) team at the embassy in Tel Aviv has helped, and will continue to help, UK companies to export to Israel through UKTI's range of marketing services.

My noble Friend the Minister of State for Trade and Investment, Lord Green, will be visiting Israel in March 2013 at the head of an oil and gas business delegation to promote UK expertise into Israel's young oil and gas sector.

Two-way trade in goods with Israel continues to grow and last year reached £3.8 billion, with UK exports to Israel at £1.5 billion.

The Office for National Statistics publish estimates of the value of the UK’s trade with Israel in Table 9.3 of the Pink Book 2012 publication, available at:

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/bop/united-kingdom-balance-of-payments/index.html