Written Statements

Thursday 19th December 2024 Written Statements

Thursday 19 December 2024

Future of Harland & Wolff

Thursday 19th December 2024 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Jonathan Reynolds)]

National security is the foundation of our plan for change—without it we cannot deliver on our milestones to raise living standards across the UK, with good, skilled, productive jobs.

I am pleased to announce that a commercial deal has been reached, subject to approvals, that will see Navantia UK—a specialist in shipbuilding—purchase Harland & Wolff’s shipyards in Belfast, Arnish and Methil in Scotland, and Appledore in Devon. This industry-led deal will secure the future of all four of Harland & Wolff’s shipyards and protect around 1,000 jobs across the UK.

The deal will ensure the delivery of the Ministry of Defence’s fleet solid support (FSS) contract. The Government have worked closely with Navantia UK on the future of the FSS programme. We have agreed with Navantia UK on the absolute minimum of changes to the contract, ensuring its continued delivery.

Defence is at the heart of the industrial strategy, where we have identified it as one of eight growth-driving sectors for the UK economy. Our industrial strategy is unreservedly pro-business, engaging on complex issues that are barriers to growth and investment.

Navantia UK has committed to invest significantly on commercial terms into Harland & Wolff’s shipyards, a major investment into the UK’s industrial base. This is a good deal for Harland & Wolff, its employees, and the British shipbuilding sector more broadly, as it provides the best opportunity to sustain essential sovereign shipbuilding capacity and capability for future naval work, safeguarding both current and future jobs in the UK.

We are committed to supporting vibrant and successful shipbuilding and offshore fabrication industries, and our skilled workforces who deliver them, in all parts of the UK, in which Harland & Wolff has an important role to play.

[HCWS344]

Water Bills: Price Review 2024 Final Determinations

Thursday 19th December 2024 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Steve Reed)]

Our water system needs fixing. Our rivers, lakes and seas are choked by pollution.

Under the Conservatives, our sewerage system crumbled. They irresponsibly let water companies divert customers’ money to line the pockets of their bosses and shareholders.

The public are right to be angry after they have been left to pay the price of Conservative failure.

This Labour Government will ringfence money earmarked for investment so it can never be diverted for bonuses and shareholder payouts. We will clean up our rivers, lakes and seas for good.

Ofwat, the independent economic regulator, has today published its final determinations for price review 2024. This independent process sets the prices water companies can charge customers in the form of water bills over five years. This includes a confirmed £104 billion of water company expenditure over the next five years—2025 to 2030. This is the highest level of investment in the water sector since privatisation. This investment will be crucial to deliver the improvements in the sector that the public expect to see.

In the next five years, the increase in bills is expected to pay for:

£12 billion investment to reduce harm from storm overflows which will reduce storm overflow pollution by 27%, including upgrading more than 2,800 storm overflows.

An £8 billion investment to boost water supply, including progressing nine new reservoirs.

Leakage reduction of 17%—taking it to the lowest since privatisation.

30,000 new jobs across the country.

While this much-needed investment in the sector is welcomed, no one wants to see these bill rises, but customers have been left to pay the price of Conservative failure.

This Labour Government will ensure that this can never happen again by ringfencing money earmarked for investment, so it is spent on cutting sewage spills and improving services for customers—not on bonuses and shareholder payouts. If the money is not spent how it was intended, it will be refunded to customers.

We expect water companies to put robust support in place for customers that are struggling to pay their bills, and ensure customers know how to access it. This includes:

Bill discount schemes such as WaterSure and social tariffs.

Actively offering payment breaks or payment holidays.

Adjusting payment plans urgently to help with sudden changes in household finances.

Simplifying the processes for customers to get extra assistance.

Helping customers get advice on benefits and managing debts.

Going forward, we have a plan to fundamentally reset the water sector—so we are not just fixing past failure, but also unlocking opportunities for the future.

We are putting accountability back at the heart of our water system. The Water (Special Measures) Bill will put a stop to the behaviour that has so enraged the public. It will strengthen regulations, including new powers to ban the payment of bonuses for water bosses if environmental standards are not met and bring criminal charges against lawbreakers, with new, tougher penalties including imprisonment when companies obstruct investigations.

We have launched an independent commission into the water sector and its regulation to put customers first, transform how our water system works and clean up rivers, lakes and seas for good. This is expected to form the largest review of the industry since privatisation.

This is a once in a generation chance to reset our water sector and deliver the change we all want to see. After years of pollution and decline, it is time to invest in new opportunities and restore our clean rivers, lakes and seas.

[HCWS345]

Hospices

Thursday 19th December 2024 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Wes Streeting)]

This Government want a society where every person receives high-quality, compassionate care from diagnosis through to the end of life.

Palliative care services are included in the list of services an integrated care board must commission. This promotes a more consistent national approach and supports commissioners in prioritising palliative and end of life care.

Whilst the majority of palliative and end of life care is provided by NHS staff and services, we recognise the vital part that voluntary sector organisations, including hospices, also play in providing support to people at the end of life and their loved ones.

This Government are determined to shift more healthcare out of hospitals and into the community, to ensure patients and their families receive personalised care in the most appropriate setting and palliative and end of life care services, including hospices, will have a big role to play in that shift.

This Government recognise the range of cost pressures the hospice sector has been facing over a number of years. In recognition of this, I am delighted to update the House that £100 million in additional capital funding is being provided to support the hospice sector. We believe that this capital investment will help with physical and operational pressures that hospices are facing. This package will allow hospices to create an improved physical environment and allow them to focus on providing the best quality care to patients.

The £100 million in additional capital funding will be spent across the remainder of this financial year (2024-25) and next (2025-26).

The principal requirements for the £100 million capital funding would be for hospices to deliver improvements that directly benefit patients, have a tangible impact on the physical environment and provide value for money.

I am also delighted to announce that children and young people’s hospices will receive a further £26 million revenue funding for 2025-26. This is a continuation of the funding which until recently was known as the children and young people’s hospice grant.

These two funding streams will help both adult and children’s hospices in England to continue delivering the best end of life care possible for patients, their families, and loved ones.

The allocation and distribution method for both strands of this additional funding will be set out in early 2025.

[HCWS348]

Compulsory Purchase Reforms

Thursday 19th December 2024 Written Statements

[The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)]

I am today publishing a consultation on reforms to the compulsory purchase process and compensation provisions in England and Wales.

The Government are determined to achieve our hugely ambitious plan for change milestones of building 1.5 million safe and decent homes and fast-tracking 150 planning decisions on major infrastructure by the end of this Parliament.

To support the delivery of a range of development, regeneration and infrastructure projects in the public interest, we need to make better use of underutilised land across the country. We know that many local authorities share this objective, but their plans are all too often frustrated by onerous barriers to land assembly, complex purchasing processes, and unrealistic compensation expectations on the part of landowners. The result is significant amounts of developable land that remains unused and overpriced.

In our 2024 general election manifesto, the Government committed to further reforming compulsory purchase compensation rules to improve land assembly, speed up site delivery, and deliver housing, infrastructure, amenity, and transport benefits in the public interest. We promised to take steps to ensure that for specific types of development schemes, landowners are awarded fair compensation rather than inflated prices based on the prospect of planning permission being granted on the land in the future—known as “hope value”.

The eight-week consultation that we are launching today is the next step in fulfilling this commitment. Building on the Government’s 9 September commencement of regulations that enact the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 power to remove “hope value” from the assessment of compensation in compulsory purchase cases by directions where justified in the public interest, the consultation proposes new reforms to the process for compulsorily acquiring land without hope value compensation through general directions on certain types of sites that deliver clear benefits in the public interest.

The objective is twofold. First, to make the compulsory purchase process faster and more efficient so that acquiring authorities are incentivised to make use of it where appropriate. Secondly, to enable more land value to be captured where justified in the public interest and then invested in schemes for public benefit.

The consultation also seeks views on broader reforms to ensure the balance of the assessment of compensation awarded to landowners is fair, both to speed up decisions on compulsory purchase orders and to reduce the administrative costs of undertaking compulsory purchase.

Through this consultation, we want to understand better how the proposed reforms would operate in practice and how successfully they would deliver on our objectives of streamlining the compulsory purchase process and bringing forward much needed development including for housing, regeneration and infrastructure.

Subject to feedback to this consultation, we intend to bring forward measures in the planning and infrastructure Bill to implement the changes.

I look forward to continuing to work with all those with an interest in improving the compulsory purchase process and compensation regimes to make sure our reforms are robust and deliverable.

[HCWS346]

British Sign Language Report 2023-24

Thursday 19th December 2024 Written Statements

[The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)]

This Government are committed to removing barriers and increasing opportunities for deaf and disabled people. The British Sign Language Act 2022 provides us with the ability to do this by creating a greater recognition and understanding of BSL, and also by requiring the Government to report on what each Department listed in the Act has done to promote or facilitate the use of British Sign Language in its communications with the public.

The publication of the first BSL report in 2023 provided a snapshot of the activity that had already been delivered by Government Departments in the first year since the Act gained Royal Assent, while also highlighting the areas of Government communication that needed further improvement.

The second BSL report, covering the period from 1 May 2023 to 30 April 2024, has been published. A copy of the second report will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses and published on gov.uk.

This second report summarises the progress Government Departments have made, and highlights where we have further to go. It shows that there has been an increase in the use of BSL compared to the first report—the overall number of BSL communications produced by Government Departments has more than doubled, from 76 in the first reporting period to 176 during the second reporting period. This represents encouraging progress but also shows that there are still improvements to be made.

This Government want to ensure disabled people’s views and voices are at the heart of all we do and ensuring that Government communications are made accessible to deaf and disabled people is essential in supporting us to achieve this goal.

This Government are committed to going further. We will be working with the BSL advisory board, deaf people and their representative organisations, and with Ministers across Government to continue to make tangible improvements for the deaf community.

We will publish a report every year for the next five years, going further than the frequency required by the Act. The next report will be published in July 2025.

[HCWS347]