Post Office Horizon: Redress
(1 day, 14 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Gareth Thomas)
The delivery of redress for victims of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal is a key manifesto commitment for this Government. As part of our commitment, I have been actively considering whether the Department for Business and Trade should take on responsibility for the redress schemes currently managed by the Post Office. This is something that postmasters, campaigners and parliamentarians, including the Business and Trade Select Committee, have called for.
I am today announcing that the Department’s Horizon convictions redress scheme (HCRS) will broaden its scope and take on responsibility for redress for postmasters who have had their convictions overturned by the courts.
There will be a three-month transition period to allow for the smooth transfer of active claims from one scheme to the other. At the end of May 2025, claims for redress under the Post Office’s overturned convictions scheme will be transferred into the HCRS and the Post Office will cease to be involved in the administration of redress for overturned convictions. From Tuesday 3 June, all existing and new overturned convictions claims will be processed by the Department for Business and Trade.
There will be no gap in service for postmasters who have claims in the system. During the transition period, the Post Office will continue to actively progress claims towards settlement. The Department is already working with the Post Office to ensure that the transfer process is as smooth as possible for individuals and will work with them and their legal representatives throughout the process. Our intention is for a seamless transition for existing claims.
The assessment framework for HCRS was deliberately aligned with the principles for decision in the overturned convictions scheme to ensure fairness of outcome across the two schemes. All postmasters can therefore expect consistency of treatment between the HCRS and overturned convictions schemes.
In advance of 3 June, I encourage all those eligible to apply for redress under the overturned convictions scheme to continue to engage with the Post Office, which is committed to continuing to process existing claims swiftly until the transfer date.
As I have previously indicated, I am considering whether responsibility for delivering the Horizon shortfall scheme should also be transferred to the Department. I will make a separate statement about that in due course. We have already committed to running the Horizon shortfall scheme appeals process within the Department, rather than allowing it to be run by the Post Office.
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Ukraine
(1 day, 14 hours ago)
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The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Rachel Reeves)
Three years on from the onset of the war in Ukraine, the Government remain steadfast in their support for Ukraine. The UK’s total military, budgetary and humanitarian support now stands at £12.8 billion, and the Government have committed to contributing £3 billion in guaranteed military support each year for as long as it takes.
The Government have on Saturday 1 March 2025 signed a loan agreement with Ukraine, setting out the terms by which the UK will provide our contribution of £2.26 billion under the G7 extraordinary revenue acceleration loans to Ukraine scheme. The loan will be limited recourse. The UK’s contribution is additional to all previous commitments to Ukraine. This agreement enables the Government to begin disbursing ERA funding to Ukraine shortly.
The G7 ERA initiative is set to collectively provide approximately $50 billion in loans to Ukraine. This crucial funding will be repaid using future flows of extraordinary profits generated from immobilised Russian sovereign assets.
On 16 January 2025, The Financial Assistance to Ukraine Act 2025 achieved Royal Assent. This Act provides HM Treasury with the authority to allocate funding towards the UK’s contribution to the ERA. The Government intend to disburse this contribution in three equal tranches over the next three fiscal years, starting in the current fiscal year 2024-25.
Given the urgent needs of Ukraine and the significant public interest in Ukraine’s defence of its territory and our shared aim of peace through strength, as well as the broader security of Europe and the UK, it is imperative that the first tranche of UK support under this scheme is distributed to Ukraine as soon as possible.
Parliamentary approval for additional capital of £752,667,000 for this new expenditure has been sought in a supplementary estimate for HM Treasury. Urgent expenditure estimated at £752,667,000 will be met by repayable cash advances from the Contingencies Fund.
The second and third tranches, payable in future financial years, will be funded in the usual way through the estimates process.
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Species Reintroductions
(1 day, 14 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mary Creagh)
Beavers were once widespread across England but became nationally extinct due to overhunting. In recent years they have returned to our waterways through a combination of licensed releases, escapes, unlawful wild releases and natural breeding.
Beavers can bring many benefits: boosting biodiversity, creating and restoring wetland habitats, and reducing downstream flooding. Their positive effect on water ecosystems can bring benefits for a variety of other organisms, supporting delivery of the Government’s statutory species abundance and extinction targets. River restoration and creation of wetlands by beavers can also potentially contribute towards delivery of the Government’s statutory target to restore or create wildlife-rich habitat outside of protected sites.
The Government are now setting out their approach to the wild release and management of beavers in England.
Licensing the wild release of beavers
The Government have asked Natural England to begin assessing licence applications to release beavers into the wild. Beavers released by these projects will be allowed to expand their range naturally, with management plans in place to promote their return to the landscape. On 10 February 2025 the National Trust received a licence to release beavers into the wild as part of their Purbeck beaver project in Dorset.
Beaver reintroductions must be carefully planned to avoid negative effects on farming, food production, and infrastructure. They can pose challenges to those responsible for land and infrastructure in some locations, especially if their activity is not effectively managed.
How the licensing scheme will work
A licence is needed to release any beavers into the wild. Applications will be considered against comprehensive wild release criteria. The criteria have been developed through extensive engagement with stakeholders.
Applicants will need to submit an expression of interest to Natural England who will assess the project. Only those likely to meet the criteria will be invited to make a full application.
The first expression of interest window will open from 1 March 2025 and will close on 2 May 2025. There will be more opportunities to submit expressions of interest on a regular basis. Full licence applications will need to:
demonstrate clear environmental benefits;
provide evidence of meaningful engagement with local landowners and managers;
explain how the risks of identified negative outcomes will be effectively avoided, mitigated or managed.
These criteria have been designed to ensure that only high-benefit, low-risk projects are licensed, and that beavers are reintroduced at a measured pace in a well-managed way.
Projects must help communities adapt to living with beavers. All new reintroduction projects that receive a licence must develop a project plan. This will usually need to cover at least a 10-year period to support the introduction of beavers into a landscape. The project plan must include an exit strategy for transition to longer-term beaver management to ensure that support to farmers, landowners and local communities continues after this initial period. Natural England must be consulted before a reintroduction project starts its exit strategy.
We will keep this approach under review. We will use what we learn to inform the long-term approach to beaver management in England, and where necessary to update our guidance.
Support for living alongside beavers
We recognise that some groups and individuals are concerned about the effects of beaver activity. Beavers can cause problems in some situations. However, with the right support and management in place, the overall benefits provided by wild beaver populations more than outweigh the risks.
We want to make sure that support is available to help beavers and people live alongside each other. Our five-step beaver management approach ensures effective management of beavers and supports people to live alongside them.
Environmental land management support and advice for land managers will be available through countryside stewardship higher tier and capital grants. In addition, some actions in the sustainable farming incentive have a role to play in riparian management.
If lower-level interventions without a licence are ineffective or not appropriate, licensed management of beavers may be considered, which can include removing or reducing the height of a dam. As a last resort, beavers may be trapped and translocated, or lethally controlled.
Managing existing wild beaver populations
Beavers are already present and breeding in the wild in several catchments in England. One population, on the River Otter in Devon, has already been allowed to remain and expand naturally following the licensed River Otter beaver trial.
We want to support the ongoing effective management of all existing populations. The Government will allow all existing beaver populations to remain and expand naturally, and will ensure that appropriate management measures are put in place. Existing wild populations will be proactively managed through their local beaver management group. Natural England will support these groups to develop their capabilities. This will include helping them to:
develop and implement beaver management and stakeholder engagement plans;
conduct risk and benefit analyses to an equivalent standard as new wild release applications.
We will not tolerate the continued unlawful release of beavers. It is an offence in England under section 14 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 to release a beaver into an enclosure or the wild except under the authority of a licence from Natural England. Doing so without a licence carries a penalty of either an unlimited fine or up to six months in prison.
Developing a long-term management plan for beavers
Our management approach and the support available for people living alongside beavers will develop and adapt to ensure that we continue to meet the challenges posed by an expanding beaver population. Building on the approach that we have already developed for wild release and management, we will collaboratively develop a management plan for the long-term reintroduction and recovery of beaver populations in England. This will help us identify any changes we need to make to adapt to an increasing beaver population, before problems arise. In this way, we will continue to support farmers, landowners and local communities in the long term.
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Rare Diseases Action Plan
(1 day, 14 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Ashley Dalton)
The Government published England’s fourth Rare Diseases Action Plan on www.gov.uk on Friday, which was international Rare Disease Day. This Government remain committed to improving the lives of people living with rare diseases, and today’s action plan provides more detail on the steps we will be taking over the next year to meet these four priorities.
The UK Rare Diseases Framework was published in January 2021 following the National Conversation on Rare Diseases, which received nearly 6,300 responses. This helped identify the four priorities of the framework in tackling rare diseases: helping patients get a final diagnosis faster, increasing awareness of rare diseases among healthcare professionals, better co-ordination of care, and improving access to specialist care, treatment and drugs.
The 2025 action plan updates on progress we have made across the system—in the NHS, in health education, in regulation—to address the four priorities of the framework:
On faster diagnosis, the Generation Study has started recruitment to pilot whole genome sequencing of newborns to identify rare diseases before symptoms develop.
On raising awareness in healthcare professionals, specific strategies for increasing awareness of rare diseases in the nursing and midwifery, pharmacy and primary care workforce have been published.
On better co-ordination of care, research is now under way on how to improve better co-ordination of care in the NHS.
On improved access to specialist care, treatment and drugs, we have worked with industry, clinicians and patients to understand the challenges and opportunities of early access pathways for rare disease therapies.
The action plan also commits to three new actions for the year ahead. This will expedite improvements in co-ordination of care to patients, and looks ahead to enabling new therapies to reach people who need them as quickly as possible and maintaining the UK’s position as a leader in life sciences:
NHS England is incentivising providers to run multi-system “carousel” clinics to enable patients to see multiple specialists on the same day, reducing the logistical burden on people living with rare diseases and their families.
The new clinical trial legislation laid last year will enable the MHRA to address some of the challenges in research for new rare disease therapies.
NHS England will explore the development of an operational framework for service delivery of individualised, or “n-of-1”, gene therapies to patients within the NHS. These are truly cutting-edge therapies that have the potential to change and save lives.
Centring the voices of those with lived experience remains an underpinning principle of the approach to rare diseases. The advocacy and expertise of the patient organisations, patients and families, has raised the awareness of rare diseases and driven progress. The action plan will be monitored for progress and outcomes during 2025-26.
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GP Contract: 2025-26 Consultation
(1 day, 14 hours ago)
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The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Wes Streeting)
I wrote to the House on 6 January announcing an £889 million proposed funding uplift to general practice, the largest funding uplift in years. Alongside this, I shared an overview of some proposals for the 2025-26 GP contract consultation.
I am pleased to share that the BMA General Practitioners Committee in England, have voted to accept the 2025-26 GP contract for the first time in four years. As the front door of our NHS, general practice plays a key role in managing pressures across the system and delivering care closer to home. This is an important milestone in the Government’s plan for change, and begins delivery on key manifesto commitments to bring back the family doctor and end the 8 am scramble, marking a step forward in fixing our NHS and resetting relationships with the profession.
Over the formal consultation with the GPCE officer team, changes to the 2025-26 GP contract were discussed with my Department and NHS England officials. I am grateful for their work at pace to collaborate and agree a fair deal for the NHS, for the profession and for patients. The 2025-26 GP contract will deliver increased investment, improvements in patient access and outcomes, reduced bureaucracy, and increased flexibilities for primary care networks to hire the right staff mix for their local population. The GPCE officer team recommended this package to the wider committee, which voted in favour. This signals the beginning of our work together to achieve the “left shift”, moving more care from hospitals into the community, ensuring the focus is on prevention and not sickness.
This package will support bringing back the family doctor by incentivising practices to identify patients who would benefit most from continuity of care. We will also build capacity in general practice by increasing flexibilities in how they recruit staff. This will improve productivity, optimise workforce balance, and support the hiring of more GPs and practice nurses.
We will make progress in moving towards a neighbour-hood health service through a greater focus on prevention and system integration. To achieve this, we will remove 32 outdated targets while strengthening existing targets for cardiovascular disease, supporting the Government’s mission to reduce deaths from the biggest killers. We will also reinforce integration with community pharmacies through better access to records, enhancing patient care co-ordination. To make significant progress on cutting waiting lists, GPs will be encouraged to seek advice from specialists when unsure about making a referral to hospital. Up to £80 million of funding will be made available for doctors to liaise with specialist consultants, which can avoid people being added on to waiting lists unnecessarily.
We will improve digital access by requiring practices to have their online consultation portals switched on throughout core hours, providing parity with walk-in and phoning in. This will ensure patients can reach their practice via the means that suits them best and helping to end the 8 am scramble. To empower patients and increase transparency, we will introduce a patient charter that clearly outlines what patients can expect from general practice and what general practice can expect from patients, improving communication and service use.
Aside from the consultation, we have made significant strides over the last eight months, including the addition of GPs into additional roles reimbursement scheme from October 2024, listening to the profession’s call for action required to tackle GP unemployment. I look forward to continued collaborative working with the general practice profession, as we build a better future for general practice and step back from collective action.
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Islamophobia: Definition Working Group
(1 day, 14 hours ago)
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The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Angela Rayner)
The Government have established a working group to provide a definition of anti-Muslim hatred/Islamophobia, chaired by the right hon. Dominic Grieve KC.
The group will advise the Government on how to best understand, quantify and define prejudice, discrimination and hate crimes against Muslims. Details of the group’s terms of reference and membership will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
Incidents of anti-Muslim hate crime are at a record high in England and Wales, and the group’s work will support wider efforts to tackle religiously motivated hate crime, delivering on the Government’s plan for change mission for safer streets.
Alongside drawing on their own expertise, members will engage widely to ensure the definition accounts for the variety of backgrounds and experiences of Muslim communities across the United Kingdom.
The group’s proposed definition will be non-statutory and will seek to provide the Government and other relevant bodies with an understanding of unacceptable treatment and prejudice against Muslim communities.
The group’s proposed definition must be compatible with the unchanging right of British citizens to exercise freedom of speech and expression—which includes the right to criticise, express dislike of, or insult religions and or the beliefs and practices of adherents. This work will support these important freedoms, ensuring that they are preserved.
The Government will continue to work with communities and other partners to heal the divisions of recent years and renew our country together. The working group announced today is an important step in that mission.
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Commonhold
(1 day, 14 hours ago)
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The Minister for Housing and Planning (Matthew Pennycook)
For far too many leaseholders, the reality of home ownership has fallen woefully short of the dream—their lives marked by an intermittent, if not constant, struggle with punitive and escalating ground rents, unjustified permissions and administration fees, unreasonable or extortionate charges, and onerous conditions imposed with little or no consultation. This is not what home ownership should entail.
We remain steadfast in our commitment to providing leaseholders with greater rights, powers and protections over their homes. Alongside the extensive programme of detailed secondary legislation that we are bringing forward to implement the remaining provisions of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024, we will further reform the existing leasehold system by legislating to tackle unregulated and unaffordable ground rents, removing the disproportionate and draconian threat of forfeiture, acting to protect leaseholders from abuse and poor service at the hands of unscrupulous managing agents, and enacting remaining Law Commission recommendations on enfranchisement and the right to manage.
However, while we are working to provide leaseholders subject to unfair and unreasonable practices with relief as quickly as possible, we will not lose sight of the wider set of reforms necessary to honour our manifesto commitment to finally bring the feudal leasehold system to an end.
The Government are determined to ensure that commonhold becomes the default tenure. To take a crucial step toward realising that objective, we are today publishing a “Commonhold White Paper” that sets out the proposed new commonhold model for home ownership in England and Wales.
Commonhold is a modern home ownership structure that is used widely around the world. It is not merely an alternative to leasehold ownership, but a radical improvement on it. At the heart of the commonhold model is a simple principle: the people who should own buildings, and who should exercise control over their management, shared facilities and related costs, are not third-party landlords, but the people who live in flats within them and have a direct stake in their upkeep.
In enabling flats to be owned on a freehold basis, commonhold ensures that the interests of homeowners are preserved in perpetuity rather than their value depreciating over time as it does under leasehold, and it transfers decision-making powers to homeowners so they have a greater say over how their home is managed and the bills they pay, as well as flexibility to respond to the changing needs of their building and its residents.
Unlike many other countries across the world that moved away from leasehold ownership structures long ago, flats here continue to be owned, almost universally, on a leasehold basis.
That is partly the result of the natural inclination to stick with the familiar, but also because there was more money to be made by selling leasehold flats through the significant additional income to be generated from leasehold homeowners. Yet the shortcomings of this form of home ownership are obvious and the case for decisive change is overwhelming.
Commonhold was introduced in England and Wales in 2004 through the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002, but for a variety of reasons it failed to establish itself and is now out of date. Having learnt the lessons of that false dawn, it is now time to finish the job. Commonhold-type models are used all over the world. The autonomy and control that it provides for are taken for granted in many other countries. It can and does work and this Government are determined, through both new commonhold developments and conversions to commonhold, to see it take root.
As the White Paper makes clear, we intend to reinvigorate commonhold through the introduction of a comprehensive new legal framework based on the vast majority of the recommendations made by the Law Commission in its 2020 report. This new legal framework will be supplemented by a ban on the sale of new leasehold flats, so that commonhold becomes the default tenure.
We will consult later this year on the best approach to banning new leasehold flats so it can work effectively alongside a robust ban on leasehold houses, and we will seek input from industry and consumers on other fundamental points such as potential exemptions for legitimate use and how to minimise disruption to housing supply.
I know my ministerial colleagues in Wales share our desire to deliver these bold reforms and so we will continue to work jointly with the Welsh Government to ensure they apply across England and Wales.
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