Baroness Thomas of Winchester

The government is continuing to consider the remaining parts of section 36 and associated Schedules. We will set out next steps in due course.

The government is considering the remaining parts of section 36 and associated Schedules.

These provisions would impose a duty on those responsible for common parts of leasehold properties, such as landlords, to make reasonable adjustments to those parts if asked to do so by a disabled tenant and if, after consultation, the landlord concluded that it would be reasonable to do so. This would apply in England and Wales.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) runs the Access to Work Scheme which provides grant funding to disabled people, as well as those with a health condition. The grant supports workplace adjustments that go beyond what would normally be expected from an employer through their duty to provide reasonable adjustments as outlined in the Equality Act 2010.   This can include grants to make appropriate changes to a place of work, to make them more accessible for the customer.

In addition, as set out in the Pathways to Work Green Paper published on 18 March, DWP are consulting on the future of the Access to Work scheme.

The department supports adults aged 19+ in England to access English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) provision, funded through the Adult Skills Fund (ASF), subject to the eligibility requirements laid out in the ASF. This allows learners to develop the English language skills they need for everyday life, work or further learning.

Adults who are granted refugee status or humanitarian protection by the Home Office, and asylum seekers whose cases have been pending for six months or longer, are eligible for the same skills funding as any other English resident and are not subject to the normal three year qualifying period to access ASF funding.

Currently, approximately 60% of the ASF is devolved to nine mayoral strategic authorities and delegated to the Mayor of London acting through the Greater London Authority. These authorities are responsible for the provision of adult education and allocation of the ASF in their local areas.

The department is responsible for the remaining ASF in non-devolved areas where colleges and training providers have the freedom and flexibility to determine how they use their ASF to meet the specific needs of their communities.

In non-devolved ASF areas, adults eligible for ASF funding, including those granted humanitarian protection and asylum seekers whose cases have been pending for six months or more, can be fully funded or co-funded to study ESOL, depending on their employment status and salary.

The department has convened an expert working group, made up of representatives from the Muslim community and Islamic finance sector, to keep the Muslim community informed on progress towards introducing an alternative student finance product, compatible with Islamic finance principles.

As part of the department’s engagement with the working group, we are seeking their expert advice and drawing on their feedback to develop our community and stakeholder engagement plans.

It is important that the Muslim community is kept informed on the certification of the alternative student finance product as compatible with Islamic finance principles. We have appointed Islamic finance advisers, the Islamic Finance Council UK, to oversee this work and will provide further updates as the work progresses.

A secure water supply is essential for every home and business throughout the country. It is the foundation of our economy, our communities and our security.

Water companies have a statutory duty to provide a secure supply of water for customers, efficiently and economically and set out how they plan to continue to supply water to their customers through statutory Water Resources Management Plans (WRMPs). These plans set out how each company will continue to meet its supply duty and manage water supply and demand, including fixing leaks, sustainably for at least the next 25 years. Within their plans, water companies must consider all options, including demand management and new water resources including reservoirs and water transfers.

The latest WRMPs include proposals for nine new desalination schemes in England. Further information about the schemes can be found at: Appendix C: Revised draft water resources management plans supply options - GOV.UK.

This Government has been clear that we will change existing policies to ban the use of neonicotinoid pesticides that threaten bees and other vital pollinators by the next General Election.

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency’s (DVSA) main priority is to reduce car practical driving test waiting times, whilst upholding road safety standards.

Measures in place to reduce waiting times for customers at driving test centres include the recruitment of driving examiners, conducting tests outside of regular hours, including at weekends and on public holidays, and buying back annual leave from driving examiners.

As of 7 October 2024, there were 571,047 car practical driving tests booked, and 89,349 driving tests available within the 24-week booking window.

DWP staff are not required to disclose details of any disabilities, however, the information can be voluntarily provided and based on those responses, 127 staff that work for Access to Work have declared a disability.

The Personal Independence Payment (PIP) assessment is designed to take into account the impact of variations in an individual's level of functional impairment. The criteria consider an individual’s ability over a 12-month period, ensuring that fluctuations are taken into account.

Health professionals carrying out PIP assessments are required to assess individuals in line with the statutory criteria, including whether an individual can complete each of the PIP activities, the manner in which they do it, and whether they can complete each activity safely, to an acceptable standard, repeatedly and in a reasonable time period.

The PIP assessment criteria were developed in collaboration with independent specialists in health, social care & disability, including disabled people. The Department aims to continually improve the assessment process through customer insight, stakeholder engagement and qualitative research. We are exploring the option of a Health Impact Record that claimants could use on a voluntary basis, in addition to other evidence, to capture the changing effect of their condition on day-to-day functionality. This could help claimants present evidence in a structured way at or preceding an assessment.

These figures can be found at part 6 of the Personal Independence Payment: Official Statistics to July 2024 and are published quarterly as part of the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) statistics on GOV.UK.

As of July 2024, clearance times for normal rules new claims are 15 weeks “end to end” (from registration to a decision being made) and 10 weeks from the assessment provider (AP) referral to the DWP decision on entitlement.

The clearance times in July 2023 were 15 weeks and 10 weeks respectively. The clearance times peaked in August 2021 at 26 weeks “end to end” (from registration to a decision being made) and 21 weeks from the AP referral to the decision.

This was partly because claims that had been allowed a longer deadline for return of the PIP 2 form during the period late February to late May 2021 were reaching clearance, and partly because priority in some areas was given to claims that had been waiting longer for processing due to the COVID-19 disruption.

• We will be engaging with the responses people have made to the previous government's consultation on Personal Independence Payment, which closed on Monday 22 July.
• We want to thank the many people who invested their time in responding.
• We will be considering our own approach to social security in due course.

Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for the provision and commissioning of local wheelchair services, including children’s wheelchair services, and the development of their local wheelchair service eligibility criteria, based on the needs of their local population. NHS England supports ICBs to commission effective, efficient, and personalised wheelchair services.

NHS England is taking a number of steps to reduce regional variation in the quality and provision of National Health Service wheelchairs, and to support ICBs to reduce delays in people receiving timely intervention and wheelchair equipment. These include:

• establishing a national wheelchair dataset, as data has been collected quarterly from Clinical Commissioning Groups, now ICBs, since July 2015, which looks at waiting times at the various stages across the pathway to enable targeted action if improvement is required, to support the drive for improvements in wheelchair services;
• developing wheelchair currencies, with wheelchair currencies having been developed by NHS England to offer a structured way for providers, commissioners, and systems to understand the complexity of a patient population and to support commissioning conversations;
• introducing personal wheelchair budgets and legal rights for people, which offers a clear framework to commission personalised wheelchair services which are outcomes focused and integrated; and
• co-producing a wheelchair quality framework, which is being co-produced with key stakeholders and people with lived experience, is due to be published by the end of the financial year 2024/25, and will set out quality standards and statutory requirements for ICBs, such as offering personal wheelchair budgets.

All new Entrants to Immigration Enforcement attend a two-day induction. Immigration officers then complete an initial training course lasting 7 weeks. This is a blended programme, consisting of classroom and practical training. If officers pass the course it is followed by a period of 12 months mentoring with an experienced officer, before being deemed fully operationally competent.

The Independent Monitoring Boards for HMP Grendon and Spring Hill have now published their annual reports for 2023, and I have written to them in response. In accordance with the usual practice, the reports, and my replies, are available on the Independent Monitoring Boards’ website (imb.org.uk).

His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) has committed £26.3 million in the period 2020-25 towards the renovation of HMP Grendon, providing fire safety improvements and night sanitation. HMPPS has also identified projects to replace cell windows and refurbish showers at HMP Grendon; and for structural repairs to the Diamond Centre and the refurbishment of the shower facilities at HMP Spring Hill. These will be considered for inclusion in future capital maintenance programmes.

HMPPS is continually reviewing the investment required across the estate, in this and for the next Spending Review period. The proposals will be underpinned by the data collected in recent condition surveys which assessed the fabric, cells, and critical assets at each prison. These will inform long-term forward maintenance registers, which can be prioritised against future capital budgets.