Lord Moylan

Since its establishment in 2020, the Restoration and Renewal (R&R) Delivery Authority has developed a 3D Building Information Model of the Palace of Westminster for the purposes of the R&R Programme. This model is able to generate drawings and plans of any part of the building, as well as enable digital rehearsals prior to physical works taking place.

The Government is committed to extending mandatory pay gap reporting to ethnicity and disability pay gaps for employers with at least 250 employees. It is also committed to ensuring the Public Sector Equality Duty covers all parties exercising public functions.

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.

Please see the letter attached from the Director General for Office for Statistics Regulation.

Ed Humpherson, Director General for Office for Statistics Regulation

The Lord Moylan
House of Lords
London
SW1A 0PW

19 December 2024

Dear Lord Moylan,

As Director General for Office for Statistics Regulation, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking when His Majesty's Government plan to update the assessment of abortion statistics by the UK Statistics Authority in order to comply with the Code of Practice for Statistics (HL3549).

The Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) was established in 2016 and is the regulatory arm of the UK Statistics Authority (the Authority). OSR provides independent regulation of all official statistics produced in the UK. Before 2016, the Authority's Monitoring and Assessment team handled regulatory functions.

Accredited Official Statistics are official statistics that have been independently assessed by OSR to comply with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics. Accredited Official Statistics are called National Statistics in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007.

Abortions Statistics for England and Wales produced by the Office for Health Improvement & Disparities (OHID, was previously Department of Health) were assessed as complying with the Code of Practice for Statistics in February 2012, and National Statistics designation was awarded[1].

It is a requirement of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 that the Code of Practice must continue to be complied with by the statistics producer in relation to the statistics. OSR regularly engages with the Head of Profession for Statistics for the Department of Health and Social Care to obtain general assurance on the Department’s compliance with the Code of Practice, but the OSR team has not discussed the abortion statistics specifically in these conversations.

Once a set of statistics has been assessed, OSR can re-assess them at any time. Reassessments can be initiated as a result of concerns raised with us by users, including citizens, academic experts and policy stakeholders. While we do not currently have any plans to re-assess the abortion statistics in this financial year, we are always open to hearing the concerns of people with an interest in the topic area.

To that end, if you have any concerns regarding the trustworthiness, quality and value of these abortion statistics not complying with the Code of Practice for Statistics, please do contact me through our general contact email regulation@statistics.gov.uk.

Yours sincerely

Ed Humpherson
Director General for OSR

[1]Statistics on Abortion: Letter of Confirmation as National Statistics, https://uksa.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/publication/statistics-on-abortion-letter-of-confirmation-as-national-statistics/

The impugned legislation in Podchasov v. Russia is not directly comparable to the Online Safety Act, which contains robust protections for privacy and freedom of expression. A memorandum on ECHR compatibility was published during Bill passage.

Section 121 of the Act contains stringent safeguards ensuring that Ofcom’s power to issue Technology Notices, including relating to child sexual exploitation and abuse (CSEA) content communicated privately, can only be used when necessary and proportionate. Ofcom must consider a range of matters, including whether there are less intrusive alternatives, the harm to individuals and the required technology’s ability to achieve the purpose described.

The Charity Commission’s role as the independent regulator of charities in England and Wales is to ensure that charity trustees comply with their duties as set out in charity law. The Charity Commission has published guidance for trustees on the use of social media and managing the risks for charities.

The Charity Commission notes the Tribunal’s judgment in this recent case, and is considering what lessons can be applied to future casework.

In the last five years, the Charity Commission has disqualified six individuals in cases that relate to the usage of social media. An individual’s use of social media was the sole basis for disqualification in three cases, while in the other three it was one of several grounds.

The Commission’s decisions to disqualify are subject to robust oversight and can be appealed through review by an independent member of Commission staff, and subsequently to the First Tier Tribunal.

The Charity Commission is independent from the Government in its regulatory decision making.

Departmental settlements have been set following the Budget announcement on October 30. Individual programmes will now be assessed during the departmental Business Planning process.

Students on Erasmus+ placements are exempt from tuition and registration fees at their host institution.

This means that EU nationals who previously came to the UK through Erasmus+ would not have taken out UK student loans, as their placements were supported through Erasmus+ funding.

Local highway authorities are responsible for maintaining their roads under section 41 of the Highways Act 1980. Individual authorities set their own criteria, including the minimum size and depth at which a defect, or pothole, is recorded or repaired, and apply risk‑based assessments that account for local conditions, traffic volumes and safety considerations when making decisions on maintenance programmes. These thresholds therefore vary between areas and are not prescribed by the Department for Transport.

This approach is based on the Well‑managed Highway Infrastructure Code of Practice, which advises that local highway authorities should use a risk‑based approach when assessing and repairing defects, and recommends that each authority determine its own intervention criteria based on local circumstances rather than a single national threshold.

Chiltern worked with Network Rail, DfT and other operators on the December 2026 timetable and services have been timetabled between Oxford, Winslow, Bletchley and Milton Keynes. The Department continues to work closely with Chiltern Railways and other partners to confirm a start date for the first East-West Rail services between Oxford and Milton Keynes Central via Winslow.

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) publishes driving instructor and motorcycle instructor register data online.

The below table shows the number of approved driving instructors (ADI) on the official register in each month since July 2024. Please note, DVSA can currently only publish data up to September 2025.

On 19 May, the Secretary of State for Transport updated Parliament on the progress of the HS2 reset, alongside the publication of her latest parliamentary report.

In addition, the government published the initial findings of HS2 Ltd CEO Mark Wild’s review into the simplification of the railway’s operational specification, and his advice on the estimated cost of cancelling and remediating the programme.

As Mark Wild said before the TSC on 20 May, the HS2 reset will continue to progress and is planned to complete in Spring 2027 when the full delivery baseline is expected to be completed, a new commercial strategy to be implemented, and HS2 Ltd to be reshaped into a leaner, more skilled organisation.

Each train operating company currently records this information in a different way – some by days lost and some by percentage absence rate. The figures below have been collated by DFT Operator. Figures cover periods in public ownership only.

Table 1:

Absences by days lost, presented by Rail Period

(Northern, TransPennine Trains, South Western Railway)

Table 2:

Absences by days lost, presented by calendar month

(Southeastern)

Table 3:

Absences by percentage, presented by Rail Period

(LNER, c2c, Greater Anglia, West Midlands Trains)

The Government will implement the Rare Cancers Act 2026 by ensuring that a National Specialty Lead for Rare Cancers is appointed by summer 2026.

The National Specialty Lead will be based in the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Research Delivery Network (RDN) and will support research delivery for rare cancers research.

National specialty leads are part time roles that are appointed through a competitive process as a secondment to the University of Leeds who provide the NIHR RDN Coordinating Centre, working with and on behalf of the Department. The National Specialty Lead for Rare Cancers will be appropriately renumerated with a salary grade that is consistent with their substantive post.

Implementing the Rare Cancers Act 2026 will make it easier for clinical trials on rare cancers to be delivered in England.

The Government will implement the Rare Cancers Act 2026 by ensuring that a National Specialty Lead for Rare Cancers is appointed by summer 2026.

The National Specialty Lead will be based in the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Research Delivery Network (RDN) and will support research delivery for rare cancers research.

The National Specialty Lead will not directly manage a budget or full-time equivalent (FTE) staff direct reports. Instead, as part of the RDN’s Health and Care Leadership team, the National Specialty Lead will work closely with researchers to develop their national funding bids for rare cancers research and deliver strategic work supported by FTE staff across NIHR partners, including the RDN, NIHR Industry Hub, and NIHR Infrastructure.

Implementing the Rare Cancers Act 2026 will make it easier for clinical trials on rare cancers to be delivered in England.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) evaluates all newly licensed cancer medicines and may recommend promising treatments for use through the Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF) where there is too much clinical uncertainty for routine commissioning. Under these arrangements, cancer medicines are made available to National Health Service patients for a defined period while further real‑world evidence is collected to address the uncertainties identified in NICE’s original appraisal.

At the end of the managed access period, NICE undertakes a full re‑appraisal of the medicine. This re‑appraisal considers all the evidence gathered during CDF use alongside updated clinical and cost‑effectiveness analyses. NICE then determines whether the medicine should be routinely funded by the NHS, or whether it cannot be recommended for routine commissioning. This re‑appraisal process is one of the limited circumstances in which NICE routinely re‑evaluates previous decisions.

In 2022, NICE updated its methods and replaced the earlier end‑of‑life flexibilities with the severity modifier. As a result, re‑appraisals of cancer medicines that originally entered the CDF under end‑of‑life criteria are now conducted in line with NICE’s current methods framework, ensuring consistency, fairness, and opportunity‑cost neutrality across all appraisals. NICE has recommended 96% of the medicines that it has re-appraised following a period of managed access for routine NHS use. Where NICE is unable to recommend a medicine for routine use following the period of managed access, it remains available for existing patients but is no longer routinely funded for new patients.

A number of National Health Service treatment options are available for patients with mantle cell lymphoma, and may include:

- chemotherapy plus rituximab;

- autologous stem cell transplant;

- ibrutinib;

- zanubrutinib;

- brexucabtagene autoleucel, a type of chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy; and/or

- supportive care.

None of these treatments are precluded on the basis of ethnicity, age, or a combination of the two, but available options will be dependent on individual clinical circumstances and any prior treatment or treatments received.

Potential treatment options are also currently being appraised by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and therefore could be made available within England in the future, subject to positive recommendations on NHS adoption being reached. These are: Acalabrutinib with bendamustine and rituximab; and Ibrutinib with R-CHOP.

202 patients have received brexucabtagene autoleucel, a form of CAR-T therapy, for the treatment of mantle cell lymphoma via the Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF). This data is taken from NHS England’s prior approval system. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is currently re-evaluating the evidence on clinical outcomes collected through its use in the CDF in its ongoing re-evaluation of brexucabtagene autoleucel.

NICE published final draft guidance on 24 December 2025 in which it was not able to recommend brexucabtagene autoleucel for the treatment of relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma in adults who have had two or more lines of systemic treatment that included a Bruton's tyrosine kinase inhibitor. This is because the extent of brexucabtagene autoleucel’s clinical benefit is uncertain. There are also uncertainties in the economic model because there is not enough evidence to tell if the cancer can be ‘cured’ in people having brexucabtagene autoleucel and it is not known how long people live after having brexucabtagene autoleucel. The cost-effectiveness estimates are also substantially above the range that NICE considers an acceptable use of National Health Service resources. NICE has not yet published final guidance and stakeholders have recently had an opportunity to appeal NICE’s recommendations.

The Government recognises that the potential withdrawal of brexucabtagene autoleucel as a treatment for future patients will be concerning for patients and their families, but it is right that these decisions are taken independently and on the basis of the available evidence. In line with an arrangement between NHS England and the company, if NICE’s final guidance does not recommend use, patients who started treatment during the managed access period can continue their treatment.