Lord Norton of Louth

The Senior Deputy Speaker has asked me, as Chair of the Services Committee, to respond on his behalf. 856,751 mail items were received on the Parliamentary Estate in 2024. The Administration does not count which House each item goes to but estimates that approximately 10 to 15 per cent of these items were destined for the House of Lords. These figures do not include courier items or internal mail.

Please note that this figure refers to the whole Parliamentary Estate, not just the Palace of Westminster.

The Civil Service Code sets out the responsibility of civil servants to advise ministers in accordance with section 3(6) of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010. The Government takes seriously its commitment to uphold and support our constitutional arrangements including the conventions which underpin the relationship between Government and Parliament. The Leaders of both Houses are responsible for representing the interests of Parliament in Government and ensuring that the customs and principles that make Parliament unique are properly represented. The Parliamentary Capability Team provides training for civil servants which emphasises the importance of these constitutional principles. Each Government department has a parliamentary team which works with civil servants to give advice on how parliament works.

It continues to be Government policy that all bills that have reached Royal Assent are eligible for post-legislative scrutiny three to five years after enactment. It can be agreed between the department and the relevant Commons select committee that a review is not required. Post-legislative scrutiny memoranda have been published on GOV.UK where Acts have undergone the process.

​​Delivering the government’s objective to break down the barriers to opportunity for every child relies on a highly skilled workforce in schools, with high quality teaching the in-school factor that makes the biggest difference to a child’s outcomes.

There are now 468,693 full time equivalent teachers in state-funded schools in England but numbers have not kept pace with demand. Of the 3,435 state-funded secondary schools in England, 71.2% employed a teacher with a relevant qualification in citizenship. This figure relates to schools that supplied teacher qualification data. In some cases, teachers with a qualification in another subject may also teach citizenship in the school.

We are focused on the need to boost teacher numbers in priority subjects across the country. This is why the government has set out the ambition to recruit 6,500 new expert teachers across our schools, both mainstream and specialist, and colleges over the course of this Parliament.

Measures will include getting more teachers into shortage subjects, tackling retention issues and supporting areas that face recruitment challenges. The government will continue to work alongside the sector as we develop our delivery plan and seek to re-establish teaching as an attractive profession.

​We have made good early progress towards this key pledge by ensuring teaching is once again an attractive and respected profession, key to which is ensuring teachers receive the pay they deserve. That is why this government has accepted in full the School Teachers’ Review Body’s recommendation of a 5.5% pay award for teachers and leaders in maintained schools for 2024/25.

Alongside teacher pay, we have made £233 million available from 2025/26 recruitment cycle to support teacher trainees with tax-free bursaries of up to £29,000 and scholarships of up to £31,000 in shortage subjects. The department has also expanded its school teacher recruitment campaign, ‘Every Lesson Shapes a Life’, and the further education teacher recruitment campaign ‘Share your Skills’.