Lord Patten

Age discrimination that cannot be objectively justified is unacceptable and unlawful across a range of fields under the Equality Act 2010. It is the strong protections in the 2010 Act that enable older people and their representatives to challenge such unlawful behaviour and ultimately seek redress in the courts or, in the case of older workers, an employment tribunal.

In addition, as regards to the public sector, the Public Sector Equality Duty places a duty on Government Departments, local authorities, the NHS and other bodies to have due regard to meeting equality requirements, including to eliminate unlawful age discrimination, where this is relevant to their policies and activities.

Age discrimination complaints to an Employment Tribunal stood at 2,434 in the year prior to the pandemic (2019/20) and fell slightly to 2080 in the 12 months to June 2023.

Age discrimination that cannot be objectively justified is unacceptable and unlawful across a range of fields under the Equality Act 2010. It is the strong protections in the 2010 Act that enable older people and their representatives to challenge such unlawful behaviour and ultimately seek redress in the courts or, in the case of older workers, an employment tribunal.

In addition, as regards to the public sector, the Public Sector Equality Duty places a duty on Government Departments, local authorities, the NHS and other bodies to have due regard to meeting equality requirements, including to eliminate unlawful age discrimination, where this is relevant to their policies and activities.

Age discrimination complaints to an Employment Tribunal stood at 2,434 in the year prior to the pandemic (2019/20) and fell slightly to 2080 in the 12 months to June 2023.

There are a wide range of studies available on the clear benefits of hybrid working, which have been used to inform the expectation for 60% office attendance for Civil Servants. The government renewed their commitment to the 60% office attendance mandate on the 24th October, and has resumed quarterly publication of office occupancy data to support this.

Current Civil Service guidance requires Civil Servants to attend the office or work face-to-face with colleagues at least 60% of the time. There are no plans to change those requirements.

It is for each individual think tank to publicise and declare their sources of funding. The Government believes that think tanks can play a legitimate part in public policy development, so long as their activity is conducted transparently and ethically in order to maintain the highest standards in public life.

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

A response to the Hon Gentleman’s Parliamentary Question of 03/09/24 is attached.

While the Lords Temporal are unable to vote at general elections to the House of Commons, this legal exclusion does not apply to the Lords Spiritual. In practice, however, it has long been the tradition that the Lords Spiritual do not vote at general elections.

We do not have any plans to conduct an analysis of the impact of home working in isolation. However, we will monitor the impact of the flexible working reforms which came into force in April 2024, and further changes planned though the Employment Rights Bill.

Fish and fishery products farmed for consumption in the UK must meet the requirements of food hygiene and contaminants and residues legislation. Responsibility for verifying food business operators comply with the legislation is delegated to Local Authorities who carry out official controls. The Veterinary Medicine Directorate’s National Statutory Surveillance plan monitors residues of veterinary medicines, prohibited substances, and various contaminants in products of animal origin, including farmed salmon. The Food Standards Agency is not aware of any evidence to indicate that fish farmed in the UK are unsafe to eat.

The Environment Agency applies the same methodology for condition assessment and allocation of maintenance funding for all flood assets and does not differentiate between coastal and other assets.

At the last Spending Review in 2021 the government increased funding for maintenance of flood defences by £22 million per year. In 2023/24, £25 million was reallocated from the capital programme to fund maintenance, meaning that the total allocation for last year was over £220 million.

The Environment Agency visually inspects its assets to assess their condition. The results inform their expected performance when operated either on a daily basis or during a flood event. Our target based on available funding for 2024/25 is for 94.5% of high consequence assets to meet the target condition.

The Environment Agency plans to publish an updated national flood risk assessment in December 2024.

The Somerset Levels and Moors is a man-made managed drainage system created over many centuries. The area has always been prone to flooding due to its low-lying nature, much of the land sitting below the highest tide levels, and having riverbanks raised above ground level.

Following one of the wettest winters on record, flood risk assets in the Somerset Levels and Moors have, once again, been significantly tested. The Environment Agency (EA) routinely inspects its flood risk assets and undertakes additional post-incident inspections. It reports that 91% of those assets, in this area of interest, are at or above their specified condition.

As with most winters, there are repairs required after high river levels and the associated overflow. The EA is delivering a programme of repairs to reinstate these damaged flood risk assets, bringing them back to target condition.

This Government recognises that the people of Cornwall need reliable transport links with London and other parts of the country. That is why we have acted quickly to pass the Passenger Railways Services (Public Ownership) Bill, a key milestone towards the establishment of Great British Railways to bring our railways back under public ownership and deliver services to passengers that we can be proud of. We announced additional funding for roads in the Autumn statement. This provides Local Authorities with stable foundations before the Spending Review statement next year which will build on that provision and help us achieve our five key strategic transport priorities.

With regards to the lifeline ferry link for the Isles of Scilly, building work is now underway on the Isles of Scilly Steamship Group's new passenger and freight vessels. These new vessels will secure a resilient lifeline connection to and from mainland Cornwall for islanders and their economy going forward.

There are a number of air links between the Isles of Scilly and mainland Cornwall. Isles of Scilly Skybus operate a year-round fixed wing service from St Mary’s Airport to Lands’ End Airport as well as a summer service to Newquay Airport. Penzance Helicopters also operate a year-round service between the Isles of Scilly and Penzance Heliport.

This Government wants everyone to have access to transport provision no matter where they live. That is why we value the opinions of people living on the Isles of Scilly and recognise the difficulties they face as an island community. My officials remain in regular contact with the Isles of Scilly Council and other Government departments to discuss and address these challenges.

We are aware of the issues between Salisbury and Yeovil and the lack of resilience due to the nature of this single line. Department officials continue to work with the South Western Railway and Network Rail in providing as much resilience as possible, including by increasing the Operator management resource tasked specifically to look at West of England line issues.

The Government recognises that the economic and environmental potential of rail freight is significant and is fully committed to supporting its growth. Under our plans to deliver the biggest overhaul of the railways in a generation, Great British Railways will have a duty and targets to grow the use of rail freight. Currently freight only operates between Salisbury and Worting Junction (Basingstoke).

There is no freight operation between Salisbury and Yeovil Junction. Network Rail is working with stakeholders and industry partners to understand the capacity and performance issues on the West of England Line and identify how these can be mitigated.

The British Transport Police (BTP) are responsible for policing the rail network across England, Wales and Scotland. They recorded the following number of incidents at stations on the Salisbury and Yeovil railway line: 2020/21 58, 2021/22 55, 2022/23 87 and 2023/24 83. The increase from 2021/22 is in line with increasing passenger numbers on the rail network following the easing of travel restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Along with data from the rest of the railway, the BTP will continually review crime trends and patterns from the Salisbury and Yeovil line, and gather intelligence to inform their daily operational deployments, including both uniform and plain clothes officers.

If passengers see or experience crime on the rail network, they should report this to BTP using the 61016 text service, via the Railway Guardian app or online. In an emergency, they should always call 999.

The Department does not set NHS England’s working from home policies, and it has not received any assessment from NHS England regarding the impact of working from home on efficiency and outcomes.

It is for NHS England to decide the best way to recruit and retain staff whilst also promoting productive outcomes. NHS England will continue to model their ways of working on what allows them to maximise outcomes, and work with optimal efficiency.

Since March 2024 alone, Ukraine has lost over 50 percent of its power generation due to a string of Russian attacks on energy generation facilities. Over the upcoming heating season, Russian attacks and low temperatures risk making access to power, water and heating intermittent, aggravating the humanitarian situation on the ground.

The UK has been working closely with Ukrainian officials and international donors to fund repairs and provide back-up power generation during the colder months, while also supporting humanitarian efforts to ensure that civilians have access to warming points and collective centres are equipped with generators.

Since the full-scale invasion in 2022, the UK has committed almost £370 million in grant, in-kind support and loan guarantees to help Ukraine respond to and recover from Russian attacks on energy infrastructure. This includes £20 million for emergency energy needs, announced by the Foreign Secretary during his visit to Ukraine in September.

The UK has donated £64 million to the Energy Community Secretariat's Ukraine Energy Support Fund, which coordinates donations of energy equipment, including electricity generators, in response to Government of Ukraine requests. All donations reflect verified, prioritised needs reported by the Government of Ukraine and draw on international supply chains.

Small businesses are vital to high streets and communities, and essential to the success of the government’s growth mission. The UK has a wide variety of businesses, which interact with the tax system in different ways. As a result, the characteristics of a small business can vary depending on the nature of the specific policy. The eligibility or applicability of individual policies will be set out in the relevant documentation for those policies.

The Government announced a range of reforms at Autumn Budget 2024 supporting small businesses. These include:

• increasing the Employment Allowance to £10,500,
• freezing the small businesses multiplier (used for properties with a rateable value below £51,000) for 2025-26, and extending the retail, hospitality and leisure (RHL) business rates relief for 1-year at 40% (up to a cash cap of £110,000 per business),
• committing in the Corporate Tax Roadmap to maintain the Small Profits Rate and marginal relief at their current rates and thresholds, as well as maintaining the £1 million Annual Investment Allowance.
• Despite the difficult fiscal inheritance, we have been able to protect key business support programmes like Growth Hubs while increasing funding for Made Smarter Adoption, and allocating £250m to the British Business Bank’s small business programmes in 2025-26.

It is expected that up to around 2,000 estates will be affected by the changes to APR and BPR. Up to around 520 of these are expected to relate to claims for APR (including those that also claim for BPR), and this number falls to around 430 when claims that include AIM shares are excluded. Almost three-quarters of estates claiming agricultural property relief (or those claiming agricultural property relief and business property relief together) each year are expected to be unaffected by these reforms.

The Government is committed to not raising taxes on working people, which is why it is not increasing the basic, higher or additional rates of income tax, their National Insurance contributions or VAT.

On 14 October the Chancellor announced the creation of the National Wealth Fund (NWF). Building on the UK Infrastructure Bank’s leadership and expertise, the NWF will go further to catalyse more private investment.

To mobilise private investment at pace, the Government has turbocharged the NWF to be more catalytic by equipping it with the financial products, mandate and risk capital to catalyse private capital most effectively. It will have a total capitalisation of £27.8bn, inheriting UKIB’s existing capitalisation with an additional £5.8bn which will be committed over this Parliament.

Going forward, the NWF will have a broader mandate, extending beyond infrastructure to support delivery of the wider Industrial Strategy in areas where there is an undersupply in private finance, working alongside the British Business Bank.

It will take a proactive approach, with increased resources and focus to conduct more outreach, identifying expanded project pipelines and structure innovative transactions. It will also have a strong regional mandate to unleash the full potential of our cities and regions. These changes will ensure that the NWF can catalyse additional investment, delivering impactful projects and unlocking growth opportunities across the UK.

Rochester Row was identified for disposal under plans to achieve a more efficient, modern and capability focussed Defence estate. Army Reserve Estate Optimisation are engaging with the Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Association (RFCA) to discuss the future plans for the site.

Where sites are disposed of on the Volunteer Estate, receipts are reinvested to enable betterment at other Reserve locations across the country, supporting Homeland Resilience, National Defence and Mobilisation.

Given the noble Lord’s question on overspending, I have interpreted the use of the term ‘special measures’ to refer to the statutory intervention framework relating to councils’ Best Value Duty and to the operation of the previous Government’s Exceptional Financial Support framework.

As of 8 October 2024, six councils are currently subject to statutory interventions for best value failure, details of which councils can be found on the gov.uk website. Under the previous Government’s Exceptional Financial Support framework, additional support was most recently agreed for nineteen councils in February 2024. Details of the amounts agreed, including for previous years, can be found on the gov.uk website.

Councils are responsible for their own financial management, and the Department does not monitor their day-to-day business. For those councils subject to statutory intervention, Commissioners or Improvement Panels appointed by the Government will have a role overseeing delivery of council improvement plans, including in relation to financial management.

To establish the number of those with an electronic monitoring requirement that have breached their electronic monitoring condition, or other licence conditions in the past 12 months would require a review of thousands of individual case records held on prison and probation systems. This information could only be obtained at a disproportionate cost.

There are lots of different types of Electronic Monitoring (EM) and effectiveness is dependent on a number of factors. Some of the EM technology is relatively new and so the Department is undertaking a comprehensive EM expansion programme designed to evaluate the effectiveness of EM on specific cohorts of individuals. We are robustly evaluating the effectiveness of each of the four projects (Acquisitive Crime – targeting burglars, robbers and thieves, Licence Variation, Domestic Abuse Perpetrators on Licence, and Alcohol Monitoring on Licence) to better understand the impacts of different forms of EM.

Evaluations will start to be published from the beginning of 2025. We are unable to predict the conclusions of these evaluations, which will be reviewed by an independent peer reviewer.

There is clear evidence that alcohol monitoring devices positively affect behaviour during the period of monitoring. England and Wales have a comprehensive programme of alcohol monitoring in place compared with international comparators. Since their introduction, alcohol monitoring tags have demonstrated a 97% compliance rate.

There are lots of different types of Electronic Monitoring (EM) and effectiveness is dependent on a number of factors. Some of the EM technology is relatively new and so the Department is undertaking a comprehensive EM expansion programme designed to evaluate the effectiveness of EM on specific cohorts of individuals. We are robustly evaluating the effectiveness of each of the four projects (Acquisitive Crime – targeting burglars, robbers and thieves, Licence Variation, Domestic Abuse Perpetrators on Licence, and Alcohol Monitoring on Licence) to better understand the impacts of different forms of EM.

Evaluations will start to be published from the beginning of 2025. We are unable to predict the conclusions of these evaluations, which will be reviewed by an independent peer reviewer.

There is clear evidence that alcohol monitoring devices positively affect behaviour during the period of monitoring. England and Wales have a comprehensive programme of alcohol monitoring in place compared with international comparators. Since their introduction, alcohol monitoring tags have demonstrated a 97% compliance rate.