Lord Rooker

The Minister is following the process in the Equality Act 2006 and is consulting the Devolved Governments at the relevant stages, as required under section 14(9).

Consultation with Welsh and Scottish Ministers is required if, or in so far as, the Code relates to a duty imposed by or under the Public Sector Equality Duty. As part of the consultation, the draft Code has been shared with the Devolved Administrations.

The EHRC has submitted its Code of Practice for Services, Public Functions and Associations to the Government. The Code addresses a broad range of issues for service providers, beyond those relating to single sex spaces. The Government is considering the draft updated Code and, if the decision is taken to approve it, the Code will be laid before Parliament.

Under Section 14 of the Equality Act 2006, the Secretary of State is required to consult with Scottish and Welsh Ministers at relevant stages in this process. Ministers are following this process.

I refer the noble Lord to my contribution in Hansard, Volume 849, column 1924: debated on Wednesday 5 November 2025: Equality and Human Rights Commission: Draft Updated Code of Practice:

"…the EHRC has not been asked to carry out a full regulatory impact assessment, but rather to provide a minimum proportionate cost assessment to evidence exclusion from a full regulatory impact assessment and enable us to take an informed decision. Understanding costs and impacts is not new; it would have been a consideration in the 2011 code.”

The Government is considering the draft updated Code and, if the decision is taken to approve it, the Minister will lay it before Parliament. Parliament will then have a 40 day period to consider the Code.

The Government has always supported the protection of single-sex spaces to ensure women’s safety, privacy and dignity.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission as Britain’s independent equality watchdog has revised its Code of Practice for Services, Public Functions and Associations (the Code) following a six-week consultation. The Code includes practical guidance for service providers, associations and those delivering public functions on how they should comply with the Equality Act 2010, following the Supreme Court ruling.

The Government is considering the draft updated Code and, if the decision is taken to approve it, the Code will be laid before Parliament. Parliament will then have 40 sitting days to consider the Code.

More widely, the Government is continuing to deliver on our commitment to halve violence against women and girls in a decade. This includes embedding domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms in five police forces under ‘Raneem’s Law’, to help improve the police response to domestic abuse; taking steps to tackle spiking including introducing a new criminal offence; widening the use of stalking protection orders; and in July announcing £53m investment over the next four years to further tackle domestic abuse.

The Government remains committed to increasing knowledge of beneficial ownership of overseas entities. In February 2025, the Government introduced The Register of Overseas Entities (Protection and Trusts) (Amendment) Regulations 2025. This enables the public to apply to access unpublished trust information on the Register of Overseas Entities from 31 August 2025, increasing transparency and empowering stakeholders to scrutinise entities more effectively. The Government will also publish a response to the public consultation on the Transparency of Land Ownership Involving Trusts in due course.

The UK does not publish data on the levels of trade between the UK and specific regions of mainland China. However, the UK’s Overseas Business Risk guidance makes clear the government’s serious concerns about the widespread and systematic human rights violations in Xinjiang and urges companies to conduct appropriate due diligence when making business decisions.

The most recent Office for National Statistics figures show that up to 453,900 full-time equivalent jobs were in the UK’s low carbon and renewable energy economy and wider supply chain in 2024.

The UK Government’s Clean Energy Jobs Plan sets out that the clean energy workforce could grow to 860,000 jobs by 2030, an increase of over 400,000 from 2023.

Independent Robert Gordon University analysis indicates that, under a pathway consistent with delivering clean power, job creation in clean energy sectors is expected to exceed projected job reductions in oil and gas, with renewables supporting more jobs overall over time.

The UK’s total offshore wind capacity and electricity generation, 2018-2025, are presented in this table:

Source: UK Energy Trends table 6.1, available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-trends-section-6-renewables

The UK has a highly resilient energy network, with diverse and secure electricity supplies; Government is confident that operators can effectively balance supply and demand in a wide range of scenarios.

Nevertheless, as a responsible Government we work continually and closely with industry and across Government to maintain this resilience, planning for a range of risks and to identify opportunities to mitigate the impacts of actual or potentially disruptive incidents.

Government is already breaking the link between wholesale gas prices and consumer bills by accelerating the deployment of low-cost renewable electricity technologies to reduce our reliance on international fossil fuel markets.

Furthermore, Government plans to offer legacy low-carbon generators the option to move onto fixed price contracts, known as Contracts for Difference (CfDs). We will consult this year and intend to run an allocation process in 2027 to award such contracts.

Finally, Government has acted to tax excess profits by raising the rate of the Electricity Generator Levy from 45% to 55%, ensuring a proportion of any exceptional revenues is available to Government to support households with their cost of living.

The National Energy System Operator (NESO) is operationally independent from His Majesty's Government. NESO set out pathways to a clean power system in 2030, and confirmed it was deliverable and could see lower electricity costs and bills.

Clean power gives us greater energy security, reducing our dependency on volatile global fossil fuel markets and delivering a diverse, secure and clean energy system based on renewables and nuclear, backed by a reserve of gas supply to be used only when essential. Over time it should significantly lower the wholesale costs of electricity, which will benefit heavy industry and has the potential to bring down consumer bills for good.

Between 2016 and 2024, Agrimetrics Ltd. received £27 million public funding through Innovate UK.

Agrimetrics Ltd. was not set up to generate or make data publicly available but used the funding to create a data platform that allowed businesses to host, integrate and analyse agri-food data.

The data on the platform was provided by a variety of different public and private sector organisations, who retained ownership, rather than Agrimetrics Ltd. This approach maximised the engagement of private sector data owners. Of the data sources used, some were already freely available, and some for a fee. We are unable to comment on what data will continue to be available as Agrimetrics Ltd. was an independent organisation and the government does not have access to the data it hosted.

The infrastructure provided value to business in the Agrifood sector over the years it was funded, however due to the speed of technological changes in this sector funding the platform no longer represented value for money. Innovate UK ceased providing Agrimetrics with core funding on 31 March 2024.

Between 2016 and 2024, Agrimetrics Ltd. received £27 million public funding through Innovate UK.

Agrimetrics Ltd. was not set up to generate or make data publicly available but used the funding to create a data platform that allowed businesses to host, integrate and analyse agri-food data.

The data on the platform was provided by a variety of different public and private sector organisations, who retained ownership, rather than Agrimetrics Ltd. This approach maximised the engagement of private sector data owners. Of the data sources used, some were already freely available, and some for a fee. We are unable to comment on what data will continue to be available as Agrimetrics Ltd. was an independent organisation and the government does not have access to the data it hosted.

The infrastructure provided value to business in the Agrifood sector over the years it was funded, however due to the speed of technological changes in this sector funding the platform no longer represented value for money. Innovate UK ceased providing Agrimetrics with core funding on 31 March 2024.

Defra publishes annual data on greenhouse gas emissions embedded within goods and services imported into the UK here (see attached) as part of the UK and England’s Carbon Footprint.

Because of the methodology used, Defra does not hold data on these emissions at an individual product level, so the department is unable to publish estimates of greenhouse gas emissions embedded specifically within the supply chains of energy intensive goods, car batteries, and solar panels, imported into the UK.

For further information, a methodology document is published alongside the UK and England’s Carbon Footprint statistics here (see attached).

We can confirm Minister Zeichner visited 'Growing Well', a mental health charity, located at Low Sizergh Farm in Kendal, on 21 August 2024.

The UK notified the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in February that we intended to lay a Statutory Instrument that will amend the Bread and Flour Regulations.

My Ministerial colleagues are considering next steps on this issue. Changes to rules could include clarifying definitions; providing for the fortification of wheat flour with folic acid; exemptions to avoid disproportionate impacts for businesses; and a change to the enforcement approach.

E10 (petrol containing up to 10% bioethanol) was introduced as the standard petrol grade in September 2021. To manufacture E10, fossil petrol is blended with ethanol either at refineries or downstream in the supply network. Accordingly the UK’s capacity to manufacture and supply E10 is impacted by the availability of bioethanol.

On 15 August 2025 Vivergo announced the closure of its UK bioethanol production plant in Hull, which at full capacity could produce 420 million litres of bioethanol per year from wheat for blending with petrol.

Whilst the UK retains bioethanol production capacity elsewhere, the closure of Vivergo represents a significant loss. However, it is not considered likely to impact the manufacture or supply of E10 petrol in the UK. It is expected that the supply of bioethanol for petrol suppliers will continue to be met by both bioethanol produced at the remaining UK plants and by imports.

The Department does not hold any data which suggests that the national bus fare cap has led to accidents.

Road safety is a priority for the government, and we expect bus operators to uphold the highest standards of safety, policed by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, and upheld judicially by the Traffic Commissioners. The Department for Transport’s guidance to local transport authorities on developing their Bus Service Improvement Plans makes clear that these should include plans setting out how LTAs and local bus operators will work together to ensure that bus services are safe and perceived to be safe by all. That same philosophy applies also to franchising and contracting by local transport authorities and to their operators.

The Department for Transport maintains a database of road injury collisions and casualties, including those involving buses or coaches, based on data reported by police using a system known as STATS19. Statistics on the number of people killed and injured in bus or coach collisions are published annually on GOV.UK.

The latest figures can be found in published Table RAS0601 and show that in 2023, the latest year for which figures are available, 59 people were killed and 4,286 injured in collisions involving buses or coaches. The number of casualties which were hospitalised is not recorded within the STATS19 dataset.

Road safety is a priority for the government, and we expect bus operators to uphold the highest standards of safety, policed by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, and upheld judicially by the Traffic Commissioners. The Department for Transport’s guidance to local transport authorities on developing their Bus Service Improvement Plans makes clear that these should include plans setting out how LTAs and local bus operators will work together to ensure that bus services are safe and perceived to be safe by all. That same philosophy applies also to franchising and contracting by local transport authorities and to their operators.

The Department for Transport maintains a database of road injury collisions and casualties, including those involving buses or coaches, based on data reported by police using a system known as STATS19. Statistics on the number of people killed and injured in bus or coach collisions are published annually on GOV.UK.

The latest figures can be found in published Table RAS0601 and show that in 2023, the latest year for which figures are available, 59 people were killed and 4,286 injured in collisions involving buses or coaches. The number of casualties which were hospitalised is not recorded within the STATS19 dataset.

Road safety is a priority for the government, and we expect bus operators to uphold the highest standards of safety, policed by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, and upheld judicially by the Traffic Commissioners. The Department for Transport’s guidance to local transport authorities on developing their Bus Service Improvement Plans makes clear that these should include plans setting out how LTAs and local bus operators will work together to ensure that bus services are safe and perceived to be safe by all. That same philosophy applies also to franchising and contracting by local transport authorities and to their operators.

The Department for Transport maintains a database of road injury collisions and casualties, including those involving buses or coaches, based on data reported by police using a system known as STATS19. Statistics on the number of people killed and injured in bus or coach collisions are published annually on GOV.UK.

The latest figures can be found in published Table RAS0601 and show that in 2023, the latest year for which figures are available, 59 people were killed and 4,286 injured in collisions involving buses or coaches. The number of casualties which were hospitalised is not recorded within the STATS19 dataset.