Lord Wigley

There are currently 10 statutory public inquiries established by HM Government under the Inquiries Act 2005 still active. Each inquiry has a sponsor department whose role includes covering ongoing costs. The duration of an inquiry is a matter for the inquiry chair, who usually has target dates for completion.

Since July 2024, no discussion has been held with the Royal Household by the government about the inclusion of a symbolic representation of Wales on the royal standard.

Our priority is to pay compensation as quickly as possible. The Infected Blood Compensation Authority is working to put in place a claim service that is simple and secure. We expect the Infected Blood Compensation Authority to begin making payments to people who are infected by the end of this year.

For people diagnosed with an eligible infection before 1 April 2025, the Scheme will remain open to applications until 31 March 2031. For people diagnosed after 1 April 2025, the Scheme will remain open to applications for 6 years from the person’s date of diagnosis.

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

Please see the letter attached from the National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority.

The Rt Hon. the Lord Wigley

House of Lords

London

SW1A 0PW

4 December 2024

Dear Lord Wigley,

As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Twycross on 19 November (HL2370), what are the latest figures for employee activity rates for the regions of England (HL3125).

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) collects information on the labour market status of individuals through the Labour Force Survey (LFS), which is a survey of people resident in households in the UK. The responses allow us to estimate how many people are in employment, and how many of those are in employment as employees, as opposed to other forms of employment such as self-employed.

Due to the current smaller sample sizes being achieved by the LFS, recent estimates are showing increased volatility and should be treated with additional caution.

The latest available estimates (July to September 2024) of the rates of employees for people aged 16 to 64 years, determined as the percentage of the population in employment as an employee, resident in each of England’s nine regions, are presented in Table 1.

Table 1: Rates of employees, people aged 16 to 64 years, regions in England, not seasonally adjusted.

Source: Labour Force Survey

Yours sincerely,

Professor Sir Ian Diamond

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

Please see the letter attached from the National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority.

The Rt Hon. the Lord Wigley

House of Lords

London

SW1A 0PW

18 November 2024

Dear Lord Wigley,

As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking what conversations have been had with the Welsh Government about seeking to include statistics on the number of people resident in England who can speak, read or write in the Welsh language in the 2031 census (HL2487).

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is developing its population and migration statistics by further expanding the range of data sources and methods it uses. A key focus of the Future Population and Migration Statistics (FPMS) Programme is continuing to expand the use of administrative data to produce population and migration statistics, working across the public sector to maximise the statistical value of its data assets. The FPMS will create a sustainable statistics system that will be flexible and dynamic in how it responds to the emerging issues of the day. The UK Statistics Authority (the Authority) plans to publish a recommendation to government in the coming months.

Decisions about the 2031 census have not yet been made. As such, topics for inclusion in a 2031 census have not formed part of the ONS’ discussions with the Welsh Government or other stakeholders. The FPMS programme has an ongoing programme of user needs engagement and carried out a consultation in 2023[1], which acknowledged the importance of collecting data on this topic. The consultation document categorised Welsh language skills as a topic for which further research is required into delivering statistics primarily based on administrative data. Welsh language is regarded as a priority characteristic within the FPMS programme with exploratory work on this topic ongoing. However, it is likely that data on Welsh language skills will predominantly come from sources relating to people resident in Wales.

In April 2023, the ONS and Welsh Government published a joint work plan on the coherence of Welsh language statistics produced from different sources[2]. The first project, to understand differences between Census 2021 and household survey estimates, has been completed. Other work outlined in the plan is ongoing, with the next priority looking at comparing Census 2021 with the Welsh School Census and other administrative sources. Welsh Government and ONS teams meet monthly to discuss progress and are arranging a secondment from Welsh Government to the ONS to support work on the planned projects. The ONS is also exploring the feasibility of producing Welsh language estimates through using existing administrative sources, with the involvement of Welsh Government.

Yours sincerely,

Professor Sir Ian Diamond

[1]https://consultations.ons.gov.uk/ons/futureofpopulationandmigrationstatistics/

[2]https://www.gov.wales/office-national-statistics-ons-and-welsh-government-joint-work-plan-coherence-welsh-language-statistics

Trade between the UK and Argentina was worth £2 billion in the 12 months to June 2024 with our top goods exports including beverages, pharmaceuticals and manufactured goods. In October, the Secretary of State met his Argentine counterpart, the first trade-related bilateral ministerial meeting between both governments since 2019. They agreed to work together to strengthen our trade relationship further including in areas such as services, customs, and education. This will build on our existing cooperation this year which saw the largest delegation from Argentina in 20 years to London’s Metal Exchange Week in September.

There are over 6,000 disused coal tips in Britain with 2,573 located in Wales. The majority of tips are in local authority or private ownership which includes legal responsibilities. Welsh Government released details of their work programme to address the tips issue including inspections/maintenance. https://www.gov.wales/coal-tip-safety

There is no central tips record in England or Scotland. The geological makeup of tip locations in Scotland and England, and previous reprofiling/restoration, has left a lower risk profile. The Mining Remediation Authority has contacted all Local Authorities reminding them of their responsibilities relating to the management of coal tips, offering support where required.

Finalised terms for applications to the Long Duration Electricity Storage (LDES) investment support scheme, which could include applications from Pumped Storage Hydro (PSH) projects, will be set out in a Technical Decision Document to be published in the first quarter of 2025.

Ofgem is the delivery body for the LDES investment support scheme and has informed Government that it intends to open the scheme to a first round of applications in the second quarter of 2025 and is working with the aim of making decisions on initial applications in early 2026.

As announced in October, the Government has decided to introduce an investment support scheme for long duration electricity storage (LDES) assets, including pumped storage hydro (PSH). This scheme will be delivered by Ofgem. We expect it to open for applications in 2025.

As the scheme has not yet opened, there are currently no formal proposals for Ofgem to consider. The Government is aware of interest in Welsh PSH and the potential for there to be some Welsh project applications in due course.

All projects in Great Britain that met the eligibility criteria were able to apply into Allocation Round 6 (AR6). Eligible projects competed in an auction, run independently by National Grid ESO, designed to bring forward the most cost-effective projects in each delivery year. The scheme is geographically neutral and does not award contracts to projects based on regional quotas.

The Contracts for Difference scheme is geographically neutral and does not award contracts to projects based on regional quotas. All projects in Great Britain that met the eligibility criteria were able to apply into Allocation Round 6 (AR6). Eligible projects competed in an auction, run independently by National Grid ESO, designed to bring forward the most cost-effective projects in each delivery year.

While tourism in Wales is devolved to the Welsh Government, VisitBritain, an arm’s length body of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, retains responsibility for marketing Great Britain on the international stage.

Visit Wales leads on the development of a tourism brand specifically for Wales, while VisitBritain works with Visit Wales to ensure that these brand values are reflected in the broader GREAT Campaign, which highlights a number of the many destinations and experiences on offer across Wales.

VisitBritain champions Wales as a distinguished travel destination, emphasizing its rich cultural heritage and landscape. VisitBritain also promotes UNESCO heritage sites on its website, including Wales slate communities.

I refer the noble Lord to the answer of 16 December 2024 to Question 19397.

Education is a devolved matter, and the response outlines the information for England only.

Earlier this year, the department announced an initial teacher training financial incentives package for the 2025/26 recruitment cycle worth £233 million, which is a £37 million increase on the last cycle. This includes a £10,000 tax free bursary to encourage trainees to teach music.

Education is a devolved matter, and the response outlines the information for England only.

The numbers of entries in A level music in the 2014/15 and 2022/23 academic years are published by the department in the ‘A level and other 16 to 18 results’ statistical release. There were 6,709 A level music entries in 2014/15 and 4,911 A level music entries in 2022/23

These numbers include all A level entries by students aged 16 to 18 in England in that academic year.

Education is a devolved matter, and the response outlines the information for England only.

In the 2023/24 financial year, the department allocated £200,000 through the Strengthening Chess in Primary Schools grant, supporting primary schools to improve their pupils’ access to chess.

More broadly, at the Autumn Budget 2024, the government announced an additional £2.3 billion for mainstream schools and young people with high needs for the 2025/26 financial year, compared to 2024/25. This means that overall core school funding will total almost £63.9 billion next year.

Each year schools receive core funding from the department to cover their expenditures. These expenditures could include teacher salaries, school lunches, electronic resources, art and craft supplies, or any other number of items.

It is for headteachers to decide how best to manage their budgets, including spending on the promotion of extracurricular activities such as chess. This funding is not ringfenced.

Schools may also choose to utilise their pupil premium funding to support enrichment. The pupil premium grant is funding to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils in state-funded schools in England. Schools must use this funding in line with the menu of approaches which are based on the evidence of how best to improve attainment for disadvantaged pupils. This includes the flexibility to use pupil premium to tackle non-academic barriers to success, including providing enrichment opportunities to benefit those pupils who may not be able to have access otherwise.

The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), now part of the Joint Information Systems Committee (Jisc), collects and publishes data on student enrolments across all UK higher education (HE) providers. This includes data on full person equivalents enrolled in different subject areas, categorised using the HE coding of subjects system. Counts of enrolments across all subjects from 2019/20 to 2022/23 are published in Table 49 of HESA’s Student Data, which can be found here: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/table-49.

Table 49 can be used to determine that in the 2022/23 academic year, there were 31,030 HE enrolments in ‘mathematics’ across 75 English HE providers and 31,405 HE enrolments in ‘music’ across 106 English HE providers. There were 58 HE providers in England that had enrolments in both ‘mathematics’ and ‘music’ in 2022/23.

Over 170 countries met for the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee in Busan from 25 November 2024 to 1 December 2024 to discuss a landmark treaty to end plastic pollution. While it is disappointing that no agreement was reached, the Committee decided it would resume the meeting for final negotiations in 2025.

The UK was one of 85 countries to endorse the Stand Up for Ambition statement calling for a global target to reduce the production of primary plastic polymers to sustainable levels, phasing out the most harmful plastic products and chemicals of concern in plastics, ambitious and effective financing from all sources, and allowing the treaty to be strengthened over time. The UK also supported using the text proposed by the Chair as a basis for future negotiations.

We urgently need an ambitious international agreement to end plastic pollution that tackles the full life cycle of plastics. The Government is committed to moving to a circular economy for plastics - a future where we keep our resources in use for longer; waste is reduced; we accelerate the path to net zero, we see investment in critical infrastructure and green jobs; our economy prospers; and nature thrives.

DfT is working closely with the Welsh Government, which is leading on this matter. Welsh officials have had regular contact with operators, including Stena, which operates the port of Holyhead. UK Government officials (including DfT, Border Force, DBT and HMRC) have supported them in the implementation of additional routes. DfT is also working very closely with the Irish Government and British Embassy Dublin, to support the response.

The Government recognises that this will have been a challenging time for the people and businesses of Ynys Mon. The Isle of Anglesey County Council business support portal will give the opportunity for businesses to express concerns to the Welsh Government. The Welsh Cabinet Secretary for Transport and North Wales has also announced a new multi-stakeholder task force to help deliver a new strategy for the future of Holyhead Port.

The Department for Transport publishes maritime freight statistics for all of UK’s major and minor ports, including the Port of Holyhead, as part of the annual Port Freight Statistics Publication.

Table 1 shows the maritime freight volume through the Port of Holyhead across the period 2015 to 2023. The freight volume has increased by 7% across this period.

Table 1: Maritime freight volume through the Port of Holyhead from 2015 until 2023

Old Oak Common is a crucial enabler for the Government’s growth mission. During construction there will be periods of full line closures and some periods – generally weekends – when the closure of some lines means fewer services will operate. During full closures, some services from Cardiff to London are expected to divert into London Euston, maintaining direct access into Central London. Government is working with industry to ensure disruption for passengers is kept to a minimum.

The performance of Avanti West Coast (AWC) services between London and Holyhead has not been good enough, with too many cancellations and delays. Poor Network Rail infrastructure reliability has also contributed to the disruption felt by passengers.

The former Secretary of State met with AWC and Network Rail in July to challenge them on poor performance and demand immediate action to deliver urgent improvements.

As part of its recovery plan, AWC will introduce 25 new weekly services on its Chester and North Wales route from 15 December 2024. In addition, AWC expects to complete work to replace its diesel trains with a brand-new fleet of modern bi-mode Hitachi trains on the North Wales Mainline by May 2025, offering more space and a quieter journey for passengers.

There have not been any discussions between the Department and the Welsh Government about safeguarding the funding of children’s hospices.

The Department works collaboratively with the Devolved Governments to drive forward our objective of supporting people to lead more independent, healthier lives for longer. While health is predominantly devolved, the Department holds some reserved functions and working together across the United Kingdom on health and social care is ingrained in the values of our National Health Service and social care sector.

Children and young people’s hospices in England will receive £26 million in revenue funding for 2025/26, through what until recently was known as the Children’s Hospice Grant. We are also supporting both the children and adult hospice sector with a £100 million capital funding boost to ensure they have the best physical environment for care. We will set out the details of the funding allocation and dissemination for both funding streams in the coming weeks.

The supply of radioisotopes has now returned to normal levels, and a Written Ministerial Statement was laid on 26 November to update Parliament. During the disruption to supply, the Department worked with industry, the devolved administrations, the National Health Service, members of the radiopharmaceutical community, and regulators to secure fair and equal access across the United Kingdom for patients, including for the treatment of cancer. Patients with the most critical needs were given priority.

Pharmacies play a vital role in our healthcare system. We are committed to expanding the role of pharmacies and to better utilising the skills of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. That includes making prescribing part of the services delivered by community pharmacists as we shift care from hospital to the community.

Now that the budget for Government has been set, we will shortly be resuming our consultation with Community Pharmacy England regarding the funding arrangements.

The Scottish Government receives funding from the UK Government through the mechanical operation of the Barnett formula when there are changes to UK Government department funding.

Following Autumn Budget 2024, the Scottish Government is receiving £47.7 billion in 2025-26. This includes an additional £3.4 billion through the operation of the Barnett formula. This settlement is the largest in real terms since devolution.

Barnett-based funding for the Scottish Government is not ringfenced for a specific policy area such as responding to bad weather. This allows the Scottish Government the flexibility to allocate its funding across devolved areas as it sees fit, according to its own priorities and local circumstances. The Scottish Government is accountable to Scottish Parliament for these decisions.

HM Treasury continues to engage closely with finance counterparts in the Welsh Government.

At Autumn Budget 2024, the Chancellor provided funding to the public sector to support them with the additional cost associated with changes to Employer National Insurance Contributions.

The Welsh Government will receive funding through the Barnett Formula in 2025-26 for any changes to UK Government department budgets, including support for Employer National Insurance Contributions. This is the normal operation of the funding arrangements as set out in the Statement of Funding Policy.

This funding will be in addition to the Welsh Government’s record Spending Review settlement for 2025-26, which is the largest in real terms of any settlements since devolution.

All devolved government settlements are growing in real terms in 2025-26.

The devolved governments’ Spending Review settlements for 2025-26 are the largest in real terms of any settlements since devolution. They are each receiving at least 20% more per person than equivalent UK Government spending in the rest of the UK. That translates into over £16 billion more in 2025-26.

The Barnett formula ensures broadly the same change in funding per person across the whole of the UK, while the underlying baseline funding broadly reflects higher needs in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The Fiscal Framework agreed between the UK and Welsh governments in 2016 added a needs-based factor into the Barnett formula to ensure Wales receives fair funding.

Section 1 of the Crown Estate Act 1961 provides that the Chancellor of the Exchequer may direct the Commissioners as to the discharge of their functions under the Act, but in doing so must have regard to the general statutory duties of the Commissioners.

Neither the Treasury nor The Crown Estate have any known record of the power of direction in section 1 of the Crown Estate Act 1961 being used since the 1961 Act came into force.

During the financial year 2023-24, the Ministry of Defence paid £2,805 to the Crown Estate in relation to its activities in Wales.

The government recognises that homelessness levels are far too high and this can have a devastating impact on those affected. We will consider all these issues as we develop our long-term cross-government strategy, working with mayors and councils across the country, to get us back on track to ending homelessness.

We are already taking the first steps to get back on track to ending homelessness. As announced at the Budget, funding for homelessness services is increasing next year by £233 million compared to this year (2024/25). This increased spending will help to prevent rises in the number of families in temporary accommodation and help to prevent rough sleeping. This brings total spend to nearly £1 billion in 2025/26.

This is on top of a £10 million fund announced in November to protect people sleeping rough from cold weather this winter.

While the Department publishes data through the English Housing Survey (EHS) on whether dwellings are underoccupied (according to the bedroom standard) or vacant, its sample size means it does not have reliable estimates for flats in London. The department also publishes statistics on vacant dwellings, as reported for the purposes of council tax, but does not disaggregate by type of property.

More information on the EHS can be found at English Housing Survey - GOV.UK., while statistics on vacant dwellings can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/council-taxbase-statistics.

Whilst many projects have progressed at pace, we are aware that others have faced difficult delivery conditions which may make it hard to deliver by the original programme end date of March 2026.

With this in mind, we are looking at whether there is scope for places to move some spending into future years. This is dependent on Departmental budgets which will be agreed as part of the Spending Review process for 2026-2029. We will communicate the outcome to grant recipients following Spring Budget.

We still encourage projects to deliver as quickly as they can, so that the positive impacts of this investment can be felt by communities more quickly.

His Majesty’s Government does not hold the information in the format requested to answer question and it could only be provided at disproportionate cost.

Charging decisions, and guidance are made by the Crown Prosecution Service, and sentencing is determined by independent courts. The Sentencing Council for England and Wales issues guidelines for sentencing that apply to all offenders and operates independently from Government.

It is right that we have a gender-neutral sentencing framework that recognises the specific circumstances of individual offenders.

Whilst there will always be women who do need to be in custody, we must ensure they are given the best chance possible to tackle the drivers of their offending and to contribute meaningfully to society.

This Government has delivered on a manifesto commitment by launching an Independent Review of Sentencing, chaired by former Lord Chancellor, David Gauke. The Review will assess whether the sentencing framework appropriately considers the specific needs or vulnerabilities of women. Additionally, we will establish a Women’s Justice Board with a clear ambition to reduce the number of women in prison and address their distinct needs within the Criminal Justice System.

As of 30 September 2024, excluding those recalled to prison following release, there were 342 prisoners serving indeterminate sentences who had a recorded home address in Wales.

As at 30 September 2024, there were a total 8,501 prisoners serving indeterminate sentences in custody in England and Wales, excluding those recalled to prison following release.

The figures have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.

The Government’s commitments on further devolution were outlined in our manifesto. We have no plans to devolve powers over the civil service to Wales.

The Secretary of State for Wales regularly meets with the First Minister to discuss a variety of issues. We have recognised that Wales’s Fiscal Framework is out of date and will be working with Welsh Government to update it. We remain committed to working in partnership to ensure the smooth delivery of the funding settlement.

Autumn Budget delivered the largest settlement for Wales in real terms since devolution at £21 billion. This includes an additional £1.7 billion through the Barnett Formula.

Since 4 July, we have received one piece of correspondence asking for a review of the Barnett Formula.