Alex Easton

The Government will work with the private sector to radically increase the deployment of onshore wind, solar and offshore wind by 2030. Changes to permitted development rights rules will mean more homeowners and businesses will be able to install solar panels on their roofs without going through the planning system. The Government is working to support household renewables through community benefits, energy efficiency schemes and the Smart Export Guarantee.

Collaboration between the UK Government and Devolved Governments is essential to accelerate Net Zero and deliver the Clean Energy Superpower Mission. The Government is working closely with governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to help work towards delivery of our respective climate targets and carbon budgets and Ministers from this department and the Devolved Governments met on 17 October in Edinburgh to discuss this.

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

This government’s ambition is that all children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) or in alternative provision receive the right support to succeed in their education and as they move into adult life.

The department is providing an increase of almost £1 billion for English local authorities’ high needs budgets in the 2025/26 financial year, bringing total high needs funding for children and young people with complex SEND in England to £11.9 billion.

The department is now in the process of calculating indicative high needs funding allocations for local authorities next year through the national funding formula (NFF), which we expect to publish by the end of November.

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

Following their meeting in Brussels on 2 October, the President of the European Commission and my right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister have agreed to strengthen the relationship between the EU and UK, putting it on a more solid, stable footing. The government will now work with the EU to identify areas where it can strengthen co-operation for mutual benefit, such as the economy, energy, security and resilience.

The government recognises and supports the benefits of collaborating with its international partners on education. The department is working with the higher education sector to ensure our world leading universities continue to attract outstanding students from around the world and support our economy. However, we have no plans for rejoining the Erasmus+ Programme.

The UK is a leader on efforts to end plastic pollution. We already have a broad range of measures in place domestically that we are using, alongside ongoing industry and private sector engagement, as the basis to drive ambition across the proposed provisions of the UN Plastic Pollution Treaty.  The Treaty is still under negotiation, with the UK committed to playing a leading role at the forthcoming fifth intergovernmental negotiating committee to ensure an effective treaty is agreed.

In line with the commitments we have made, as we move to our new UK internal market system we will ensure that the only checks when goods move within the UK internal market system are those conducted by UK authorities as part of a risk-based or intelligence-led approach to tackle criminality, abuse of the scheme, smuggling and disease risks. But in order not to undermine that approach, as is the case across the UK we do not disclose the specific number or nature of interventions made by UK authorities.

The Northern Ireland Pet Travel Scheme will significantly reduce the burdens associated with the original Northern Ireland Protocol, and provides a stable and long-term footing for pet travel for those travelling with their pets within the United Kingdom.

The Government is committed to delivering for nature, and taking action to meet our Environment Act targets to restore and protect our natural world. We are working towards concluding the review of the Environmental Improvement Plan (EIP) by the end of the year. We will publish a summary of findings in early 2025, to be followed by publication of a revised EIP in spring 2025. This will play a role in framing how we will meet our domestic and international targets to help us significantly improve the natural environment in England.

The four nations of the UK and the relevant UK Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies worked together to submit our National Targets to the Convention on Biological Diversity on 1 August, committing us to meeting all 23 of the Global Biodiversity Framework targets at home. We will publish the full UK National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan in due course, detailing further delivery plans and future ambitions.

The farming budget beyond this year will be part of the Government’s spending review. The Chancellor will set out the Government’s spending plans on 30 October alongside the Budget.

The Government is committed to championing farmers while protecting the environment. We said we would provide stability for farmers and we are delivering on this commitment. We will optimise Environmental Land Management schemes so they produce the right outcomes for all farmers - such as small, grassland, upland and tenanted farms - while delivering food security and nature recovery in a just and equitable way.

The Government is committed to accelerating the roll-out of charging infrastructure so that everyone, no matter where they live or work, can make the transition to an electric vehicle (EV). As of November, there are over 71,000 publicly available charging devices in the UK. The £381 million Local EV Infrastructure (LEVI) Fund currently supports local authorities in England to work with industry to transform the availability of EV charging for drivers without off-street parking and will support the installation of tens of thousands of local chargers.

The Government also confirmed in the October 2024 Budget that it will continue to support the uptake of EVs by investing over £200 million in 2025/26 to accelerate EV chargepoint rollout.

This government is committed to breaking down the barriers to opportunity for disabled people and people with health conditions, including people with multiple sclerosis, improving our employment and health support offer and tackling rising levels of economic inactivity.

We will be considering our own approach to social security in due course and welcome the opportunity to work in partnership with disabled people and the people that represent them to address some of the most challenging issues under this new government.

More disabled people and people with health conditions will be supported to enter and stay in work, by devolving more power to local areas so they can shape a joined-up work, health, and skills offer that suits the needs of the people they serve.

These plans to reform the system are central to our missions of kickstarting economic growth and breaking down barriers to opportunity.

The consultation entitled Modernising Support for Independent Living: the health and disability green paper ran for 12 weeks and closed on Monday 22 July. We received over 16,000 responses, demonstrating the depth of feeling about this important policy area. The consultation explored a range of policy proposals developed by the previous Government, including options for alternatives to cash support.

We will be considering our own plans for social security in due course. As we develop proposals, we will consider the potential impacts of reform on disabled people. This government is committed to championing the rights of disabled people and people with health conditions, and to the principle of working with disabled people so that their views and voices are at the heart of all that we do.

The rights of disabled people under this Convention are largely reflected in domestic policies and legislation, including the Equality Act 2010 in England, Scotland and Wales, and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 in Northern Ireland.

We are committed to championing the rights of disabled people. Our Equality (Race and Disability) Bill will enshrine in law the full right to equal pay for disabled people, including disability pay gap reporting for large employers. Additionally our Employment Rights Bill will support people - including disabled people - to access flexible working and break down barriers to opportunity.

As health is a devolved matter, it is for the devolved Governments to decide how best to improve mental health support for children and young people in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

Plans for investment in children and young people’s mental health services will be known once the planning round for 2025/26 has concluded following the publication of system allocations and planning guidance for the next financial year. Devolved Governments, including Northern Ireland, will benefit from this additional funding through the Barnett formula.

The Mental Health Bill currently before Parliament will deliver the Government’s commitment to modernise the Mental Health Act 1983, so that it is fit for the 21st century. The Bill will amend the Act, which applies to England and Wales, and give children and young people detained under the Act greater choice, autonomy, rights, and support.

NHS England runs Help Us Help You campaigns to increase knowledge of cancer symptoms and address barriers to acting on them, to encourage people to come forward as soon as possible to see their general practitioner. The campaigns focus on a range of symptoms, including symptoms of ovarian cancer, as well as encouraging body awareness, to help people spot symptoms across a wide range of cancers at an early point. Previous phases of the campaign have focused on abdominal symptoms which, among other abdominal cancers, can be indicative of ovarian cancer.

It is a priority for the Government to support the National Health Service to diagnose cancer, including ovarian cancer, as quickly as possible, to treat it faster, and to improve outcomes. This is supported by NHS England’s key ambition on cancer to meet the Faster Diagnosis Standard, which sets a target of 28 days from urgent referral by a general practitioner or screening programme to patients being told that they have cancer, or that cancer is ruled out.

To ensure women have access to the best treatment for ovarian cancer, NHS England commissioned an audit on ovarian cancer. The aim of the audit is to provide timely evidence for cancer service providers of where patterns of care in England may vary, to increase consistency of access to treatments, and help stimulate improvements in cancer treatment and outcomes for patients.

Lord Darzi’s report has set out the scale of the challenges we face in fixing the NHS and the need to improve cancer waiting-time performance and cancer survival. In particular, he has highlighted the need to improve the number of patients starting their treatment within 62 days of referral and to increase the number of patients diagnosed at an earlier stage.

The Government will set out any further priorities on cancer, including on early diagnosis, in a national cancer plan. The national cancer plan will include further details on how we will improve outcomes for cancer patients, as well as speeding up diagnosis and treatment, ensuring patients have access to the latest treatments and technology, and ultimately bringing this country’s cancer survival rates back up to the standards of the best in the world.

The impact of sodium valproate on families affected by fetal valproate syndrome in Northern Ireland is a transferred matter and is the responsibility of the Northern Ireland Executive, therefore an assessment has not been made by the Department of Health and Social Care.

The Government is carefully considering the valuable work done by the Patient Safety Commissioner and the resulting Hughes Report, which set out options for redress for those harmed by valproate and pelvic mesh. We will be providing an update to the Patient Safety Commissioner’s report at the earliest opportunity. Although the Hughes Report and its recommendations only cover patients harmed in England, the Government recognises that any response will likely have implications for the whole of the United Kingdom, and is engaging with the devolved administrations on the Hughes Report.

The Department is currently considering next steps to improve access to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) assessments and support in England. It is the responsibility of integrated care boards to make appropriate provision to meet the health and care needs of their local population, including ADHD assessments and support, in line with relevant National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines.

We are supporting a taskforce that NHS England is establishing to look at ADHD service provision in England and its impact on patient experience. The taskforce will bring together expertise from across a broad range of sectors, including the National Health Service, education, and justice, to better understand the challenges affecting people with ADHD and to help provide a joined-up approach in response to concerns around rising demand.

Alongside the work of the taskforce, NHS England will continue to develop a national ADHD data improvement plan, carry out more detailed work to understand the provider and commissioning landscape, and capture examples from local health systems in England, which are trialling innovative ways of delivering ADHD services, to ensure best practice is captured and shared across the system.

The Department recognises that children and young adults with brain cancer are often waiting too long for diagnosis. As part of our 10-Year Health Plan to radically reform our broken National Health Service, we will fight cancer on all fronts, from prevention to diagnosis, treatment, and research.

Brain cancer in children remains one of the hardest to treat cancers and a challenging area of research, but the Government is taking several steps to improve outcomes. In September 2024, the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) announced new research funding opportunities for brain cancer research spanning both adult and paediatric populations. This includes a national NIHR Brain Tumour Research Consortium, to ensure the most promising research opportunities are made available to adult and child patients. This also included a new funding call to generate high quality evidence in brain tumour care, support before during and after treatment, quality of life, and patient rehabilitation.

To support faster and earlier diagnosis, we will address the challenges in diagnostic waiting times, providing the number of computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and other tests that are needed to reduce cancer waits. NHS England is delivering a range of interventions to support general practices in diagnosing brain cancer earlier, for example, in April 2020, NHS England introduced the early cancer diagnosis service specification for Primary Care Networks. This is designed to support improvements in rates of early cancer diagnosis by requiring Primary Care Networks to review the quality of their practices’ referrals for suspected cancer and take steps to improve this.

We are also improving treatment and support for brain tumour patients. NHS England has worked with the Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission to designate centres of excellence in the management of brain tumours, with nine centres having achieved designation. The mission has a workstream on training to expand the brain tumour treatment workforce, in collaboration with NHS bodies, royal colleges, and charities.

We consistently raise human rights with the Eritrean government, including religious freedoms. We advocate for the end of detentions based on religion or belief, as we have stated at the UN Human Rights Council. We call for all those unjustly incarcerated to be released. The UK's Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea raised human rights during her visit to Eritrea in June. The UK supports the work of the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Eritrea, voting in favour of his mandate renewal in July.

Since day one of this government, we have prioritised working to end this conflict and secure the safe release of hostages, in co-ordination with international partners. The Prime Minister - along with other G7 Leaders - has fully endorsed efforts by the US and regional partners to reach a comprehensive deal in line with United Nations Security Council Resolution 2735. We need the hostages returned immediately and unconditionally. During his most recent visit to the region on 9 October, the Foreign Secretary reiterated the need for an immediate ceasefire to ensure their safe release. We must also see greater protection of civilians, a rapid increase in humanitarian aid to Gaza, and the enabling of UN and humanitarian agencies to operate safely in Gaza.

The UK will champion Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB) for all abroad. No one should live in fear because of what they do or do not believe in. The official source of data on UK Official Development Assistance (ODA) is Statistics on International Development (SID). In line with the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) ODA reporting rules, ODA data is categorised using sector (or purpose) codes, which classify ODA activities by the sectors they benefit. These sector codes are not sufficiently granular to enable tracking of ODA provided to religious minorities. The FCDO works to ensure that Official Development Assistance (ODA) is allocated to those who are most vulnerable and most in need of this assistance irrespective of race, religion, or ethnicity. This includes minority religious or belief communities, who are assessed by our partners when determining those most in need of protection and assistance.

Annex A of the FCDO's Annual Report and Accounts 2023-2024 sets out the FCDO's Official Development Assistance (ODA) programming outturn for financial year 2023-24, including by country.

Ministers are currently reviewing the FCDO's ODA budget and will publish planned ODA allocations for 2024-25 in due course.

Pakistan is a FCDO human rights priority country. We work to protect and promote human rights in Pakistan through our diplomatic engagement and programme funding. This includes regularly raising our opposition to the death penalty and concerns about the misuse of blasphemy laws, both in principle and in relation to specific cases. I underlined the importance of promoting religious tolerance and harmony with Pakistan's Human Rights Minister Azam Tarar on the 4 September.

The Government has published information about the reforms to agricultural property relief and business property relief at www.gov.uk/government/publications/agricultural-property-relief-and-business-property-relief-reforms, and further explanatory information at https://www.gov.uk/government/news/what-are-the-changes-to-agricultural-property-relief.

In accordance with standard practice, a tax information and impact note will be published alongside the draft legislation before the relevant Finance Bill.

Agricultural land and associated buildings are exempt from business rates.

At Autumn Budget 2024, the Government provided £5 billion across this year and next to support the ongoing transition towards a more productive and environmentally sustainable agricultural sector in England. This will strengthen the domestic sector, and improve food security.

The devolved governments’ settlements for 2025-26 are the largest in real terms of any settlements since devolution.

The previous government announced the Personal Allowance would be maintained at its current level of £12,570 until April 2028.

The government must ensure the tax system supports strong public finances. Sound fiscal policy is key to economic stability and, ultimately, growth, which is vital to keeping taxes as low as possible whilst continuing to deliver excellent public services.

The Northern Ireland Executive (NIE) receives Barnett consequentials on spending on policing and justice by the UK Government in England and Wales. Any Barnett consequentials in 2024-25 are subject to a 24% needs-based uplift, to reflect the higher level of relative need in Northern Ireland, as identified by the independent Northern Ireland Fiscal Council.

In addition, the UK Government provides ringfenced Additional Security Funding for the Police Service of Northern Ireland each year to help address Northern Ireland’s specific security challenges. Decisions on future non-Barnett funding for the Northern Ireland Executive will be taken at future spending reviews.

Policing and justice are devolved responsibilities of the NIE. The allocation of funding for the PSNI is a decision for the NIE, the NIE Department of Finance and the NIE Department of Justice.

The Home Secretary is in regular contact with the Metropolitan Police Service on a range of issues, including public order.

The management of demonstrations is an operational matter for the police, who are independent from government.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) maintain 185 graves, mostly of the fallen from the two World Wars at Dido Valley Cemetery, and (on behalf of the Ministry of Defence) 41 graves from the Anglo-Boer War at the Seaforth Cemetery in Simon’s Town, South Africa.

Maintenance includes ensuring that headstones and memorials are kept clean and in good condition through repair of weather or other damage, and that the surrounding gardens are also in keeping with CWGC standards. Further detail can be found at https://www.cwgc.org/our-work/caring-for-our-sites/.

The Strategic Defence Review will determine the roles, capabilities and reforms required by UK Defence, including the Royal Navy, to meet the challenges, threats and opportunities of the twenty-first century, deliverable and affordable within the resources available to Defence within the trajectory to 2.5%. The review will report in the first half of 2025.

With regard to the supply of social and affordable housing, I refer the Hon Member to the answer given to Question UIN 11383 on 31 October 2024.

To support first-time buyers, the Government has committed to introducing a permanent, comprehensive mortgage guarantee scheme and to giving first-time buyers the first chance to buy homes.

The Renters' Rights Bill will provide more security for tenants and empower them to challenge poor practice and unreasonable within-tenancy rent increases without fear of eviction.

The UK Shared Prosperity Fund provides £67.5 million for projects in Northern Ireland this financial year.

The Autumn Budget announced that the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, for which the previous government made no plans beyond March 2025, will be extended for 2025-26 at a reduced level of £900 million.

With this transitional arrangement, Northern Ireland will continue to benefit from investment next year in local growth, providing certainty of funding in advance of wider local growth funding reforms. This will provide the flexibility to deliver the most important local projects for Northern Ireland, including projects helping those at risk of being left behind.

My department will update the fund prospectus and confirm the Northern Ireland funding allocation for 2025-26 as soon as possible.

The Government are exploring new ways to increase and enhance community engagement in the planning process, including by improving access to planning data through its digitisation drawing on provisions in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023. This will help remove barriers to participation in the planning process, including among those on housing waiting lists.

As set out in the Deputy Prime Minister’s Written Ministerial Statement on Monday 28th October (HCWS169), the government will consult on a new 5-year social housing rent settlement to provide the sector with the certainty it needs to invest in new social housing. The intention would be for this to increase with Consumer Price Index inflation figures and an additional 1%. The consultation will also seek views on other potential options to give greater certainty, such as providing a 10-year settlement.

I refer the Hon Member to the answer I gave to Question UIN 8302 on 18 October 2024.

Business relief support is devolved to the Northern Ireland Executive. The Northern Ireland Executive’s Spending Review settlement for 2025-26 is the largest in real terms of any settlement since devolution.

The Northern Ireland Executive is receiving £18.2 billion in 2025-26, including an additional £1.5 billion through the operation of the Barnett formula and £760 million targeted funding, with £670 million resource and £90 million capital, including for the 2024 restoration financial package, historic funding packages, and additional security funding.

It is for the Executive to allocate this record funding in a way that delivers effective public services and provides better outcomes for people.

The UK Government welcomes the launch of the Strategic Framework to End Violence against Women and Girls by The Northern Ireland Executive. This Government is seeking to tackle violence against women and girls across the United Kingdom and will support the NI Executive to implement and deliver this strategic framework fully.