Alex Easton

Small businesses are the backbone of our economy and the Government will ensure the interests of small businesses are embedded into our Industrial and Trade Strategies, as part of a comprehensive approach to delivering on our economic growth mission. The Windsor Framework established a broad set of arrangements to support Great Britain-based businesses to move goods to Northern Ireland, including to small businesses based in Northern Ireland.

The Northern Ireland Retail Movement Scheme reduces checks and administrative burdens on retail agrifood movements. The Northern Ireland Plant Health Label scheme removes unnecessary costs and enables previously prohibited goods to enter Northern Ireland. The first stage of the UK internal market scheme was implemented in 2023, and ensures thousands of businesses can move goods without being subject to customs duties. The Government works closely with industry stakeholders and trade associations on the implementation of these arrangements and will continue to do so.

Support arrangements for the Independent Review of the Windsor Framework are being put in place. Those arrangements will reflect routine Government practice for providing appropriate support to a panel or review. The Review will operate under the leadership of the Rt Hon the Lord Murphy of Torfaen and in line with the Terms of Reference which have been published by the Government.

The selection process for the Second Permanent Secretary for EU and International Economic Affairs was overseen by the First Civil Service Commissioner. She was joined on the selection panel by the Cabinet Secretary and the HM Treasury Permanent Secretary.

Government recognises the importance of Spirit Aerosystems’ operations, skills, capabilities and experience to the Northern Ireland economy, the wider UK aerospace sector and its future potential in the global market. My department has been a supporter of Spirit AeroSystems’s via Repayable Launch Investment (RLI) and Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) funding, and we retain a strong interest in seeing its operations prosper after the sale process has concluded. Ministers and officials are in conversation with the interested parties, including the Northern Ireland Executive, to ensure the best outcome whereby the new owners commit to invest and grow the businesses, thereby sustaining jobs and safeguarding the aerospace sector in Northern Ireland.

As set out in the King’s Speech, the Government will publish a draft Audit Reform and Corporate Governance Bill to strengthen audit and corporate governance oversight of corporations including UK-based multinationals. The draft Bill will uphold standards and independent scrutiny of companies’ reporting and governance, supporting investment and economic security.

The Secretary of State and I recently met with the Post Office Chair, Nigel Railton, and discussed his proposals for the future of the company before Mr Railton announced Post Office's Transformation Plan on 13^th November. While Post Office has the freedom to make commercial decisions regarding the composition of its network, Government sets the parameters for the Post Office to operate in.

The Government protects the branch network by setting minimum access criteria which require 99% of the UK population to be within three miles of their nearest Post Office outlet. The access criteria ensure that however the network changes, services remain within local reach of all citizens.

Government provides an annual £50m Network Subsidy funding to support the delivery of a minimum number of branches and a geographical spread of branches in line with published access criteria. The access criteria ensure that however the network changes, Post Office delivers essential services, including banking and cash services, across all four nations of the UK via its network of 11,500 branches.

The Government further understands the importance of face-to-face banking to communities and high streets, and is committed to championing sufficient access for all. We have committed to work closely with banks to roll out at least 350 banking hubs, which will provide individuals and businesses up and down the country with critical cash and banking services.

The UK Government is committed to reaching clean power by 2030 and restoring nature. We need to ensure that our marine ecosystems are healthy, and capturing and storing carbon too. This means that new energy infrastructure needs to be planned and developed in a way that protects the natural environment and supports nature recovery.

Assessment and mitigation of environmental impacts are a core part of our planning processes, and future spatial plans will support rebuilding our natural infrastructure at the same time as building the new energy infrastructure we need for the twenty first century.

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.

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.

The Government is committed to supporting the uptake and development of alternative methods to the use of animals in science. We are currently engaging with partners from sectors with interests in animal science as to how we will take this commitment forward, including the publishing of a strategy to support the development, validation and uptake of alternative methods. This has included discussions between ministers from DSIT, the Home Office and Defra. We expect to publish this strategy later this year.

All user-to-user and search services in scope of the Act must tackle illegal content and, where relevant, protect children from harm. Ofcom is the independent regulator for this regime and takes a proportionate and risk-based approach to regulation. Ofcom must ensure burdens on providers are proportionate to their risk factors, size, and capacity.

I have held regular meetings with Ofcom, both on their own and with others, when these and many other issues have been discussed.

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) receive the right support to succeed in their education and as they move into adult life.

Following the 2024 Autumn Budget, the department is providing an increase of £1 billion for high needs budgets in England in the 2025/26 financial year, bringing total high needs funding for children and young people with complex SEND to £11.9 billion.

The department is keeping the high needs funding arrangements under review as we progress wider SEND reforms.

The National Careers Service provides free, up to date, impartial information, advice and guidance on careers, skills and the labour market in England, helping customers make informed choices about their career options.

Adults with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are one of the priority groups for the service and can access in-depth tailored support, drawing on localised labour market information, including face-to-face support from community-based careers advisers, information and advice through webchat, telephone helpline and website.

Prime contractors delivering community-based support are required to comply with all relevant legislation and must develop strategies to encourage people from identified priority groups, including those with learning difficulties or disabilities, to use the community-based service and ensure they meet the specific needs of these customers.

The National Careers Service website provides education advice and job support for people with SEND and content is accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018. The education advice is available here: https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/careers-advice/education-advice-disabled-special-educational-needs. The job support is available here: https://nationalcareers.service.gov.uk/careers-advice/career-and-job-support-for-people-with-a-disability/.

As outlined in the Get Britain Working White Paper, Jobcentre Plus will be brought together with the National Careers Service in England, to create a new Jobs and Careers Service, transforming the experience for all users.

Part of the digital offer of the new service will include exploring how assistive technology can be used to aid in the accessibility and inclusiveness of the service.

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

Schools should be calm, safe and supportive environments which children want to attend, and which support them to learn and thrive. Any form of violence in school is completely unacceptable and should not be tolerated.

By law, schools must have a behaviour policy. It is for school leaders to develop and implement behaviour policies that work for their own schools and school community, including measures to prevent all forms of bullying. Any policy must be lawful, proportionate and reasonable, and comply with the school’s duties under the Equality Act 2010, Education and Inspections Act 2006 and Human Rights Act 1998.

While the department expects schools to take immediate and robust action if incidents of violence occur, including sexual violence, any decision on how to sanction the pupil or pupils involved is a matter for the school. The department does not investigate individual cases. In the most serious cases, suspensions and permanent exclusion may be necessary to ensure that teachers and pupils are protected from disruption and to maintain safe, calm environments. Should the incident constitute a criminal offence, the school should report it to the police. When a report of child-on-child sexual violence or sexual harassment is made, schools should follow the general safeguarding principles set out in ’Keeping children safe in education’ statutory guidance.

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.

In England, we have established a comprehensive network of 181 Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), which cover the majority of our saltmarsh and seagrass habitats. While blue carbon habitats may not always be an explicitly designated feature, MPA protection may still yield benefits.

Our focus is now on ensuring that these MPAs are effectively protected to allow the designated features to achieve favourable condition. Three Highly Protected Marine Area (HPMAs) designations in English waters came into force in summer 2023. Two of the three designated sites, Allonby Bay and North East of Farnes Deep, contain blue carbon habitats.

Defra set up the UK Blue Carbon Evidence Partnership in partnership with DESNZ and the Devolved Administrations to address evidence gaps around these important habitats. We are funding a multi-year research project to increase our understanding of UK seabed sediment carbon storage and sequestration, the impact of human activities and to model potential management interventions. Initial outputs from this work were published in January 2025.

Defra has a vital role to play to ensure nature-based solutions are a core part of tackling climate change and averting its impacts. Nature-based solutions deliver multiple benefits for climate, biodiversity and people, and can therefore play a critical role in helping deliver the Government's priorities, such as ensuring nature recovery. Defra’s Secretary of State has made nature recovery one of the five top priorities for the Department.

This Government is committed to achieving its tree planting targets and is committed to the legal target to plant 16.5% tree cover by 2050.  We will also restore hundreds of thousands of hectares of peatland and we are developing delivery mechanisms for peatland restoration.

Defra has secured a farm support budget of £2.4 billion for the next financial year. This means we can maintain the momentum of our Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes, which will rise to the highest funding levels ever by 2025/26. Through this investment, we are helping to secure a healthy and resilient future for English farming and restore our natural landscapes for generations to come whilst continuing to support farmers and landowners in their low-carbon, nature friendly practices.

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.

At the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to develop a new UN Plastic Pollution Treaty, the UK will align with our domestic policy on any provisions related to chemical recycling.

The UK recognises that chemical recycling technologies can offer a complementary route to support the transition towards a circular economy, where mechanical recycling is unfeasible or uneconomic and where this waste may otherwise be incinerated.

Our domestic policy will inform our position on any provisions related to chemical recycling, including the mass balance approach, that are negotiated at the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to develop a new UN Plastics Pollution Treaty.

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.

In 2022, Active Travel England was established as an executive agency to the Department for Transport, with the strategic aim of enabling people to walk, wheel and cycle and protecting them when they do by reducing road danger through the creation of safe infrastructure. The agency has been supporting the development of designs and the assessment of design quality through the use of recently published active travel design assistance and scheme review tools. Officials use these tools for ongoing design assurance and to identify critical safety issues that are associated with an increased risk of collisions for people walking, wheeling, or cycling, and work with local authorities to remove or mitigate them.

To further improve road safety for cyclists, we are investing up to £30 million this year to scale up Bikeability training to over 500,000 more children, and will announce further funding for Bikeability training in the coming months.

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.

We published the framework ‘Tackling Child Poverty: Developing Our Strategy’ on 23 October and will explore all available levers to deliver an enduring reduction in child poverty in this parliament, as part of a 10-year strategy for lasting change.

The Child Poverty Strategy will look at levers across four key themes of increasing incomes, which includes considering social security reforms, reducing essential costs, increasing financial resilience, and better local support especially in the early years. This will build on the reform plans underway across government and work underway in Devolved Governments.

The Child Poverty Taskforce continues its urgent work to publish the Strategy in Spring 2025.

This government believes there is a strong case to change the system of health and disability benefits across Great Britain so that it better enables people to enter and remain in work, and to respond to the complex and fluctuating nature of the health conditions many people live with. The system must also work to reduce poverty for disabled people and those with health conditions and support disabled people to live independently.

We want to engage with disabled people, and others with expertise and experience on these issues, to consider how to address these challenges and build a better system. We will be working to develop proposals for reform in the months ahead and will set them out for consultation and engagement in a Green Paper in spring 2025. This government is committed to putting the views and voices of disabled people at the heart of all that we do, so we will consult on these proposals with disabled people and representative organisations.

The receipt of War Pensions and Armed Forces Compensation Scheme (AFCS) awards is already fully ignored when calculating eligibility for Universal Credit.

The first £10 per week of a War Pension or AFCS award is disregarded in: income-related Employment and Support allowance; income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance; and Income Support. Armed Forces Independence Payments are fully disregarded in these benefits and can also allow the recipient to qualify for an additional disability amount. This contrasts with a benefit like Industrial Injuries Disablement benefit where there is no weekly disregard. Furthermore, these are legacy benefits, in the process of being replaced by Universal Credit, in which War Pensions and AFCS are ignored.

By default, the first £10 per week of a War Pension or Armed Forces Compensation Scheme is disregarded in Housing Benefit. Furthermore, a discretionary scheme allows local authorities to fully disregard them.

In relation to Pension Credit, the first £10 of any War Pension payments or AFCS award made due to injury or disablement is disregarded. Four additions to the War Disablement Pension are completely disregarded: Constant Attendance Allowance; Mobility Supplement; Severe Disablement Occupational Allowance; and dependency increases for anyone other than the applicant or her/his partner.

War Pensions and AFCS awards are a qualifying income for the Savings Credit element of Pension Credit, which is available to those who reached State Pension age before April 2016. Armed Forces Independence Payments are fully disregarded in Pension Credit and can also allow the recipient to qualify for an additional disability amount. There are no plans to change the ways in which War Pensions and Armed Forces Compensation Scheme (AFCS) awards interact with means tested benefits.

Social security in Northern Ireland is a transferred matter. The Department for Communities is responsible for how compensation payments are treated in means-tested benefits in Northern Ireland.

The DWP wants new mothers to be able to take time away from work in the interests of their own and their baby’s health and wellbeing.

That is why maternity pay is primarily a health and safety provision for pregnant working women and is paid for each pregnancy, not in respect of each child. Maternity pay is not and has never been intended to replace a woman's earnings completely nor is it intended to help with the cost of having a baby; rather, it provides a measure of financial security to help pregnant working women to take time off work in the later stages of their pregnancy and in the months following childbirth.

There are two types of maternity pay available to pregnant working women

• Statutory Maternity Pay paid by employers to, and

• Maternity Allowance paid by the Department for Work and Pensions to eligible women (including the self-employed and women in employment who are not eligible for SMP).

Additional financial support is available depending on individual circumstances, such as Universal Credit and Child Benefit. The Sure Start Maternity Grant (a lump sum payment of £500) may also be available. For more information about benefits and financial support available to pregnant women and their families can be found on www.gov.uk via the Childcare and Parenting link on the home page.

In terms of wider support for parents, the Government committed in its manifesto to review parental leave to ensure that it best supports working families. This is an opportunity to engage with stakeholders on this issue. Further details of the review will be announced in due course.

It’s worth noting that maternity pay is devolved to Northern Ireland and is therefore governed by its own set of legislation. The responsibility for maternity pay policy in Northern Ireland sits with the Department for Communities.

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.

There are no current plans to review the legal avenues of online prescribing and the dispensing of prescription-only medications.

Decisions about what medicines to prescribe are made by the doctor or healthcare professional responsible for that part of the patient’s care, and prescribers are accountable for their prescribing decisions, irrespective of the forum in which these decisions are made.

Clinicians are expected to work with patients to make decisions about their care and treatment as part of shared decision making, including discussing risks, benefits, and possible consequences of different options, in line with professional guidelines laid down by the General Medical Council, which are available at the following link:

https://www.gmc-uk.org/professional-standards/the-professional-standards/good-practice-in-prescribing-and-managing-medicines-and-devices

As health is a devolved matter, no plans have been made to work with local health boards to review the level of need for migraine-specific services and ensure appropriate provision. In England, NHS England is responsible for allocating funding to integrated care boards (ICBs), which are, in turn, responsible for commissioning specialist migraine services that meet the needs of their populations, subject to local prioritisation and funding.

The process of commissioning services should take into account best practice guidance, such as the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s (NICE) guidance on the diagnosis and management of headaches in over 12-year-olds, which was updated in December 2021. The NICE guideline provides recommendations on principles of care for people with migraines, which may include a multidisciplinary approach to care, based on clinical need, and involving access to a range of health professionals, including specialist neurology nurses, neurologists, and pain management specialists. Whilst NICE guidelines are not mandatory, the Government expects the healthcare system to take them fully into account when designing services.

Occupational health as advisory support has a broad remit. It plays an important role in supporting employers to maintain and promote employee health and wellbeing through assessments of fitness for work, advice about reasonable adjustments, work ability or return to work plans, and signposting to treatment for specific conditions such as migraines.

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 UK remains strongly committed to freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) for all abroad. It is our firm opinion that no one should live in fear because of what they do or do not believe in. We continue to champion the right to FoRB, whilst promoting tolerance and mutual respect, through our engagement in multilateral fora, including through our position at the UN and Article 18 Alliance.

The development and use of religious apps presents both opportunities and risks for the enjoyment of human rights, including FoRB. It is important that we champion the positive potential of technology, whilst taking action to mitigate risks. We do this by working with international partners and through multilateral fora including the UN and regional organisations.