Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many DVSA delegated driving examiner training slots are scheduled for 2025.

Answered by Lilian Greenwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) is committed to the delegated examiner scheme and recognise the flexibility this provides with regards to heavy goods vehicles, passenger carrying vehicles and the emergency services in managing the availability of suitably qualified drivers.

DVSA are currently not able to provide plans for delegated training in 2025. DVSA are continuing to develop a training schedule for organisations who require delegated examiners. This approach will need to balance all of the demands on DVSA’s training resource.

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, if her Department will publish guidance on the process for establishing passenger transport executives.

Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

The Department has no current plans to publish guidance on establishing a new Passenger Transport Executive. Setting up a new Passenger Transport Executive to coordinate local transport in its area would require amendments to legislation. Local and Combined Authorities already have a number of coordinating powers and functions in relation to transport. The English Devolution White Paper (December 2024) set out Government’s plans to provide additional transport powers and responsibilities to Local and Combined Authorities.

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how much funding her Department provided for retrofitting buses to reduce emissions under (a) the Clean Vehicle Retrofit Accreditation Scheme and (b) other relevant schemes in 2024.

Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

Since 2017, the Government allocated approximately £100m toward the retrofitting of Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) technology. The Government has not provided any funding for the retrofitting of SCR technology in 2024.

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what data her Department holds on how many and what proportion of buses have onboard connections for electronic devices in England.

Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

As of March 2024, there were 29,790 buses used by local bus operators in England. Around 28% of these buses, approximately 8,300, were equipped with charging points.

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps her Department is taking to help tackle changes in average bus speeds.

Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

The government is committed to working with local transport authorities and the bus sector to deliver better, more reliable services for passengers.

At the Budget, the government confirmed over £1 billion in funding to improve bus services, protect vital routes and keep fares down. This includes over £700 million allocated to local councils to deliver bus service improvement plans (BSIPs). Councils can use the funding in whichever way they wish to improve bus services for all passengers, including investing in infrastructure or bus priority schemes to help reduce journey times.

We introduced the Bus Services Bill on 17 December, which will give local leaders the powers they need and the freedom to take decisions to deliver their local transport priorities and ensure networks meet the needs of the communities who rely on them.

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 14 October 2024 to Question 6923 on Euston Station: Passengers, what assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of progress in the implementation of crowd management improvements to Euston station required by the Office of Road and Rail.

Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) closed its Improvement Notice served in respect of crowd management at Euston last year - on 15 December 2023.

As the duty holder, Network Rail is accountable for meeting health and safety and other legal responsibilities at Euston and the ORR is responsible for monitoring compliance.

The Department recognises the need for urgent improvements to passenger experience at Euston and welcomes the improvements Network Rail is making under its five-point plan announced on 4 October.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department is taking to improve the availability of (a) eye clinic appointments and (b) hospital eye services.

Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Government is committed to putting patients first. This means making sure that patients are seen on time and have the best possible experience during their care. As of October 2024, the waiting list for ophthalmology services stands at just over 593,000. 66.1% of these involved treatment within 18 weeks.

This is not good enough, and we have committed to getting back to the NHS Constitutional standard that 92% of patients should be seen within 18 weeks of referral, by the end of this Parliament, across all specialities. Funding announced in the Autumn Budget will support delivery of an additional 2 million operations, scans, and appointments during our first year in Government, which is equivalent to 40,000 per week, as a first step towards achieving this.

NHS England is also testing how improved IT connectivity between primary care optometry and secondary eye care services could improve the referral process and allow for the virtual triage of patients. This also includes looking at whether patients can be managed in the community, freeing up hospital eye clinic capacity for patients that need face to face specialist input.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many (a) mental health and (b) dementia related hospital admissions took place during heatwaves in 2024.

Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

The information is not held in the format requested.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many hours of teaching were lost as a result of (a) extreme heat and (b) flooding in 2024.

Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

From the start of the 2024/25 academic year, schools have had a duty to provide daily attendance data to the department. Attendance data can be found here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/pupil-attendance-in-schools.

The department does not specifically collect data on teaching hours lost due to extreme heat and flooding.

It is for individual settings and responsible bodies to determine their approach to closure based on their own risk assessment. Closures should be considered a last resort and the imperative is for settings to remain open, where it is safe to do so.

Where a school was planning to be open for a session, but then has to close unexpectedly, for example, due to adverse weather, the attendance register is not taken as usual because there is no session. For statistical purposes this is counted as a not possible attendance.

Where settings are temporarily closed they should consider providing remote education for the duration of the closure in line with the department’s guidance. Providing remote education does not change the imperative to remain open or to reopen as soon as possible. As set out in the department’s guidance on providing remote education, pupils who are absent from school and receiving remote education still need to be recorded as absent using the most appropriate absence code. Schools should keep a record of, and monitor, pupil’s engagement with remote education, but this is not formally tracked in the attendance register. The guidance on providing remote education is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/providing-remote-education-guidance-for-schools/providing-remote-education-guidance-for-schools.

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether there will be a minimum service requirement for broadband on train services under Great British Railways.

Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

There have been no discussions around the minimum levels of service for wifi or broadband on trains under Great British Railways. However, officials are looking more widely into different solutions to improve passenger connectivity, such as a low earth orbit satellite and neutral host solutions to improve connectivity via Network Rail’s ‘Project Reach’.

Submit Evidence (by 7 Feb 2025)

The Transport Committee is examining investment pipelines for the railway.