Asked by: Alison Bennett (Liberal Democrat - Mid Sussex)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to ensure equal access to education for children with additional learning needs.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
An inclusive education system for all children and young people requires a strong universal offer, built on high-quality adaptive teaching and early, effective support.
To support the development of a more inclusive mainstream system, we are investing £500 million per financial year over the next three years through an Inclusive Mainstream Fund (IMF) to support schools, colleges and early years settings with upfront funding to help them move towards becoming more inclusive by design.
We have published guidance for school leaders on how to develop an Inclusion Strategy and use their IMF allocations alongside core budgets to more effectively invest in inclusive approaches and activities that address barriers to learning and participation.
Beyond this investment, we have published guidance on Inclusion Bases, assistive technology, and other resources designed to help education and early years settings deliver high-quality inclusive learning environments and practice. Additionally, following changes to Ofsted inspections, settings are now held to account for their support for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), through a new focus on inclusion. The renewed inspection framework sets out expectations for how leaders should ensure needs are identified and met, and how barriers to learning and engagement are removed.
The government is committed to supporting local areas to create high-quality places that are suitable to meet the needs of children and young people with SEND, to enable more children and young people to access the right support in their local area. This will enable them to learn alongside their peers and siblings, instead of travelling a long way to a specialist school.
The department is investing at least £3.7 billion in high needs capital funding between 2025/26 and 2029/30, to support local authorities to provide places for children and young people with SEND, or who require alternative provision, across early years settings, schools, and colleges.
This funding is expected to fund a transformative expansion of inclusion bases, as well as adaptations to improve the accessibility and inclusivity of mainstream settings. It can also be used to create special school places for pupils with the most complex needs.
Additionally, the department is investing around £1.8 billion over three years to develop a new Experts at Hand offer, giving mainstream settings access to specialist support from key health and education professionals.
Our overall package of reforms will ensure every child gets the right support at the right time.
Asked by: Alison Bennett (Liberal Democrat - Mid Sussex)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether the Government plans to review the maximum amount jurors can claim for loss of earnings while undertaking jury service, and whether he considers the current allowance to be sufficient.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Jury service is an important civic duty, and the Government is committed to ensuring jurors feel supported throughout their service. People who are not paid by their employer whilst they are on jury service can claim a loss of earnings allowance from the court, and jurors can apply for a deferral or excusal based upon financial hardship. All support for jurors is kept under review to ensure that it remains appropriate and accessible
Asked by: Alison Bennett (Liberal Democrat - Mid Sussex)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment she has made of trends in the level of (a) cancellation rates and (b) service reliability on Thameslink services since the operator transferred into public ownership.
Answered by Keir Mather - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
Thameslink services transferred into public ownership on 31 May 2026, and the Department has not yet made a formal assessment of trends in cancellation rates and service reliability since that transfer.
However, the new public sector operator has committed to a range of measures intended to improve reliability and reduce cancellations, including recruiting additional drivers, completing the Thameslink automatic train operation training programme and introducing further operational improvements across the network.
These measures will take time to implement, but they will have long lasting benefit to passengers.
Asked by: Alison Bennett (Liberal Democrat - Mid Sussex)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what service targets apply to (a) application processing, (b) renewals, (c) payment processing and (d) complaint handling within Access to Work.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government) (Equalities)
Access to Work is a discretionary grant scheme and does not operate against published service targets for application processing or renewals.
The time taken to process applications and renewals will vary depending on a range of factors, including the complexity of the case and the provision of evidence from customers.
Access to Work operates a Service Level Agreement for payment processing. The current Service Level Agreement is to process payments within 10 working days of receiving the information required to make a payment.
Complaints are handled in accordance with the Department's complaints procedures. The Department aims to provide a full response to complaints within 15 working days.
Asked by: Alison Bennett (Liberal Democrat - Mid Sussex)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether she plans to review Civil Enforcement Officer powers where there is a repeated contravention of parking restrictions over the course of a single day within a localised area.
Answered by Justin Madders - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
There are no plans to review Civil Enforcement Officer (CEO) powers. In the event that multiple parking contraventions are observed, CEOs have powers to issue a Penalty Charge Notice in respect of each contravention.
Asked by: Alison Bennett (Liberal Democrat - Mid Sussex)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps he is taking to recover public funds lost through fraud, misconduct and the improper award of public contracts; and how much has been recovered in each of the last five years.
Answered by Mark Ferguson - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
This government is taking the strongest action against fraudsters that seek to take advantage of the public sector.
That’s why the government introduced the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Act in December 2026 - giving us more tools to combat fraud, recover public money and allow the government to investigate fraud. The Procurement Act also takes tougher action on fraud and corruption against public contracts, excluding suppliers which have fallen foul of the fraud exclusion ground and pose particular risks.
Taking action against fraud and error has an impact. In 2024-25, the Government Counter Fraud Function delivered counter fraud and error savings of £7.53bn. This includes not only fraud and error recoveries, but also savings in prevented fraud and error. The Public Sector Fraud Authority’s Cross-Government Fraud Landscape Reports sets out where departments (except HMRC and DWP, which publish their own figures independently) have taken action to prevent and recover fraud and error.
Asked by: Alison Bennett (Liberal Democrat - Mid Sussex)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to ensure that children from ethnic minority and working class backgrounds have equal access to education and future work opportunities.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The department is committed to doing more to improve the life changes of all children, including children from ethnic minority and working class backgrounds.
Our approach is comprehensive: rebuilding early family support, developing a new model for targeting disadvantage funding so it better reflects need, strengthening teaching quality and ensuring high-quality curricula are embedded across the system.
We are also launching two place-based missions, Mission North East and Mission Coastal, to drive sustained improvement in areas where outcomes remain stubbornly low. These missions will bring together schools, families and local partners at place level to tackle entrenched disadvantage and raise attainment.
Asked by: Alison Bennett (Liberal Democrat - Mid Sussex)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what diplomatic steps she is taking in response to ongoing restrictions put on women in Afghanistan by the Taliban.
Answered by Hamish Falconer - Minister of State (Cabinet Office) (Jointly with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
I refer the Hon Member to the answer provided on 2 April in response to Question 122807.
Asked by: Alison Bennett (Liberal Democrat - Mid Sussex)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure the provision of British Sign Language interpreters within emergency services.
Answered by Preet Kaur Gill
Integrated care boards are responsible for commissioning services to meet the health needs of their local population, which includes responsibility for ensuring that there is adequate provision of British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters to support deaf patients.
To facilitate clear and effective communication in emergency situations, individuals who are deaf, hard of hearing, or speech impaired can utilise tools such as the 999BSL video relay platform, both app and web-based, to contact 999 via a BSL interpreter as well as access via emergency SMS messaging.
Video relay apps can also be used to support communication and face-to-face assessment by crews on scene at incidents, where, via on-board iPads, paramedics can connect patients with a remote BSL video interpreter. These resources, which are free to use and operate 24 hours, seven days a week, ensure that real-time communication is possible for BSL users when emergency and urgent assistance is required.
The BSL Advisory Board was established in 2023, to advise the Government on key issues impacting the Deaf community in their everyday life. On 27 November 2025, the BSL Advisory Board published a report titled Locked out: Exclusion of deaf and deafblind BSL users from health and social care in the UK, which is available at the following link:
The Government welcomed the report, and thanked the BSL Advisory Board for their work to improve the accessibility, inclusion, and the experiences of Deaf and Deafblind BSL users within the health and social care system. The board’s recommendations are informing work to implement the 10-Year Health Plan and to reform adult social care so we can deliver improvements to the health, care, and the experience of Deaf people.
Asked by: Alison Bennett (Liberal Democrat - Mid Sussex)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department plans to take to support hospices prior to the implementation of the reforms outlined within the Modern Service Framework for Palliative and End of Life Care.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Secretary of State for Wales
We have supported the hospice sector in England with a £125 million capital funding boost for adult and children’s hospices to ensure they have the best physical environment for care. We are also providing approximately £80 million of revenue funding for children and young people’s hospices over the next three financial years, giving them the stability they need to plan ahead.
I also provided an interim update to the House on the Modern Service Framework (MSF) on 4 June 2026 in the form of a Written Ministerial Statement, accompanied by a letter containing further information for interested parties. A copy of the statement is available at the following link:
https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail/2026-06-04/hcws88
As part of this interim update, the National Director for Primary Care and Community Services at NHS England has written to systems, setting out two actions to ensure progress is made towards strategic commissioning of palliative care and end-of-life care services: firstly, produce an integrated needs assessment and understand service provision and utilisation; and secondly, move to sustainable contracting of hospice services.
The interim update outlines that the MSF will embed palliative care and end-of-life care within a strategic commissioning model that is centred on clear and transparent contractual arrangements for commissioned palliative care activity across all providers, including hospices, to meet population health needs, with explicit regard to reducing inequalities and improving outcomes for underserved and disadvantaged groups. The full MSF will be published in Autumn 2026.
As set out in the interim update, we expect all integrated care boards to complete an integrated needs assessment, to gain a detailed understanding of their current and future population, including people of all ages with palliative care and end-of-life care needs. This is vital in order to commission the services to best meet that need, whilst providing the best value for money.