Asked by: Allison Gardner (Labour - Stoke-on-Trent South)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps she is taking to improve safety on rural roads.
Answered by Lilian Greenwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
This Government takes road safety very seriously and reducing those killed and injured on our roads is a key priority. We do recognise that the majority of road fatalities (according to the latest statistics) occurred on rural roads (60%) with fewer fatalities on urban roads (35%) and motorways (5%).
The Department’s Safer Roads Fund has awarded local authorities £185.8 million of funding between 2017 and 2024 to improve the safety of England's most high risk 'A' roads. To date, it has funded 445.3 miles of safety improvements on rural roads, making up 62.4% of all funded routes.
Asked by: Allison Gardner (Labour - Stoke-on-Trent South)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions,what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the Universal Credit reimbursement processes on claimants having to pay childcare fees upfront in a lump sum.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Universal Credit customers can claim up to 3 months of future childcare costs at a time with these costs reimbursed month by month.
Universal Credit childcare element, when claimed together with upfront childcare costs, means that customers receive up to 185% of the first month of childcare costs to ease them into the Universal Credit childcare costs payment cycle.
Asked by: Allison Gardner (Labour - Stoke-on-Trent South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress his Department has made on the creation of a National Care Service.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to building consensus on the long-term reform needed to create a National Care Service, including by engaging cross-party and with people who draw on care and support.
Alongside our plan for health, we will create a 10-year plan for social care which recognises the importance of social care in its own right, as well as its role in the success of the National Health Service. On 10 October, we took a critical step by introducing legislation to establish the first ever Fair Pay Agreement for care professionals to ensure care workers are recognised and fairly rewarded for the important work they do.
To stabilise the system in the short term, we are providing at least £600 million of new grant funding for social care to support local authorities. This is part of a broader real-terms uplift to core local government spending power of approximately 3.2%.