Asked by: Amanda Martin (Labour - Portsmouth North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people were employed by her Department at the rank of Chief Immigration Officer at the end of the 2015-16 financial year.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
Border Force had 760 BFOs at grade CIO as of FY 2015/16.
Asked by: Amanda Martin (Labour - Portsmouth North)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 13 June to Question 57910 on Legal Aid Scheme, how much the Legal Aid Agency paid in fees to Duncan Lewis LLP in (a) 2021-22, (b) 2022-23, (c) 2023-24, and (d) 2024-25 related to immigration and asylum cases.
Answered by Sarah Sackman - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The requested information can be found in the table below. Information filterable by financial year, legal aid provider, and type of legal aid can be viewed on the Provider explorer dashboard of the Legal aid provider completions and starts statistics data visualisation tool.
Financial Year | Immigration and Asylum Closed Case Expenditure – Duncan Lewis |
2021-2022 | £8,201,255 |
2022-2023 | £7,980,147 |
2023-2024 | £8,108,969 |
2024-2025 | £6,052,515 |
Duncan Lewis is the largest Legal Aid provider in the UK, currently operating across 29 offices.
Legal aid is only available in respect of immigration cases which are within the scope of legal aid as set out under Schedule 1, Part 1 of the Legal Aid and Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 and is subject to both financial eligibility and merits tests.
Asked by: Amanda Martin (Labour - Portsmouth North)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, if he will publish a list of the (a) names and (b) locations of former airforce bases within the UK that are no longer in use by the Royal Air Force but remain part of the Ministry of Defence estate as of 1 September 2025.
Answered by Luke Pollard - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
No, a historical list is not held. The Defence Disposal Database details all Ministry of Defence sites the Department plans to release when they become surplus to Defence requirements. This is published on gov.uk: Disposal database: House of Commons report - GOV.UK
Asked by: Amanda Martin (Labour - Portsmouth North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential impact of (a) requiring secondary schools to provide at least one hour per week of (i) music, (ii) drama and (iii) art teaching and (b) abolishing arts carousel timetabling models on arts participation.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
Art and design, music and drama within English are important parts of the national curriculum, and the government trusts schools to determine how best to teach all arts subjects, including teaching time.
Schools are expected to fund the teaching of arts subjects from their core budget. School funding is increasing by £3.7 billion in the 2025/26 financial year, meaning that core school budgets will total £65.3 billion.
In addition, a £76 million annual core grant is provided to 43 Music Hub partnerships to provide instrument tuition, loans, and whole-class ensemble teaching alongside £25 million for instruments and technology. From September 2026, the National Centre for Arts and Music Education will also support excellent teacher training in the arts, boost partnerships between schools and arts organisations and promote arts subjects.
The department launched the four-year music opportunities pilot in September 2024 across 12 local areas, backed by £2 million and a further £3.85 million from Arts Council England and Youth Music. The pilot supports pupils eligible for the pupil premium and others to learn how to play an instrument or sing to a high standard, including fully funded one-to-one tuition. The findings from the pilot will inform future policy on widening music opportunities.
Asked by: Amanda Martin (Labour - Portsmouth North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of encouraging schools to fully fund one-to-one music tuition for pupils eligible for pupil premium funding.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
Art and design, music and drama within English are important parts of the national curriculum, and the government trusts schools to determine how best to teach all arts subjects, including teaching time.
Schools are expected to fund the teaching of arts subjects from their core budget. School funding is increasing by £3.7 billion in the 2025/26 financial year, meaning that core school budgets will total £65.3 billion.
In addition, a £76 million annual core grant is provided to 43 Music Hub partnerships to provide instrument tuition, loans, and whole-class ensemble teaching alongside £25 million for instruments and technology. From September 2026, the National Centre for Arts and Music Education will also support excellent teacher training in the arts, boost partnerships between schools and arts organisations and promote arts subjects.
The department launched the four-year music opportunities pilot in September 2024 across 12 local areas, backed by £2 million and a further £3.85 million from Arts Council England and Youth Music. The pilot supports pupils eligible for the pupil premium and others to learn how to play an instrument or sing to a high standard, including fully funded one-to-one tuition. The findings from the pilot will inform future policy on widening music opportunities.
Asked by: Amanda Martin (Labour - Portsmouth North)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she plans to increase dedicated arts funding for schools to ensure (a) music, (b) drama and (c) art are delivered as core subjects.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
Art and design, music and drama within English are important parts of the national curriculum, and the government trusts schools to determine how best to teach all arts subjects, including teaching time.
Schools are expected to fund the teaching of arts subjects from their core budget. School funding is increasing by £3.7 billion in the 2025/26 financial year, meaning that core school budgets will total £65.3 billion.
In addition, a £76 million annual core grant is provided to 43 Music Hub partnerships to provide instrument tuition, loans, and whole-class ensemble teaching alongside £25 million for instruments and technology. From September 2026, the National Centre for Arts and Music Education will also support excellent teacher training in the arts, boost partnerships between schools and arts organisations and promote arts subjects.
The department launched the four-year music opportunities pilot in September 2024 across 12 local areas, backed by £2 million and a further £3.85 million from Arts Council England and Youth Music. The pilot supports pupils eligible for the pupil premium and others to learn how to play an instrument or sing to a high standard, including fully funded one-to-one tuition. The findings from the pilot will inform future policy on widening music opportunities.
Asked by: Amanda Martin (Labour - Portsmouth North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to improve biodiversity in coastal areas impacted by algae overgrowth.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
In the most ambitious target on water pollution in history, we will halve sewage pollution by 2030.
We are restoring our waterways to good health so communities can once again take pride in their rivers, lakes and seas.
We are abolishing Ofwat and establishing a new, single, powerful regulator. We are ending the era of water companies marking their own homework by ending operator self-monitoring. And we are ensuring greater local involvement in planning decisions around water.
Asked by: Amanda Martin (Labour - Portsmouth North)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether claimants with disabilities who are in receipt of the Personal Independence Payment and legacy work-related benefits will be treated as new claimants for the purposes of the proposed changes to the health element of Universal Credit when they are migrated onto Universal Credit through managed migration; and whether such claimants will see a reduction in their income as a result of these proposed changes.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department plans to complete migration of ESA claimants to UC by March 2026. As part of this ESA claimants will be migrated to the UC Health Element. To protect any claimants who have not migrated by April 2026 we intend to mirror as closely as possible the changes made in UC in the ESA rates. Changes to the “support component” and the two disability premia (severe and enhanced disability premium rates) will reflect changes to UC LCWRA rates for existing claimants. Including these commensurate measures aims to give fair treatment for all customers moving onto UC from income related ESA, regardless of their point of migration.
Asked by: Amanda Martin (Labour - Portsmouth North)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that projects supported by the Zero Emission Vessel Infrastructure fund in (a) Aberdeen (b) Portsmouth and (c) the UK are able to proceed with vessel plug-in demonstrations; and whether she has made an assessment of the potential impact of (i) uncertainty on the UK Emission Trading Scheme's applicability to domestic maritime, (ii) the VAT rating of shore power and (iii) the level of ports' (A) transmission and (B) standing charges on the viability of such projects.
Answered by Mike Kane
The Zero Emission Vessel Infrastructure (ZEVI) fund provided £80 million of funding to ten projects, including over £25 million for cold ironing projects in Portsmouth, Aberdeen and Falmouth. Our UK SHORE programme delivery partner Innovate UK, monitors, scrutinises and works with projects to ensure they are on track for delivery and to assist with overcoming barriers which may impact upon delivery.
While we have not specifically assessed the impact of the points raised on the viability of ZEVI projects, the wider policy environment will of course enable the long-term viability of these projects.
The recently published Maritime Decarbonisation Strategy sets out our intended policy package for the UK domestic maritime sector, including expanding the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) to domestic maritime from 2026. This will be a key policy in enabling the conditions for zero and near-zero emission vessels to be commercially viable, by applying a price to emissions, and incentivising the uptake of emissions reduction technologies.
In the coming months we will publish our response to the consultation on the technical details of including domestic maritime in the ETS, which will provide more certainty on the applicability of the scheme.
Further to this, we recently concluded a call for evidence on Net Zero Ports. It focused on port decarbonisation and zero emissions at berth, including questions on the barriers and opportunities of reducing emissions at berth and standing and transmission charges at ports. Our response to this call for evidence will follow in due course. We will continue to engage with Ofgem and other departments regarding the provision and use of electricity by ports and their users.
Asked by: Amanda Martin (Labour - Portsmouth North)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, with reference to his Department's document entitled Maritime Decarbonisation Strategy, published on 25 March 2025, when he will announce the outcome of the consultation on the application of the UK Emissions Trading Scheme to shipping operating in UK waters.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
A second, technical consultation on the expansion of the UK Emissions Trading Scheme to include the maritime sector closed in January 2025. The UK ETS Authority is currently analysing responses and finalising policy design for implementation. The consultation outlined that the scheme would apply to domestic voyages between UK ports, including voyages that begin and end in the same UK port. The Authority also proposed to include emissions at berth in UK ports (irrespective of whether a ship is undertaking a domestic or international voyage). We will publish the Authority Response to this consultation in due course.