Andrew Mitchell

The Government Property Agency is currently developing plans to refurbish the building for use by civil servants.

Due to reasons of commercial sensitivity, I will write to my Hon. Friend separately with details of these costs.

As of 10 January 2021, 2,057 loans have been offered at a value of £62,409,360 in the Sutton Coldfield constituency, through the Bounce Back Loan Scheme.

In March 2020, the Government put forward an initial and unprecedented package of support to help businesses with their ongoing business costs in recognition of the disruption caused by Covid-19. This included the Small Business Grants Fund (SBGF) and the Retail, Hospitality and Leisure Grants Fund (RHLGF). These schemes closed in August last year.

Over the lifetime of the two schemes, more than £11.12 billion was paid out to 906,620 businesses in England. In the West Midlands region, Local Authorities have reported to the department that a total of £1.11 billion was paid to 94,265 business premises under these schemes.

A full breakdown of grant funding allocated to and distributed by each Local Authority is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-grant-funding-local-authority-payments-to-small-and-medium-businesses.

We are providing the hospitality sector with a wide package of support. On 5 January, my Rt. Hon. Friend Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer announced a one-off top up grant for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses worth up to £9,000 per property to help businesses. A £594 million discretionary fund is also being made available to Local Authorities to help them support other impacted businesses.

The Equality Act 2010 provides strong protection against direct and indirect age discrimination in employment and makes it unlawful for an employer or an employment service provider such as a recruitment agency, to discriminate against any employee or job applicant because of their age. This applies both to when the employer is making arrangements to fill a job and in respect of anything done during the course of a person’s employment. To be lawful, any differential treatment based on age must be objectively justified.

In order to tackle outdated perceptions about older workers, the Government has appointed Andy Briggs as Business Champion for Older Workers, to spearhead the Government’s work to support employers to retain, retrain and recruit older workers. His team will actively promote the benefits of older workers to employers across England, both strategically and through the provision of practical advice.

The Corporate Transparency and Register Reform Consultation was launched on the 5th May 2019 and closed on the 5th August 2019. It received a significant number of responses. The Government plans to publish the response in due course.

Last year the government announced the unprecedented £1.57 billion support package for the culture sector, of which over £1 billion has now been allocated to over 3,000 arts and culture organisations across the country. This funding is supporting the arts and culture sector to survive the pandemic and continue operating.

We have now also announced a second round of the Culture Recovery Fund to support organisations to make the transition to full reopening.

So far 289 organisations in the West Midlands received funding through the recovery grants programme, the capital grants programme and via repayable finance. These include world-renowned organisations such as the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Birmingham Royal Ballet as well as those at the heart of their communities, such as the Black Country Living Museum, the People’s Orchestra in West Bromwich and Re-form Heritage in Stoke-on-Trent.

Overall, funding awarded through the first Round of the Culture Recovery Fund is supporting organisations which employ 69% of arts sector employees in the West Midlands.

We are in regular contact with Treasury colleagues regarding the impact of Covid-19 on the business events industry.

Events businesses can continue to make use of the broader support package available to them. This includes the Bounce Back Loans scheme, the Self-Employed Income Support Scheme and the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme.

We recognise that the events industry and its supply chain has been severely impacted by Covid-19. We continue to meet with the stakeholders, including through the Visitor Economy Working Group and the Events Industry Senior Leaders Advisory Panel, to discuss the specific issues facing the industry.

The Government has also implemented a series of Covid-19 related financial measures that will assist tourism businesses, including those in the West Midlands. This includes the significant cut to VAT and business rates relief for hospitality, retail and leisure businesses, both of which will last until the end of March.

Between April and July, VisitEngland’s £1.3 million Destination Management Organisation Resilience Fund supported local tourism organisations in the West Midlands. The West Midlands Growth Company received £29,866 from the DMO Resilience Fund. Visit Shropshire received £25,066.

More broadly, the £45m Discover England Fund has supported the development of internationally marketed tourism products in the region, including the ‘England’s Waterways’ project. We are also working with regional partners to maximise the tourism benefits of hosting the UK City of Culture in Coventry and the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.

My Department has taken a number of steps to increase tourism in the West Midlands.

The £45m Discover England Fund supports the development of internationally marketed tourism products in the region. For example, the England’s Waterways project encourages visitors to explore the canals in and around Birmingham and the Midlands, while the England’s Originals project provides itineraries that include Worcester as a destination.

We are also working with regional partners to maximise the tourism benefits of hosting the UK City of Culture 2021 in Coventry and the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.

Government’s first annual report on tackling loneliness was published in January 2020. It highlighted the progress made so far across the country, including in the West Midlands.

This includes: action by frontline workers across the public sector to recognise and act on loneliness; the launch of the Let’s Talk Loneliness campaign; the commitment to include measures in the Public Health Outcomes Framework so we can understand local rates of loneliness; and the announcement of an additional £4m of grant-funding, in partnership with the National Lottery Community Fund, to help frontline grassroots organisations that bring people together.

The report also highlighted the good work of the 126 projects supported through the £11.5m Building Connections Fund to bring people and communities together. 14 grants, totalling £1.2million, have been made to projects in the West Midlands. This includes grants to the Chell Area Family Action Group to appoint volunteer social isolation champions to work with the people most at risk of loneliness and to Edward’s Trust to create and support a compassionate community of bereaved young people.

Supporting local authorities to create sufficient school places is one of the government’s top priorities. Local authorities are responsible for providing enough school places for children in their area. Birmingham was allocated £23,208,348 of basic need funding earlier this year for places needed by September 2023.

Officials are in close liaison with Birmingham City Council and all other local authorities with regard to the sufficiency of local school provision. The department engages regularly to discuss local intelligence and offer advice and support to ensure sufficiency requirements are addressed.

In Birmingham, at a citywide level, a reduction in demand at primary phase is expected and, as a consequence, the department does not anticipate any local expansion plans in the primary phase in the short term. In contrast, during recent engagement with Birmingham City Council, it was identified that the local authority plans to uplift secondary phase capacity in Sutton Coldfield. We anticipate further engagement with Birmingham City Council about the detail of these expansion plans.

I refer the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield to the answer I gave on 2 June 2021 to Question 7328.

Children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing is a priority for this government. While education settings cannot provide specialist clinical care, the support that schools and colleges are providing to their pupils, following the return to face-to-face education, should include time devoted to supporting mental health and wellbeing, which will play a fundamental part in supporting recovery. We want schools to have the freedom to decide which wider pastoral and extra-curricular activity to put in place, based on the needs of their pupils and drawing on evidence of effective practice.

We are supporting recovery action with significant additional funding. In June 2021, we announced £1.4 billion of additional funding for education recovery. This is in addition to the £1.7 billion already committed, bringing total investment announced for education recovery over the past year to over £3 billion. The package provides support to children aged 2 to 19 in schools, 16-19 providers and early years. It will expand our reforms in 2 areas where the evidence is clear that our investment will have significant impact: high-quality tutoring targeted at those that need it most and high-quality training for teachers.

The one-off Recovery Premium for state-funded schools will help schools to provide their disadvantaged pupils with a boost to the support, both academic and pastoral, that has been proved most effective in helping them recover from the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak. This is in addition to the £650 million catch-up premium shared across state-funded schools over the 2020 to 2021 academic year, which is also supporting education settings to put the right catch-up and pastoral support in place. The Education Endowment Foundation have published a COVID-19 support guide to support schools, which includes further information about interventions to support pupils’ mental health and wellbeing: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/eef-support-for-schools/covid-19-resources/national-tutoring-programme/covid-19-support-guide-for-schools/.

Our Mental Health in Education Action Group has been looking further at what more can be done to help education settings support mental wellbeing as part of recovery. The department has recently brought together all its sources of advice for schools and colleges into a single site, which includes signposting to external sources of mental health and wellbeing support for teachers, school staff and school leaders: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/mental-health-and-wellbeing-support-in-schools-and-colleges#mental-health-and-wellbeing-resources. It also includes guidance to support relationships, sex and health education curriculum planning, covering the key issues children and young people have been concerned about throughout the COVID-19 outbreak: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/teaching-about-mental-wellbeing.

On 10 May, as part of Mental Health Awareness Week, we announced more than £17 million of mental health funding to improve mental health and wellbeing support in schools and colleges. This includes £9.5 million for up to 7,800 schools to train a senior mental health lead in the next academic year, and £7 million in additional funding for local authorities to deliver the Wellbeing for Education Recovery programme. This builds on Wellbeing for Education Return in the 2020/21 academic year, which offered schools in every local authority and reached up to 15,000 schools with free expert training, support and resources for staff dealing with children and young people experiencing additional pressures from the last year, including trauma, anxiety, or grief.

For further education, the College Collaboration Fund (CCF), a £5.4 million national programme of competitive grant funding delivered in the 2020/21 financial year, is helping to support learner and staff mental health and wellbeing through online programmes and remote support. One of the funded projects was Weston College’s ‘Let’s Chat’ programme, which delivered a number of wellbeing support packages accessible at any time to keep staff, students and their families safe and well during lockdown. We are now assessing bids for the CCF 2 for the 2021/22 financial year.

​With regards to higher education, student mental health and suicide prevention are key priorities for this government. We continue to work closely with the HE sector to promote good practice. Universities are not only experts in their student population, but also best placed to identify the needs of their student body. The Department of Health and Social Care has overall policy responsibility for young people’s mental health. We continue to work closely with them to take steps to develop mental health and wellbeing support.

We have also increased funding to specialist services. In March, we announced a £79 million boost to children and young people’s mental health support, which will include increasing the number of Mental Health Support Teams. The support teams - which provide early intervention on mental health and emotional wellbeing issues in schools and colleges - will grow from the 59 set up by last March to around 400 by April 2023, supporting nearly 3 million children. This increase means that millions of children and young people will have access to significantly expanded mental health services. In total, £13 million will be used to accelerate progress to support young adults aged 18 to 25. This group includes university students and those not in education or training, who have reported the worst mental health outcomes during the COVID-19 outbreak, and who sometimes fall through the gap between children and adult services.

While it is for HE providers to determine what welfare and counselling services they need to provide to their students to offer that support, the government is proactive in promoting good practice in this area. We continue to work closely with Universities UK on embedding the Stepchange programme within the sector. Stepchange calls on HE leaders to adopt mental health as a strategic priority and to take a whole-institution approach, embedding it across all policies, cultures, curricula, and practice. The Stepchange programme relaunched in March 2020 as the Mentally Healthy Universities programme. Further information on the programme is available here: https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/stepchange.

The University Mental Health Charter, announced in June 2018, is backed by the government and led by the HE sector. The Charter, developed in collaboration with students, staff and partner organisations, aims to drive up standards of practice, including leadership, early intervention, and data collection. Further information on the Charter is available here: https://www.studentminds.org.uk/charter.html.

The department has also worked with the Office for Students (OfS) to provide Student Space, a dedicated mental health and wellbeing platform for students. Student Space has been funded by up to £3 million from the OfS in the 2020/21 academic year. We have asked the OfS to allocate £15 million towards student mental health in the 2021/22 academic year through proposed reforms to Strategic Priorities grant funding, to help address the challenges to student mental health posed by the transition to university, given the increasing demand for mental health services. This will target students in greatest need of such services, including vulnerable and hard to reach groups.

The Department has provided additional funding to schools, on top of existing budgets, to cover unavoidable costs incurred between March and July 2020 due to the COVID-19 outbreak that could not be met from their budgets. We have paid schools £102 million for all claims in the first claims window that were within the published scope of the fund, and we will shortly process claims made in the second window in December 2020.

Last term, the Department announced the COVID-19 workforce fund for schools and colleges, to help those with high staff absences and facing significant financial pressures to stay open. It funded the costs of teacher absences over a threshold from 1 November 2020 until the end of the autumn term. We expect the schools claims form to be launched in spring 2021.

The Department will also fund schools for costs relating to COVID-19 testing. We have published a workforce planning tool which illustrates the levels of funding available. Funding will be paid to schools who have conducted testing in respect of workforce costs and other incidental costs relating to testing, such as waste disposal.

The Government is delivering catch-up funding worth £1 billion, including a ‘Catch-Up Premium’ worth a total of £650 million to support schools to make up for lost teaching time. Alongside this, we have also announced a new £350 million National Tutoring Programme for disadvantaged pupils, including the National Tuition Fund for students age 16-19.

Finally, schools have continued to receive their core funding throughout the outbreak, regardless of any periods of full or partial closure, with this year marking the first year of a three-year increase to core funding - the biggest in a decade. This will ensure schools can continue to pay their staff and meet other regular financial commitments.

The early years sector has benefitted from the continuation of early years entitlement funding during the summer and autumn terms in 2020.

According to the 2019 Provider Finances report, the biggest cost for early education providers is staff, comprising 70% of costs for private nurseries, 75% for voluntary, 81% for school-based nurseries and 79% for Maintained Nursery Schools. The report is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/providers-finances-survey-of-childcare-and-ey-providers-2019/.

Providers who have seen a drop in either their income from parents or the government, as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak, can access support through the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS), as long as the staff meet the other criteria for the scheme. An early years provider can access the CJRS to cover up to the proportion of its salary bill which could be considered to have been paid for from that provider’s private income. This would typically be income received from ‘parent-paid’ hours that have not yet returned as a result of COVID-19.

Eligible nurseries can also benefit from a business rates holiday and can access the business loans as set out by my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

We continue to work with the early years sector to understand how they can best be supported to ensure that sufficient safe, appropriate and affordable childcare is available to those who need it now, and for all families who need it in the longer term.

While biodegradable materials may be seen as a solution to reduce the impact of waste, they can also be more environmentally damaging than non-biodegradable materials if disposed of incorrectly. The Government is also concerned that, in the absence of robust standards, claims about the biodegradability of plastic-based products cannot be verified.

In order to consider impacts carefully, Defra and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy published a call for evidence to help us consider the development of standards or certification criteria for bio-based, biodegradable, and compostable plastics, and to better understand their effects on the environment and our current waste system. We are currently analysing responses to the call for evidence with a view to publication of a government response shortly.

Recycling rates for 2019/20 for local authorities in England are not yet available. Reporting of waste and recycling data for local authorities in England for the year 2019/20 was delayed due to Covid-19.

Recycling rates for 2019/20 will be published on 3 March 2021 (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/announcements/local-authority-collected-waste-management-for-england-for-201920)

The most recent publication of waste statistics shows that the recycling rate for Birmingham in 2018/19 was 22.0%

The Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan sets out our ambition to eliminate all avoidable plastic waste. We are making great strides to tackle plastic pollution. In December 2018 we published the Resources and Waste Strategy, which sets out how we want to achieve this and move towards a circular economy. We know more needs to be done, and for the most problematic plastics we are going faster, which is why we have committed to work towards all plastic packaging on the market being recyclable, reusable or compostable by 2025.

We have made significant progress, by introducing one of the world’s toughest bans on microbeads in rinse-off personal care products and have significantly reduced the use of single-use carrier bags by the main supermarket retailers by 95% with our 5p charge. We have announced our plans to increase the minimum charge to 10p and to extend the charge to all retailers later this year. In October 2020, we introduced measures to restrict the supply of plastic straws, plastic drink stirrers, and plastic-stemmed cotton buds. We will continue to review the latest evidence on problematic products and/ or materials to take a systematic approach to reducing the use of unnecessary single-use plastic products, including problematic packaging materials.

As the hon. Member will be aware, it is an offence to drop litter (including in public parks), and councils have legal powers to take enforcement action against offenders. Anyone caught littering may be prosecuted in a magistrates’ court, which can lead to a criminal record and a fine of up to £2,500 on conviction.

Instead of prosecuting, councils may decide to issue a fixed penalty (on-the-spot fine) of between £65 and £150.

With regards to improving enforcement, we are seeking powers in the Environment Bill to ensure that enforcement powers are used with a high degree of professionalism, whether by council staff or private contractors, and to place our improved enforcement guidance on a firm statutory footing, giving those to which it applies a clear and explicit duty to have regard to it when exercising their enforcement functions.

We also continue to campaign to raise awareness of littering issues in public spaces. Last summer, in response to Covid-19, Defra developed a ‘Respect the Outdoors’ campaign to encourage people to follow the Countryside Code and to highlight the impacts of littering. This was promoted both online and in locations across the country near to urban parks, beaches and national parks. We also supported, and provided funding for, Keep Britain Tidy’s Love Parks campaign, which encouraged people to treat our parks with respect.

Preliminary evaluation of these campaigns indicated that they had a positive influence on the target audience’s intended disposal of PPE litter, with anecdotal reports from local authorities that the intervention resulted in a markedly beneficial outcome.

We recognise this has been an extremely tough time for the sector and would like to assure zoos that we remain committed to ensuring the sector can deliver the best possible care for its animals. We have extended the application deadline for the Zoo Animals Fund from 29 January 2021 to 26 February 2021, and the fund provides support up until the end of March 2021. The Zoo Animals Fund is an envelope of funding which to provides for zoos which, due to a coronavirus-related drop in income are experiencing severe financial difficulties and need support in caring for their animals. The focus of the fund is on the welfare of zoo animals and if zoos are downsizing or rehoming their collections, including if they are closing, then the fund can also provide support for this to ensure the animals' welfare. The fund has been a lifeline for many zoos and has been accessible to all zoos which need funds to care for their animals, as evidenced by the success of small, medium and large zoos in securing grant funding. We stand ready to process applications and encourage any zoo in need to apply.

Beyond the Zoo Animals Fund, the Government has provided a package of temporary, timely and targeted measures to support businesses, including zoos, through this period of disruption caused by COVID-19 and we encourage zoos to explore these. Zoos are eligible to apply for a range of support schemes including the Job Retention Scheme, VAT deferral, Business Rates Relief, the Business Interruption Loan, the option to reclaim the costs of Statutory Sick Pay and grant funding.

The Litter Strategy for England was published in April 2017, setting out the Government’s aim to clean up the country, including our precious waterways, and deliver a substantial reduction in litter and littering within a generation.

The Government is committed to encouraging local solutions for local problems, and this is particularly relevant in dealing with litter and fly-tipping. Our role is to enable and support this local action by providing a clear legal framework of rights and responsibilities, setting national standards and, where possible, making sure that the costs of dealing with these issues are passed to those responsible.

Navigation authorities in England and Wales are responsible for ensuring the canals and rivers that they own and manage are properly maintained and navigable. Local authorities are responsible for clearing fly-tipping from public land, and navigation authorities work closely with them to remove fly-tipping that occurs on waterside land. Councils also have legal powers to take enforcement action. They can prosecute anyone caught fly-tipping or littering or, alternatively, issue a fixed penalty notice.

Navigation authorities may also take steps to remove litter from their waterways as part of routine maintenance with the assistance of their volunteers, as well as in some cases running awareness-raising publicity campaigns. An example of this is the recently re-launched Canal and River Trust ‘Plastics Challenge’ campaign, which encourages all users of their waterways to pick up a piece of plastic litter and take it home with them to dispose of properly.

It is encouraging to see that there are a growing number of public-spirited individuals and community groups tackling litter all over the country. We have been proud to support and endorse national clean-up days such as the Great British Spring Clean, and the Great British Beach Clean, and we will continue to use our influence to encourage as many people and businesses as possible to participate in these types of events, whilst following Government guidance on staying safe outside the home.

The Department is committed to ensuring consumers have reliable access to a comprehensive vehicle charging network so that they can easily and conveniently charge their vehicles wherever they live and travel. The Government has committed £1.3 billion to accelerate the roll out of charging infrastructure, targeting support on rapid charge points on motorways and major roads to dash any anxiety around long journeys, and installing more on-street charge points near homes and workplaces to make charging as easy as refuelling a petrol or diesel car.

The On-Street Residential Chargepoint Scheme (ORCS) is available to all UK local authorities and provides public chargepoints for residents without access to private parking. The ORCS has so far delivered 430 chargepoints in the West Midlands with funding in place for a further 73. This year, a further £20 million is available under the scheme to ensure more local authorities and residents can benefit. Government also committed at Spending Review 2020 a further £90 million to fund local EV charging infrastructure, to support the roll out of larger, on-street charging schemes in England.

In addition, the Workplace Charging Scheme, open to small and medium size enterprises and the charity sector has provided another 1,772 sockets with Electric Vehicle Homecharge Scheme and its predecessors seeing the delivery of another 17,141 domestic chargepoints, across the region.

Network Rail submitted the Strategic Outline Business Case (SOBC) for Midlands Rail Hub in August 2019, it was assessed in line with the HMT Green Book and approved by Ministers.

The next stage is the development of the Outline Business Case which is being progressed by Network Rail with input from Midlands Connect, the Department expects to receive initial reports in 2022.

We have introduced new flexible season rail tickets across England this year, including the East and West Midlands. Tickets were launched on the 21 June and became available for use on the 28 June.

We are also working with local authorities and the bus and technology sectors on establishing a model for multi-operator bus ticketing and on further developing existing smart card ticketing offers.

Guidance on Gov.uk in relation to pre-departure testing to travel to the UK states that, if people have recently recovered from COVID but are no longer infectious, they should use a lateral flow device (LFD) that meets the minimum performance standards. LFD tests have a lower sensitivity than PCR or LAMP tests, so are less likely to return a positive result from a historic infection. All passengers are currently required to take a PCR test on arrival in the UK, so that positive results can be genomically sequenced.

We continue to work across Government to review testing measures in place, with the next checkpoint review taking place shortly.

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) aims to answer 95 per cent of hon. Members correspondence within eight working days days. Given the impact of the pandemic and industrial action taking place at DVLA 90% correspondence is being answered within ten working days. The DVLA also offers hon. Members a dedicated phone line for their use. Relevant information is taken during the call and hon. Members receive a call back from a specialist team within three working days.

Additional resource is being utilised in the relevant teams and every effort is being made to direct resource to the most critical work to ensure that customers in the greatest need are dealt with as a priority.

Work Coaches refer suitable candidates to available vacancies, statistics on referrals is not currently available.

Our Plan for Jobs is a Cross-Government initiative that will promote employment opportunities to people of all ages.

Our local jobcentres are now fully reopened and we will provide additional support to claimants by doubling the number of Work Coaches in this financial year. We are expanding our sector-based work academy programme (SWAP), which supports claimants aged 18+ into a wide range of current vacancies through a short period of training and work experience linked to a guaranteed job interview.

We have launched our ambitious Kickstart scheme, which will provide a vital first step on the jobs ladder for many young people. Funding for 6-month Kickstart placements covers the relevant National Minimum Wage rate for 25 hours a week, the associated employer National Insurance contributions, and employer minimum automatic enrolment contributions, as well as £1500 of employability support.

Nine Small and Medium Employers in Sutton Coldfield are interested in taking part in the Kickstart Scheme. Each have under 30 vacancies to offer and we are waiting for intermediaries to be appointed, who will then make applications on their behalf via Gov.uk.

Jobcentre Plus Older Claimants Champions work with Work Coaches to deliver Jobcentre Plus’ commitment to support older people to find work and stay in work. Champions liaise with employers and providers to promote and raise the profile and benefits of employing older workers.

Jobcentre Plus staff are meeting employers and organisations in their area to promote Kickstart and encourage participation with the scheme.

Officials have also engaged with representatives from the Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership to engage with their networks of local employers and organisations.

We are providing £1.2 billion to enhance work search support service in Great Britain which includes doubling the number of frontline Work Coaches in Jobcentre Plus before the end of the financial year. We are also increasing the flexible support fund which includes extending the Rapid Response Service, tripling the number of Sector-based Work Academy Placements in England, and expanding the work and health programme to deliver Job Entry: Targeted Support. Further, the Job finding support service will provide tailored one-to-one job finding support to the recently unemployed.

The Department is working closely with other government departments, external organisations and local partners to support people into work. The Kickstart scheme was recently announced to help young people aged 16-24 find 6-month work places and in Sutton Coldfield there are 9 Small and Medium Employers have expressed an interested in taking part in the Kickstart Scheme. We urge all those wishing to get involved to visit gov.uk.

There are no specific claim processes designed for individual health conditions such as Parkinson’s Disease. This is because PIP claims are assessed on the basis of individual functional need rather than health condition. We actively manage and review our PIP claim processes to ensure claims are assessed and paid as quickly and accurately as possible. Normal rules new claims are currently being dealt with in an average of 14 weeks from registration to initial decision. There is also a fast-track process for any claimants with a terminal illness.

There are currently no plans to do so. However, the Department is currently reviewing the guidance ‘Coronavirus (COVID-19): advice for pregnant employees’.

The Department has made no such assessment.

We have no plans to do so. HM Treasury and the Department will continue to scrutinise spending to ensure good value outcomes. Health and social care spending will also continue to be subject to scrutiny by the National Audit Office and through the Health and Social Care Select Committee and Public Accounts Committee.

We will publish the delivery plan for tackling the electives backlog later this year.

In 2020 the Department received 31,509 cases from hon. Members compared to 10,467 in 2019; the increase was overwhelmingly due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We have taken steps to improve efficiency through the end-to-end correspondence process and have doubled the number of staff in the Department’s correspondence unit temporarily to cope with the extra demand.

The FCDO is in regular contact with the Spanish authorities about their COVID-19 entry requirements, and to ensure that any changes are reflected in our Travel Advice. If a traveller has proof of vaccination, the Spanish Government does not require a negative COVID-19 test for entry from the UK. Only arrivals to Spain from the UK (aged 12 years and older) who do not have proof of vaccination must present on entry a negative COVID-19 test. Spain is responsible for setting its entry requirements to protect public health. As stated on our Travel Advice, certificates of recovery are not currently accepted for arrivals to Spain from the UK.

Coping with climate change is a challenge that faces us all. The poor in developing countries are likely to be hit first and hardest. Our International Climate Finance (ICF) reaches those most in need and we are committed to doubling our ICF to £11.6bn over the next five years. In our adaptation programming we prioritise locally-led action with a strong grounding in the local context and needs, targeting marginalised groups.

We do not need to change climate funding mechanisms to ensure that, through quality education, more girls are empowered and equipped as agents of change. Voluntary family planning programmes empower women and girls to choose whether and when to have children - this in turn supports the health, prosperity and resilience of their communities and countries.

The UK Government is deeply concerned about the grave humanitarian situation in Ethiopia and shares the concerns outlined in the report on 24 June by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Ensuring assistance gets to those who need it most remains our priority in Tigray. We continue to explore all options with partners to expand humanitarian access by both air and land. We have not discussed access for humanitarian supplies with the Government of Eritrea given the destabilising role their forces continue to play in the conflict . We are focussed on securing the complete, immediate and verifiable withdrawal of all Eritrean troops from Tigray in order to help humanitarian relief efforts.

On 14 June I [Minister Duddridge] announced that the UK will allocate a further £16.7 million to the crisis in Tigray. This will support civil-military coordination to help aid get to those in need and address famine risk through the provision of healthcare, sanitation, and nutritional support. This allocation is on top of the existing £27 million in 2020-21 already directed to the response, and an additional £4 million allocated to support nutrition and vaccinations in Tigray. This brings UK total funding to support response to the crisis to £47.7 million. We continue to urge all parties to the conflict to protect civilians and respect international humanitarian law.

The UK Government is deeply concerned about the grave humanitarian situation in Ethiopia and shares the concerns outlined in the report on 24 June by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Ensuring assistance gets to those who need it most remains our priority in Tigray. We continue to explore all options with partners to expand humanitarian access by both air and land. During his visit to Sudan the Foreign Secretary commended Sudan's leaders for their efforts to press for a peaceful resolution to the situation in Tigray and for their support for refugees entering Sudan from Ethiopia. There is currently no viable land route from Sudan into Tigray due to ongoing fighting in Western Tigray although we continue to monitor the logistical and political viability of this route and are engaging the Government of Sudan to support any route that becomes available.

On 14 June I [Minister Duddridge] announced that the UK will allocate a further £16.7 million to the crisis in Tigray. This will support civil-military coordination to help aid get to those in need and address famine risk through the provision of healthcare, sanitation, and nutritional support. This allocation is on top of the existing £27 million in 2020-21 already directed to the response, and an additional £4 million allocated to support nutrition and vaccinations in Tigray. This brings UK total funding to support response to the crisis to £47.7 million. We continue to urge all parties to the conflict to protect civilians and respect international humanitarian law.

The UK Government is deeply concerned about the grave humanitarian situation in Ethiopia and shares the concerns outlined in the report on 24 June by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Ensuring assistance gets to those who need it most remains our priority in Tigray. We continue to explore all options with partners to expand humanitarian access by both air and land including the possibility of air bridges into Tigray. At this point the FCDO assess that airdrops would not be a viable response to the current situation.

On 14 June I [Minister Duddridge] announced that the UK will allocate a further £16.7 million to the crisis in Tigray. This will support civil-military coordination to help aid get to those in need and address famine risk through the provision of healthcare, sanitation, and nutritional support. This allocation is on top of the existing £27 million in 2020-21 already directed to the response, and an additional £4 million allocated to support nutrition and vaccinations in Tigray. This brings UK total funding to support response to the crisis to £47.7 million. We continue to urge all parties to the conflict to protect civilians and respect international humanitarian law.

The Government appreciates the significant disruption the pandemic has had on travel agents. Companies facing difficulties can draw upon the unprecedented package of measures announced by the Chancellor, including the COVID loans schemes and extended furlough.

In England, travel agents can benefit from the £5 billion package of grant support announced at Budget. This includes Restart Grants worth up to £6,000 if classified as non-essential retail or up to £18,000 if classified as a leisure or accommodation business. This package of support also includes the £425 million top-up to the Additional Restrictions Grant which has already provided Local Authorities (LAs) with £1.6 billion. This funding is at the LAs discretion and is intended to support businesses which are not eligible for Restart Grants, but which are nonetheless experiencing a severe impact on their business.

The Government continues to review all the economic support schemes, including grant support, as the public health response evolves.

We regularly work with our international partners in the G7, G20 and Paris Club on debt issues, including private sector participation in debt restructurings. We also engage directly with the private sector, including through the Institute of International Finance.

Support for Low-Income Developing Countries is a key priority for the UK’s G7 presidency this year and we have made clear our expectation that the private sector will offer debt treatment on at least as favourable terms as the official sector under the Common Framework agreed by the G20 last November.

Company formation service providers are regulated entities under the UK’s Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017. The Regulations set out the high-level requirements on regulated firms to combat money laundering and ensure that key professionals identify their customers, understand the purpose behind transactions including the source of funds and have policies, controls and procedures in place to mitigate against the risks of money laundering and terrorism financing they face.

As a regulated entity under the Regulations, company formation service providers must be registered with an anti-money laundering supervisor. Anti-money laundering supervisors must effectively monitor the compliance of regulated entities they supervise. In December 2018, the Financial Action Task Force, the global standard-setter for anti-money laundering and counter terrorism financing (AML/CTF), published its Mutual Evaluation Report of the United Kingdom. It recognised that the UK’s AML/CTF regime is the strongest of over sixty countries assessed by FATF and its regional bodies to date.

The government is committed to making the UK the best place to start and grow a digital business, and to ensuring the benefits of digital are felt across the country.

The Midlands is well-placed to make the most of the digital revolution, with its leading universities and strengths in advanced manufacturing and engineering. It is already home to more than 20,000 digital technology businesses.

We are driving further growth in the region’s digital economy through:

• The £250m Midlands Engine Investment Fund (MEIF), which enables effective collaboration between lenders, local bodies and the British Business Bank to help local firms access the investment they need to thrive. The MEIF complements other British Business Bank programmes to give small and medium-sized businesses increased flexibility in the types of funding available to them.
• A Skills deal with West Midlands Combined Authority, which will unlock up to £69m to boost digital and technical skills, job opportunities and productivity across the region.
• Committing over £20m for large-scale testing of new 5G applications in urban areas across the West Midlands, helping local people and businesses to benefit from new digital technologies. This builds on the £4.8m invested in the 5G testbed in Worcestershire, putting the Midlands at the forefront of 5G developments.

The region is also benefitting from:

• Our investment of £21m in Tech Nation’s regional network, which is helping tech entrepreneurs across the UK to scale their businesses.
• The government’s commitment since 2016 to invest an additional £7bn by 2022 in R&D – the largest increase on record and demonstrable progress towards our goal of increasing economy-wide R&D investment to 2.4% of GDP by 2027.
• Support for businesses through R&D tax reliefs, which has more than tripled overall since 2010 and totalled £4.4bn in 2016-17.

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act lists a range of public authorities who use Covert Human Intelligence Sources (CHIS) for general investigative purposes. The CHIS (Criminal Conduct) Bill restricts the number of public authorities able to authorise participation in criminal conduct to only those public authorities who have demonstrated a clear operational need for the tactic. Authorisations will be subject to a robust set of safeguards and an authorisation can only be granted where it is necessary and proportionate to the criminality it is seeking to prevent.

The Food Standards Agency is tasked with protecting consumers and the food industry from crime within food supply chains. Examples of such criminality include the use of stolen food in the supply chain, unlawful slaughter, diversion of unsafe food, adulteration, substitution or misrepresentation of food and document fraud.

An example of where they might need to authorise participation in criminal conduct is where an individual working within a food business, contacts handlers to pass on intelligence. This relates to the ongoing misrepresentation of meat as being of premium quality and the extension of meat durability dates, leading to out of date meat being consumed.

The continuing presence of the individual within the workplace necessitates them actively participating in presenting, packaging and re-labelling produce in order to misrepresent its quality and fitness for consumption, which are criminal offences. This provides opportunities for the evidential seizure of unfit produce and to identify those complicit in, and responsible for, directing fraudulent activity. As a result, evidence is available to support a successful prosecution.

All authorisations are granted by an experienced and highly trained authorising officer who will ensure that the authorisation has strict parameters and that this is communicated to the ‘agent’ or CHIS. Authorising Officers receive robust training to ensure they understand necessity, proportionality and risk considerations.

Public authorities each have in place their own training processes for their authorising officers to reflect the specialist remit in which they operate.

The authorisation of CHIS participation in criminal conduct is, and will continue to be, subject to robust and independent oversight by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner.

The Commissioner has wide-ranging statutory responsibilities for the oversight of investigatory powers, including this power, which are set out in Part 8 of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016. The Bill sets out particular requirements in relation to participation in criminal conduct. It amends the Investigatory Powers Act to provide a requirement for the Investigatory Powers Commissioner to pay particular attention to public authorities’ use of the power to grant criminal conduct authorisations under new section 29B.It also requires the Investigatory Powers Commissioner to include information about public authorities’ use of criminal conduct authorisations in his annual report. This will include information such as statistics on relevant public authorities’ of the power, the operation of safeguards in relation to authorisations, and errors.

As part of this, we anticipate that the IPC and his office will identify if any public body is failing to train and assess their officers to a sufficiently high standard.

A covert human intelligence source (CHIS) will never be given authority to commit any and all crime. All authorisations must be necessary and proportionate to the criminality they are seeking to prevent and the Authorising Officer must ensure that the level of criminality authorised must be at the lowest level of intrusion possible to achieve the aims of the operation.

There are limits to the activity that can be authorised under this Bill and these are contained in the Human Rights Act. This includes the right to life, and prohibition of torture or subjecting someone to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

The Bill does not list specific crimes which may be authorised, or prohibited, as to do so would place into the hands of criminals, terrorists and hostile states a means of creating a checklist for suspected CHIS to be tested against. This would threaten the future of the CHIS capability, and result in an increased threat to the public.

With regards to international comparisons, different countries have different legal systems, threat pictures and operational practices which means that simply comparing respective legislation gives only a very partial picture. In the course of developing this Bill, officials have engaged with a variety of stakeholders, including US counterparts.

In 2020/21, we are providing over £700 million to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping across England.

Birmingham City Council have been allocated more than £2.5 million through rough sleeping programmes in 2020/21. This includes:

• Rough Sleeping Initiative funding to support the establishment or enhancement of coordinated local services for rough sleepers or those at risk of sleeping rough;
• Next Steps Accommodation funding to prevent those bought in during the COVID-19 pandemic returning to the streets and long term funding through the Rough Sleeper Accommodation Programme, from 2020/21 – 2023/24;
• Cold Weather Funding to bring forward COVID-secure accommodation this winter and to keep vulnerable people safe;
• Protect Programme funding, which provides targeted support to local authorities with higher numbers of rough sleepers to meet the specific challenges they faced;
• Drug and alcohol misuse funding for those with drug and alcohol support needs to get the help they need to rebuild their lives, and;
• Funding for Housing First is also providing accommodation for up to 130 individuals in the city by the end of June 2021.

Birmingham City Council have been closely supported by our MHCLG Rough Sleeping Initiative and homelessness advisers. These expert advisers are pro-actively working with local areas as they adapt to the new restrictions and will continue to support these authorities beyond COVID-19.

This Government is committed to ending rough sleeping and we have taken unprecedented steps to protect rough sleepers during the pandemic. This work has not stopped, and through Everyone In, by November we had supported around 33,000 people with nearly 10,000 in emergency accommodation and over 23,000 already moved on into longer-term accommodation.

The Government’s support for biodiversity is made clear in the National Planning Policy Framework and accompanying planning guidance. The Framework says that to protect and enhance biodiversity, planning policies and decisions should minimise impacts on and provide net gains for biodiversity, and it contains a number of policies in support of this. The accompanying planning guidance was updated on 21 July 2019 and provides advice on how development can achieve biodiversity net gains. The Environment Bill will take biodiversity net gain a stage further by making it a mandatory requirement for development.

We have no plans to publish a draft document prepared for the previous government which was not issued, and no plans to review the law on assisted suicide or issue a call for evidence.

The government’s view remains that that any change to the law in this area must be for individual Parliamentarians to consider as an issue of conscience, rather than a decision for Government.

I note the Rt. Hon. Member’s ongoing interest in this matter, and would reassure him that discussions are taking place at official level on the statutory review.

The right to a fair trial is a fundamental part of our society and the Closed Material Procedures contain strong procedural and judicial safeguards.

We will bring forward the statutory review as soon as possible.

I can advise that discussions are still ongoing and an announcement will be made in due course.

I can advise that discussions are still ongoing and an announcement will be made in due course.

I can advise that discussions are still ongoing and an announcement will be made in due course.