Baroness Thomas of Winchester

This Government has been clear that we will change existing policies to ban the use of neonicotinoid pesticides that threaten bees and other vital pollinators by the next General Election.

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency’s (DVSA) main priority is to reduce car practical driving test waiting times, whilst upholding road safety standards.

Measures in place to reduce waiting times for customers at driving test centres include the recruitment of driving examiners, conducting tests outside of regular hours, including at weekends and on public holidays, and buying back annual leave from driving examiners.

As of 7 October 2024, there were 571,047 car practical driving tests booked, and 89,349 driving tests available within the 24-week booking window.

The Personal Independence Payment (PIP) assessment is designed to take into account the impact of variations in an individual's level of functional impairment. The criteria consider an individual’s ability over a 12-month period, ensuring that fluctuations are taken into account.

Health professionals carrying out PIP assessments are required to assess individuals in line with the statutory criteria, including whether an individual can complete each of the PIP activities, the manner in which they do it, and whether they can complete each activity safely, to an acceptable standard, repeatedly and in a reasonable time period.

The PIP assessment criteria were developed in collaboration with independent specialists in health, social care & disability, including disabled people. The Department aims to continually improve the assessment process through customer insight, stakeholder engagement and qualitative research. We are exploring the option of a Health Impact Record that claimants could use on a voluntary basis, in addition to other evidence, to capture the changing effect of their condition on day-to-day functionality. This could help claimants present evidence in a structured way at or preceding an assessment.

These figures can be found at part 6 of the Personal Independence Payment: Official Statistics to July 2024 and are published quarterly as part of the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) statistics on GOV.UK.

As of July 2024, clearance times for normal rules new claims are 15 weeks “end to end” (from registration to a decision being made) and 10 weeks from the assessment provider (AP) referral to the DWP decision on entitlement.

The clearance times in July 2023 were 15 weeks and 10 weeks respectively. The clearance times peaked in August 2021 at 26 weeks “end to end” (from registration to a decision being made) and 21 weeks from the AP referral to the decision.

This was partly because claims that had been allowed a longer deadline for return of the PIP 2 form during the period late February to late May 2021 were reaching clearance, and partly because priority in some areas was given to claims that had been waiting longer for processing due to the COVID-19 disruption.

• We will be engaging with the responses people have made to the previous government's consultation on Personal Independence Payment, which closed on Monday 22 July.
• We want to thank the many people who invested their time in responding.
• We will be considering our own approach to social security in due course.

Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for the provision and commissioning of local wheelchair services, including children’s wheelchair services, and the development of their local wheelchair service eligibility criteria, based on the needs of their local population. NHS England supports ICBs to commission effective, efficient, and personalised wheelchair services.

NHS England is taking a number of steps to reduce regional variation in the quality and provision of National Health Service wheelchairs, and to support ICBs to reduce delays in people receiving timely intervention and wheelchair equipment. These include:

• establishing a national wheelchair dataset, as data has been collected quarterly from Clinical Commissioning Groups, now ICBs, since July 2015, which looks at waiting times at the various stages across the pathway to enable targeted action if improvement is required, to support the drive for improvements in wheelchair services;
• developing wheelchair currencies, with wheelchair currencies having been developed by NHS England to offer a structured way for providers, commissioners, and systems to understand the complexity of a patient population and to support commissioning conversations;
• introducing personal wheelchair budgets and legal rights for people, which offers a clear framework to commission personalised wheelchair services which are outcomes focused and integrated; and
• co-producing a wheelchair quality framework, which is being co-produced with key stakeholders and people with lived experience, is due to be published by the end of the financial year 2024/25, and will set out quality standards and statutory requirements for ICBs, such as offering personal wheelchair budgets.

The Independent Monitoring Boards for HMP Grendon and Spring Hill have now published their annual reports for 2023, and I have written to them in response. In accordance with the usual practice, the reports, and my replies, are available on the Independent Monitoring Boards’ website (imb.org.uk).

His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) has committed £26.3 million in the period 2020-25 towards the renovation of HMP Grendon, providing fire safety improvements and night sanitation. HMPPS has also identified projects to replace cell windows and refurbish showers at HMP Grendon; and for structural repairs to the Diamond Centre and the refurbishment of the shower facilities at HMP Spring Hill. These will be considered for inclusion in future capital maintenance programmes.

HMPPS is continually reviewing the investment required across the estate, in this and for the next Spending Review period. The proposals will be underpinned by the data collected in recent condition surveys which assessed the fabric, cells, and critical assets at each prison. These will inform long-term forward maintenance registers, which can be prioritised against future capital budgets.