Asked by: Charlie Dewhirst (Conservative - Bridlington and The Wolds)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment has been made of the adequacy production standard of eggs imported from Ukraine.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The UK imports a small proportion of its annual supply of eggs, including from Ukraine, to meet domestic demand. We consistently monitor the impact of imports on the UK market.
All agri-food products must comply with the UK sanitary and phytosanitary standards and wider import requirements in order to be placed on the UK market.
Asked by: Charlie Dewhirst (Conservative - Bridlington and The Wolds)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what the (a) name, (b) job title, (c) annual remuneration, (d) time commitment and (e) expected end date is for each direct ministerial appointment in her Department.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
HM Treasury makes information on its direct ministerial appointments available in line with Cabinet Office guidance on transparency. This information is available on GOV.UK and kept under review to ensure it is up to date.
The arrangements for each appointment are outlined in their terms of reference published on GOV.UK.
NAME | JOB TITLE | PRESS RELEASE |
John Van Reenen | Adviser on Economic Growth | |
Alex Depledge | Entrepreneurship Adviser | First ever Entrepreneurship Advisor appointed to the Treasury - GOV.UK |
Anna Valero | Industrial Strategy Adviser | |
Catherine Howard | Infrastructure and Planning Adviser | Chancellor appoints infrastructure and planning adviser to clear path for new investments - GOV.UK |
Mark Austin | Chair, Dematerialisation Market Action Taskforce (DEMAT) | |
Geoffrey Spence | External expertise on project finance to HMT | |
David Sturrock | Member of the Council of Economic Advisers | The Chancellor has appointed David Sturrock to the Council of Economic Advisors - GOV.UK |
Asked by: Charlie Dewhirst (Conservative - Bridlington and The Wolds)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will list the non-governmental organisations and associations that the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Nature has met, since her appointment to the Department.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
I regularly engage with a wide range of stakeholders. Since coming into office my meetings have been declared here: Defra: ministerial overseas travel, and meetings - GOV.UK.
Asked by: Charlie Dewhirst (Conservative - Bridlington and The Wolds)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what estimate her Department has made of the volume of egg imports into the United Kingdom from Ukraine in the last 12 months.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is responsible for the collection and publication of data on imports and exports of goods to and from the UK. HMRC releases this information monthly, as an Accredited Official Statistic called the Overseas Trade in Goods Statistics (OTS), which is available via their dedicated website (www.uktradeinfo.com)
From this website, it is possible to build your own data tables based upon bespoke search criteria including imports from Ukraine.
Goods moving to and from the UK are identified by commodity codes. To build a table you will need to know the commodity code of the goods imported. These codes are available in the UK Tariff at https://www.gov.uk/trade-tariff. The commodity code for eggs can be found in Chapter 04.
If you need help or support in constructing a table from the data on uktradeinfo, please contact uktradeinfo@hmrc.gov.uk.
Asked by: Charlie Dewhirst (Conservative - Bridlington and The Wolds)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will set out how the proposed modern service frameworks will interact with (a) National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance, (b) the proposed National Cancer Plan and (c) other health plans.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Everyone in the National Health Service is responsible for delivering high-quality care. As announced in the 10-Year Health Plan, as well as an overall quality strategy, the National Quality Board will oversee the development of a new series of service frameworks.
Between 1997 and 2010, national service frameworks were a clinically led approach to developing guidance that supported sustained improvement in major condition outcomes, including by narrowing inequality and reducing unwarranted variation. As set out in the 10-Year Health Plan, we will reintroduce and modernise this approach. These modern service frameworks will define an aspirational, long-term outcome goal for a major condition and then identify the best evidenced interventions and the support for delivery.
Modern service frameworks will work with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and others to identify the best evidenced interventions that would support progress towards the outcome goal and set standards on how those interventions should be used.
Early priorities will include cardiovascular disease, severe mental illness, and the first ever service framework for frailty and dementia. The Government will consider other long-term conditions for future waves of modern service frameworks. The criteria for determining other conditions for future modern service frameworks will be based on where there is potential for rapid and significant improvements in quality of care and productivity.
Plans to introduce a modern service framework for cancer will be considered as part of the development of the National Cancer Plan.
Asked by: Charlie Dewhirst (Conservative - Bridlington and The Wolds)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, how much money has been allocated through the the UK Research and Innovation fund to research into mitochondrial diseases in each of the last five years.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Medical Research Council (MRC), which is part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), committed £55,650,000 since 2020 to research into mitochondrial disease.
2020 | £9,283,000 |
2021 | £11,063,000 |
2022 | £13,416,000 |
2023 | £9,738,000 |
2024 | £12,150,000 |
Additionally, MRC awarded the MRC Mitochondrial Biology Unit (MBU), which focuses entirely on mitochondrial disease, £39,489,000 over this period.
Asked by: Charlie Dewhirst (Conservative - Bridlington and The Wolds)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to support (a) agricultural colleges and (b) training providers to develop education programmes on regenerative farming techniques.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government is fully supportive of collaboration with industry, higher and further education institutions, and training providers to strengthen skills in the farming sector, including those needed for regenerative farming techniques. We will also continue to support farmers through our Environmental Land Management Schemes (ELMS) who want to introduce regenerative agriculture techniques.
Asked by: Charlie Dewhirst (Conservative - Bridlington and The Wolds)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to introduce a modern service framework for cancer.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Everyone in the National Health Service is responsible for delivering high-quality care. As announced in the 10-Year Health Plan, as well as an overall quality strategy, the National Quality Board will oversee the development of a new series of service frameworks.
Between 1997 and 2010, National Service Frameworks were a clinically-led approach to developing guidance that supported sustained improvement in major condition outcomes, including by narrowing inequality and reducing unwarranted variation. As set out in the 10-Year Health Plan, we will reintroduce and modernise this approach. These Modern Service Frameworks will define an aspirational, long-term outcome goal for a major condition and then identify the best evidenced interventions and the support for delivery.
Early priorities will include cardiovascular disease, severe mental illness and the first ever service framework for frailty and dementia. The Government will consider other long-term conditions for future waves of Modern Service Frameworks. The criteria for determining other conditions for future Modern Service Frameworks will be based on where there is potential for rapid and significant improvements in quality of care and productivity.
Plans to introduce a modern service framework for cancer will be considered as part of the development of the National Cancer Plan.
Asked by: Charlie Dewhirst (Conservative - Bridlington and The Wolds)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will set (a) the role of Integrated Health Organisations (IHOs) and (b) how IHOs will align with (i) integrated care boards and (ii) neighbourhood health plans.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
As set out in the 10-Year Health Plan, the very best foundation trusts will have the opportunity to be eligible for designation as integrated health organisations (IHOs).
An IHO will hold the whole health budget for a local population. IHOs will be required to support integration, shift resources from hospital to community, focus on population health and tackle inequalities.
Guidance for providers on IHO designation is available at the following link:
Further guidance on the implementation of IHOs will be published by NHS England shortly.
Asked by: Charlie Dewhirst (Conservative - Bridlington and The Wolds)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps her Department is taking to communicate the implications of inheritance tax reforms to business and agricultural property relief to family business owners.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
As announced at Autumn Budget 2024, the government will reform Inheritance Tax agricultural property relief and business property relief from 6 April 2026.
The government has published several documents setting out further detail on how these changes will work in practice, including a policy paper at Autumn Budget 2024: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/reforms-to-agricultural-property-relief-and-business-property-relief
A detailed explainer of the reforms, including case study examples, was published 5 November 2024: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/what-are-the-changes-to-agricultural-property-relief
On 21 July 2025, the government published draft legislation, an Explanatory Note and a Tax Information and Impact Note for the changes, alongside its response to the technical consultation on the changes: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/reforms-to-agricultural-property-relief-and-business-property-relief
Final legislation for this measure will be included in the upcoming Finance Bill 2025-26, which will be published shortly after the Budget on 26 November. HMRC will publish full guidance and explain the changes through their communications channels, as appropriate, in due course for the changes coming into effect on 6 April 2026.