Craig Tracey

This Government launched the National Cyber Security Strategy in 2016 which included the creation of the National Cyber Security Centre. The NCSC provides world leading advice to public and private sector organisation with the intention of making the UK the safest place in the world to live and do business online.

The data sharing measures in the Digital Economy Bill will enable more effective data sharing to improve the public services and functions we deliver. In addition the Government Transformation Strategy sets out specific opportunities for improvement which will be overseen by a new Chief Data Officer and a Data Advisory Board.

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply.

The Government is aware that a range of building materials are in short supply nationally. This is driven by demand and increased global competition to secure supplies. At present, we do not have any information to suggest that demand from HS2 is having a material impact on supplies within the UK or on major projects in the construction, manufacturing and engineering sectors. However, the Government recognises that this is a critical situation and we are following events closely.

The Construction Leadership Council’s Coronavirus Task Force has established a Product Availability Working Group, comprised of product manufacturers, builders’ merchants and suppliers, contractors of all sizes, and housebuilders. The Task Force continues to monitor the supply and demand of products, and identify those in short supply.

The Careers & Enterprise Company is making excellent progress and is having a real impact across the country by linking schools and colleges with employers and providers of careers and enterprise activities. The Company is delivering lasting, powerful connections between local businesses and nearby schools and colleges through its Enterprise Adviser Network. The Company has already appointed 78 Enterprise Coordinators and almost 1,200 advisers. Over 900 schools and colleges (in 37 out of 38 Local Enterprise Partnership areas in England) have been helped to develop better careers and enterprise programmes for their pupils. In addition, the Company has launched its £5 million careers and enterprise fund to boost provision for nearly 250,000 young people across England in 75% of ‘cold spot’ areas. It has also launched a £12 million Mentoring Investment Fund to scale-up mentoring and tackle disengagement across England. Details of the Company’s achievements and progress are summarised in their first annual report published in June this year. The report can be found here: https://www.careersandenterprise.co.uk/posts/careers-enterprise-company-first-annual-review-published

School playing fields are protected by Section 77 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. Schools and local authorities must obtain the Secretary of State’s approval before they can dispose of their land. Applications to dispose of school playing fields are considered by the independent school playing fields advisory panel, and are approved only when it is demonstrated that the application meets published criteria.

The Department is aware of an application by Warwickshire County Council to seek approval to dispose of the former Sparrowdale Special School. The application is currently being processed by officials at the Education Funding Agency; a final decision should be expected in the summer. The application will only be considered when sufficient information is available to consider how the sale proceeds will be invested to benefit other local schools. The Secretary of State will consider the recommendation of the panel before making her final decision.

The Department has published a list of decisions since May 2010 on applications for consent to dispose of school playing field land: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-land-decisions-about-disposals

The UK and Turkey are both Parties to the United Nations Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Waste and Their Disposal. The Convention provides a global system for controlling the export of hazardous wastes and wastes collected from households. The UK and Turkey are also both members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and are subject to an OECD Council Decision which provides the legal framework for the control of movements of wastes within the OECD to ensure the environmentally sound and economically efficient recovery of wastes.

The requirements of the Basel Convention and the OECD Decision are implemented in UK law by the EU Waste Shipment Regulations and the UK Transfrontier Shipment of Waste Regulations. This legislation requires that those involved in the shipments of waste take all necessary steps to ensure waste is managed in an environmentally sound manner throughout its shipment and during its recycling or recovery in the country of destination.

The UK regulators take a proactive and intelligence-led approach to checking compliance with waste shipments legislation and intervene to stop illegal exports taking place when necessary. In England in 2018/19, the Environment Agency (EA) inspected almost 1,000 shipping containers at ports and returned over 200 of those to sites. During this period, the EA also prevented 12,000 tonnes of waste from reaching ports which may have otherwise been exported illegally.

Any operators found to be illegally exporting waste can face severe sanctions - from financial penalties to imprisonment for a period of up to two years.

Forestry Commission statistics published as part of their Corporate Performance Indicators on 13 November 2018 indicate that at the end of September 2018 at least 15.2 million trees have been planted since April 2010 with government support, equivalent to approximately 12,900 hectares of woodland. Annual figures are provided in the same report.

A separate report has been produced by the Forestry Commission using the best available information New Planting of Trees Supported by the Rural Development Programme for England, and other forms of Government Support; April 2010 to September 2018. This gives a breakdown of government supported planting by region, local authority area and parliamentary constituency. A draft copy of this report, which is subject to further review, has been placed in the library. The Forestry Commission is planning to publish the final version of the report with the next release of their Corporate Performance Indicators in February 2019.

Of the £700 million announced in the Spring Budget 2016 to boost spending on flood defences and resilience, £446.6 million has been allocated to Defra and £150.5 million to the Department for Transport.

£406.6 million of this funding for Defra has been allocated for specific purposes to improve defences or better manage flood risk. We anticipate that a decision will be made by summer on the remaining £40 million.

£117.9 million of the funding allocated to Defra had been spent by March and £73.7 million of the funding allocated to Department for Transport has been committed to be spent in 2018.

The United Kingdom’s trade relationship with Israel is already strong, totalling £4.9 billion in the four quarters to the end of Q3 2020. The United Kingdom-Israel Trade and Partnership Agreement entered into force on 1^st January 2021. As the Foreign Secretary noted, the United Kingdom is now able to start scoping for greater ambition in our trade relationship with Israel. Science and innovation are key elements of this relationship and we are currently building a framework for a new Britain-Israel Science Partnership. Moreover, the ‘TechHub’, based in British Embassy Tel Aviv, continues to partner Israeli expertise with British companies, delivering significant benefits to the British economy.

The United Kingdom-Israel Trade and Partnership Agreement entered into force on the 1 January 2021. The agreement provides an ambitious framework to continue to grow our future trading relationship, which totalled £4.9 billion in the four quarters to the end of Q3 2020. We have identified opportunities to deepen our bilateral trade relationship in sectors such as financial services, infrastructure, and technology. We will work with our Israeli counterparts to realise these including through reinstating plans to host a UK-Israel Trade and Investment conference in London.

The United Kingdom-Israel Trade and Partnership Agreement entered into force on the 1^st January 2021. The agreement provides an ambitious framework to continue to grow our future trading relationship, which totalled £4.9 billion in the four quarters to the end of Q3 2020. We are now working with Israeli counterparts on the implementation of our agreement and to scope where there is a shared ambition to deepen our bilateral trade relationship. This includes the opportunity to reinstate plans to host a United Kingdom-Israel Trade and Investment Conference.

UKTI’s functions have been elevated and integrated into the Department for International Trade. In line with the Secretary of State’s ambitious plans, we will focus resource on 191 priority global high-value export campaigns, and 250 campaigns for Foreign Direct Investment. We are also creating new, targeted digital support services and working closely with an increasing breadth of commercial partners to drive both export value, and the number of UK companies exporting.

The spend via expenses for IT and DSE equipment (chairs, desks, risers etc) related to home working is as follows:

£69,843 in 2020

£35,128 for 2021(January – September)

HS2 Ltd publishes data on senior officials’ expenses and hospitality associated with business trips as part of its transparency disclosures available on gov.uk. This information is updated on a quarterly basis.

HS2 Ltd spend for rail, air and road travel – which reduced as a result of the pandemic - is as follows:

In line with the Government’s transparency agenda, HS2 Ltd publishes data for all payments over £25,000 and any payments over £500 made using corporate purchasing cards. This information is available on gov.uk

(a) In line with the Government’s transparency agenda, HS2 Ltd publishes every payment over £25,000 and all payments over £500 using corporate purchasing cards.

(b) This information is published in HS2 Ltd’s Community Engagement Progress Reports which are available on https://www.hs2.org.uk/document_types/community-engagement-progress-reports/

The criteria for accessing insurance products is a matter for the insurance industry, therefore no such assessment has been undertaken by the DWP.

Universal Credit is not paid to claimants who have sufficient income available from other sources to support themselves. Where claimants have income available to meet their everyday living costs, their entitlement to Universal Credit is adjusted accordingly.

Regular income payments that are paid to meet living costs, including individual income protection insurance payments, result in reductions in the claimant’s Universal Credit entitlement pound for pound.

This is published in the supplementary tables available here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/universal-credit-statistics-29-april-2013-to-14-january-2021.

For those that do experience a shortfall, Discretionary Housing Payments are available. Since 2011 we have provided over £1 billion in Discretionary Housing Payment funding, enabling local authorities to support households that need additional help by making financial awards to people experiencing financial difficulty with housing costs who qualify for Housing Benefit or the housing costs element of Universal Credit.

Universal Credit household shortfalls November 2020

In order to ensure that claimants’ award decisions take into account the changes to the term ‘safely’ and how we consider risk of harm, we will review all previous decisions dating back to 9th March 2017. As referred to by the Memo Advice for Decision Making 30/17, this will be delivered by carrying out a Legal Entitlements and Administrative Practice exercise. This will include both existing claimants who may benefit and those who have previously been assessed as ineligible for PIP since the date of the judgment.

We will be undertaking a Legal Entitlement Administrative Procedure (LEAP) to ensure claimants’ awards are updated in line with a recent Upper Tribunal judgment around the term ‘safely’. This is a complex exercise which we need to get right and we are committed to ensuring this process is fair to all. Claimants will be notified of appeal rights in accordance with applicable statutory requirements.

The Breast Screening Risk Adaptive Imaging for Density trial is looking into the use of supplementary imaging techniques for women, within the standard breast screening programme, who are found to have radiographically dense breast tissue. The UK National Screening Committee, which advises ministers and the National Health Service in all four countries in the United Kingdom, will review this evidence when it becomes available.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has not yet published final guidance on the use of trastuzumab deruxtecan (Enhertu) for the treatment of metastatic HER2-low breast cancer. The NICE published final draft guidance on 5 March 2024, that does not recommend it as a clinically and cost-effective use of National Health Service resources. Stakeholders had until 19 March 2024 to lodge an appeal against the NICE’s recommendations. The NICE currently expects to publish final guidance on 3 April 2024.

The National Health Service is restoring the full operation of all cancer services, with local delivery plans being delivered by Cancer Alliances.

Systems will work with general practitioners and the public locally to restore the number of people coming forward and being referred with suspected cancer to at least pre-pandemic levels.

Sufficient diagnostic capacity in COVID-19 secure environments will be supplied through the use of independent sector facilities, the development of Community Diagnostic Hubs and Rapid Diagnostic Centres, further all cancer screening programmes will be fully restarted.

The United Kingdom National Screening Committee (UK NSC) is aware of the The Lancet publication of the long-term outcomes of the UK Breast Screening Age trial.

The UK NSC will examine the findings carefully along with other initiatives in this area, which includes the use of artificial intelligence and digital pathology in the National Health Service Breast Screening Programme (NHS BSP). Currently there is a robust estimate that the current NHS BSP strategy is effective in preventing deaths from breast cancer. This involves regular screening in women aged 50 up to their 71^st birthday.

The UK NSC also awaits the publication of the Age Extension Trial of screening in women over the age of 70 which is due to report in 2026.

The Committee’s overriding concern is that any significant change to the Programme should result in more good than harm and be cost proportionable.

School-aged vaccinations, including human papillomavirus (HPV), were impacted by the closure of schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. School-aged immunisation providers across the country are now working with NHS England and NHS Improvement commissioners with clinical advice from Public Health England to catch up those vaccinations that were previously paused.

Whilst we do not have an estimate of the number of school children whose HPV vaccination has been delayed due the COVID-19 outbreak, the priority now is to ensure that all those eligible are offered at least one dose of HPV vaccine, as per the advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation.