Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to her Department’s meeting with Hertfordshire County Council on 18 April 2024 on SEND services, what progress has been made on improving the services provided by that local authority.

Answered by David Johnston

I refer the honourable Member for St Albans to my answer of 20 May 2024 to question 25358.

On April 18, departmental officials met Hertfordshire local authority officials to discuss progress with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) improvement and they were satisfied with the local area's progress so far against its improvement plan. For example, the local authority has recruited over 100 new employees and caseloads have reduced. The local authority has also established a SEND Academy to induct and train new employees. However, further improvement is necessary, and the department will continue to monitor progress closely to ensure that services improve for children and families in Hertfordshire.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what progress her Department has made on improving SEND services at Hertfordshire County Council.

Answered by David Johnston

The department issued an improvement notice to Hertfordshire Council in February of this year to ensure that the local area makes improvements quickly and effectively.

The local authority has appointed Dame Christine Lenehan, a former director at the council for disabled children, as the independent chair of the partnership’s multi-agency improvement board.

Departmental officials are continuing to support and challenge Hertfordshire's special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) improvement. The department has appointed a specialist professional SEND adviser to provide additional advice and support to the local SEND leaders, until such time as my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, is satisfied this is no longer required. The department has also procured expert support for the local area partnership from the council of disabled children and the national development team for inclusion.

Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission will visit in early 2025 for formal monitoring, with a full reinspection taking place in summer 2026.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress her Department has made on the Interim Delivery Plan for ME/CFS.

Answered by Andrew Stephenson

In August 2023, the Department published My Full Reality, a cross-Government interim delivery plan on myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), which sets out a number of actions to improve the experiences and outcomes for people with the condition through an expansion of research, better education of professionals, improvements in attitudes towards the condition, and improvements to service provision.

Alongside the publication of the interim Delivery Plan, we ran a public consultation to gather the views and experiences of healthcare professionals, organisations, and individuals with lived experiences of ME/CFS. The aim of the consultation is to build a picture of how well the interim delivery plan identifies and meets the needs of the ME/CFS community, and to understand where there are any gaps where further action may be necessary.

The consultation received well over 3,000 highly detailed responses, which are in the process of being analysed. The consideration and analysis of these responses is progressing steadily, and we are on track to publish a summary of the consultation responses shortly. The consultation responses, along with continued close engagement with stakeholders, will inform the development of the final delivery plan, which we aim to publish later this year.

Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Deputy Foreign Secretary, whether he has had discussions with his French counterpart on the potential merits of ensuring British passport holders have an exit stamp added to their passport each time they leave the Schengen area.

Answered by Nusrat Ghani

As of 1 January 2021, British citizens are treated as third-country nationals under the Schengen Borders Code. This means British citizens' passports should be stamped on entry to and exit from the Schengen Area, unless they can show evidence that they lawfully reside in an EU Member State or European Free Trade Association (EFTA) country. Border guards will use passport stamps to check that third-country nationals are compliant in terms of the length of stay permitted in the Schengen Area. The Government engages with European counterparts at all levels to ensure the consistent application of the Schengen Borders Code.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children in care are moved more than 10 miles away due to a lack of appropriate local care options.

Answered by David Johnston

The ‘Children looked after in England including adoptions’ 2023 data shows that 70% of children who were looked after on 31 March 2023 were placed within 20 miles of home and 21% were placed over 20 miles from home. This data is published on GOV.UK. Information for the remaining 9% was not known or not recorded. In most cases this will be because the child was an unaccompanied asylum-seeking child but it could also be because the home address was not known or for reasons of confidentiality. Information on reasons why children were placed more than 20 miles from their home is not held centrally by the department.

Sometimes out of area placements are essential to keep a child safe, but the department recognises there are challenges in the children’s social care sector. At the Spring Budget, the government announced a £165 million boost to expand places in secure and open residential children’s homes, on top of the £259 million secured at Spending Review 2021. This takes the total planned investment to over £400 million. This Spring Budget funding is expected to create a further 200 open children’s homes (OCHs) places and rebuild Atkinson and Swanwick secure children’s homes (SCHs). This is in addition to the 95 new OCHs, providing 360 additional placements, and two brand new regional SCHs in London and West Midlands created by the Spending Review funding. This total investment illustrates the department’s commitment to support councils in continuing to deliver high-quality services to vulnerable children and families.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 30 April 2024 to Question 23314 on Migrant Workers: Hospitality Industry, if he will make it his policy to (a) collect and (b) publish data on certificates of sponsorship for the hospitality industry.

Answered by Tom Pursglove

The Home Office publishes data on Certificates of Sponsorship (CoS) used in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on CoS used by industry are published in table ‘CoS_D01’ of the Work Sponsorship detailed dataset. Information on how to use the dataset can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbook. The latest data relates up to the end of December 2023.

A CoS is considered used when the visa applicant has made an application which has also received an outcome.

Hospitality is not a term used by UK Visas and Immigration when classifying job roles for immigration purposes and there are no plans to use it to gather or publish data on Certificates of Sponsorship.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the press notice entitled Major agreement to deliver new cancer vaccine trials, published on 5 July 2023, whether brain cancer patients will be given access to the treatments and therapies made available through that programme.

Answered by Andrew Stephenson

The Government’s partnership with BioNTech aims to provide up to 10,000 United Kingdom patients with personalised immunotherapies by 2030. As well as cancer vaccines, BioNTech has several other classes of cancer therapy under development, such as engineered cell therapies and antibodies. We are not able to comment at this stage on the exact pipeline of clinical trials that BioNTech will go on to launch in the UK, over the coming years.

Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Deputy Foreign Secretary, pursuant to the Answer of 20 May to Question 26278 on Passports: EU Countries, what the process is by which British passport holders who require an exit stamp to be added to their passport each time they leave the Schengen area, but have been denied one, can raise their concerns at the time of denial.

Answered by Nusrat Ghani

British citizens who have complied with travel duration rules in the Schengen Area but do not have the relevant entry or exit passport stamps may challenge this if they provide the border guard evidence of when and where they entered or exited the Schengen Area, such as a boarding pass or transport ticket.

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment he has made of the impact of removing digitised signatures from UK passports issued after January 2017 on the online renewal process for DVLA photocard licences.

Answered by Guy Opperman

The impact of His Majesty’s Passport Office no longer collecting digital signatures for passports on driving licence applications has been minimal. Around 70 per cent of driving licence renewal applications are made online.

The DVLA also has an online service which allows customers applying for a first provisional driving licence to upload their own digital photograph and signature. Customers using the DVLA’s renew a photocard licence service can also upload a new signature or use an existing one.

The DVLA is focused on delivering further improvements to enable even more customers to use its online services. The exact order of implementing service improvements will be based on where the DVLA can add the most value to customers.

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what his timeline is for extending an online renewal service to all DVLA photocard licences.

Answered by Guy Opperman

The impact of His Majesty’s Passport Office no longer collecting digital signatures for passports on driving licence applications has been minimal. Around 70 per cent of driving licence renewal applications are made online.

The DVLA also has an online service which allows customers applying for a first provisional driving licence to upload their own digital photograph and signature. Customers using the DVLA’s renew a photocard licence service can also upload a new signature or use an existing one.

The DVLA is focused on delivering further improvements to enable even more customers to use its online services. The exact order of implementing service improvements will be based on where the DVLA can add the most value to customers.

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the Seventh Report of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee of Session 2022-23 on Food Security, HC622, published on 28 July 2023, whether he has undertaken a comprehensive review of Departmental responsibilities and structures on food policy.

Answered by Mark Spencer

As we have previously articulated in the Government Response to the recommendations for the House of Commons, Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee - Food Security report, the Government agrees with the need for policy coherence and for strong leadership on food-related issues. Food supply is one of the UK's 13 Critical National Infrastructure sectors. Defra and the Food Standards Agency (FSA) are joint Lead Government Departments (LGDs), with Defra leading on supply and the FSA on food safety. As such Defra works closely with the Cabinet Office and other LGDs ensuring food supply is fully incorporated as part of emergency preparedness, including consideration of dependencies on other sectors. There are clear accountabilities within Cabinet, and attendant Departmental responsibilities, with cross-Whitehall structures enabling coordination.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on what date her Department expects to receive the final business case studies from hospital trusts that are part of the New Hospital Programme.

Answered by Andrew Stephenson

It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Dissolution.

Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Deputy Foreign Secretary, what recent support his Department has provided to Sudan.

Answered by Andrew Mitchell - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Minister for Development)

The UK remains a committed donor to Sudan. This financial year, the UK bilateral ODA to Sudan will nearly double to £89 million; the vast majority of which will be humanitarian aid. The UK underlined this commitment at the Sudan humanitarian conference in Paris on 15 April, one year after the outbreak of the conflict. UK funded support is being delivered through the UN and other trusted partners and is providing nutrition, safe drinking water, medical care and shelter, as well as supporting protection services for those affected by gender-based violence.

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 1 May 2024 to Question 23803 on Aviation: South East, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the progress made by Heathrow Airport in meeting the Future Airspace Strategy Implementation South change deadlines.

Answered by Anthony Browne

The department has robust governance to effectively monitor progress of airspace modernisation, alongside the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). My Officials have engaged with Heathrow Airport whilst they move towards their Stage 2 gateway under the CAP 1616 process. A decision on whether to approve changes to the notified airspace design is made by the CAA in accordance with the airspace modernisation strategy and requirements set out in the Transport Act 2000.

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