Asked by: Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of extending the deadline for neutering dogs whose owners wish to withdraw a certificate of exemption.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
For a Certificate of Exemption to remain valid, owners must arrange to have their XL Bully dog neutered and to provide evidence of this to Defra by set deadlines. These deadlines are 30 June 2024 if the dog was 12 months or older on 31 January 2024, 31 December 2024 if the dog was at least 7 months old, but less than 12 months old on 31 January 2024, and 30 June 2025 if the dog was younger than 7 months on 31 January 2024.
Owners who no longer think that their dog is an XL Bully will be able to ask Defra to withdraw their certificate of exemption. Defra will provide more information about how to do this soon.
Asked by: Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to support young people with autism spectrum conditions who have education otherwise than at school plans.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Local authorities provide support to certain children and young people with special educational needs (SEN) through Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans. A local authority may choose, where statutory criteria are met, to make an ‘Education Otherwise than in School’ arrangement, whereby the child or young person with the EHC plan receives special educational support outside of a school or college.
The department are taking steps to improve the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system. There are measures in place for the department to support and challenge local authorities to improve their practice. Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission commenced a strengthened local inspection framework in January 2023. Where local authorities are failing, the department works with them, using a range of improvement programmes and SEND specialist advisers to address weaknesses. Inspections under this new framework will place greater emphasis on the outcomes that are being achieved for children and young people with SEND, including those who are autistic.
More generally, as part of the department’s support for autistic young people, the department worked closely with the Department of Health and Social Care to develop a refreshed cross-government Autism Strategy. This was published in July 2021 and includes children and young people. The strategy recognised the progress that has been made, as well as the challenges and priorities for reducing inequalities, and enabling autistic people of all ages to have the same opportunities as everyone else to lead healthy, happy and fulfilling lives. The national strategy sets out the department’s vision to make life fundamentally better for autistic people, their families and carers by 2026.
Asked by: Darren Jones (Labour - Bristol North West)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps his Department is taking to help limit noise pollution for people who live near motorways.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
National Highways are responsible for managing and improving England’s motorways and major A roads, known as the strategic road network. National Highways use a range of measures to reduce the impact of noise on their roads including using low-noise surfacing for road surfaces, installing noise barriers where suitable, and delivering noise insulation packages. National Highways recognise that there are opportunities to implement more measures in the older parts of its network that were built to different standards and have set a target to mitigate noise in 7500 properties during the second road investment period.
The Government continues to take action to reduce the levels of excessive noise experienced by communities, delivering noise mitigation in Noise Important Areas near the strategic road network, and has funded leading research into noise cameras to detect and enforce excessively noisy road vehicles.