Asked by: David Chadwick (Liberal Democrat - Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, how much and what proportion of (a) Project Gigabit funding has been (i) spent on and (ii) allocated for and (b) additional funding announced in the press notice entitled Hundreds of thousands of Brits in rural villages and towns to benefit from UK government broadband boost, published on 7 January 2025, has been allocated for projects in Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe constituency.
Answered by Chris Bryant - Minister of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
Project Gigabit funding is not allocated at a constituency or regional level. Instead, it is targeted at premises across the UK that need it most, specifically those outside of suppliers' commercial plans.
The latest Project Gigabit contracts announced on 7 January 2025 do not cover Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe as eligible premises in the constituency have already been included in an earlier Project Gigabit contract with Openreach. This contract is currently expected to deliver gigabit-capable connections to approximately 3,600 premises in the constituency.
To date, over £1 million in public subsidy has been spent in the Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe constituency through the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme and its previous iterations, passing nearly 800 premises with gigabit-capable broadband. This includes top-up funding from Welsh Government. Additionally, almost 6,700 premises across the constituency have received a gigabit-capable connection through the government’s Superfast and GigaHubs programmes. We do not hold constituency-level data of spend for these schemes.
Asked by: David Chadwick (Liberal Democrat - Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people are receiving PIP as a result of having a lung condition; and whether breathlessness is taken into account when conducting a PIP assessment.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
In October 2024, there were 107,697 claimants with a respiratory diseased who received Personal Independence Payment (PIP). These figures are for England and Wales only and exclude claimants with Special Rules for End of Life. This figure can be found in Stat Xplore in the “PIP cases with Entitlement from 2019” table found here: Stat-Xplore - Home.
Entitlement to PIP is assessed on the basis of the needs arising from a health condition or disability, rather than the health condition or disability itself. Individuals can be affected in different ways by the same condition and so the outcome of a PIP claim depends very much on individual circumstances.
PIP legislation requires decision makers to consider whether individuals can complete each assessment activity “safely, to an acceptable standard, repeatedly and in a reasonable time period”. These four components are known as the reliability criteria.
When determining whether an activity can be reliably carried out, symptoms such as breathlessness should be considered, as they may indicate that the activity cannot be done to an acceptable standard, repeatedly, or within a reasonable time period. The impact of completing one activity on the ability to complete others must also be considered.