Asked by: David Chadwick (Liberal Democrat - Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of a statutory duty to provide public conveniences.
Answered by Alex Norris - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
Adequate provision of public conveniences is an important issue which local authorities are best suited to manage, given their firm understanding of the needs of their communities.
Our English Devolution White Paper, published before Christmas, sets out how we will unleash power from Whitehall back into communities, with local government having a much greater ability to make decisions based on local priorities. Similarly, the Local Government Finance Settlement 2025 to 2026 published in November 2024 outlines how councils will have more financial certainty and flexibility when making decisions for their areas.
Asked by: David Chadwick (Liberal Democrat - Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps her Department is taking to support local authorities to provide public conveniences.
Answered by Alex Norris - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
Adequate provision of public conveniences is an important issue which local authorities are best suited to manage, given their firm understanding of the needs of their communities.
Our English Devolution White Paper, published before Christmas, sets out how we will unleash power from Whitehall back into communities, with local government having a much greater ability to make decisions based on local priorities. Similarly, the Local Government Finance Settlement 2025 to 2026 published in November 2024 outlines how councils will have more financial certainty and flexibility when making decisions for their areas.
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.
Asked by: David Chadwick (Liberal Democrat - Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment she has made of the potential implications for her policies of varying fuel prices at nation-wide service station providers; and what steps she is taking to ensure equity for customers.
Answered by Lilian Greenwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The local pricing of fuel at forecourts is a commercial matter for retailers. The Competition and Markets Authority has powers to monitor competition in the road fuel retail market. The government has committed to introduce legislation to implement Fuel Finder which will increase price transparency and enable drivers to compare prices. Additionally, recognising that pump prices are significantly higher in some rural locations, the Rural Fuel Duty Relief scheme supports motorists by providing a 5 pence per litre reduction to the standard rate of fuel duty in designated areas.
Policies introduced by the Department for Transport impacting road fuel prices tend to apply UK wide, for example the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO). The RTFO does not give rise to price pressures which would necessitate regional or geographical variations in pricing at forecourts.