Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent steps his Department has taken to help support pensioners with increases in the cost of living.
Answered by Laura Trott - Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury
The Government understands the pressures people are facing with the cost of living which is why we are providing total support of over £94bn over 2022/23 and 2023/24 to help households and individuals with their rising bills.
From April 2023, State Pensions, including the Pension Credit Standard Minimum Guarantee, were increased by 10.1%, in line with prices in the year to September 2022.
Over 8 million UK households on eligible means tested benefits, including the 1.4 million pensioners currently in receipt of Pension Credit, will receive additional Cost of Living Payments totalling up to £900 in the 2023/24 financial year.
In addition, over 8 million pensioner households will receive a £300 pensioner Cost of Living Payment as a top up to their winter fuel payment later this year increasing payments to £500 for households with someone aged 66-79 and £600 for households with someone aged 80 and over.
Specific statistics relating to the pensioner Cost of Living Payments are not available. However, the latest available winter fuel payment statistics (2021/22) show that 14,271 customers in Bexleyheath and Crayford received a winter fuel payment. We expect a similar number of customers will receive the pensioner Cost of Living Payment in 2022/23 and 2023/24.
Pension Credit provides vital financial support to pensioners on a low income and we want all eligible pensioners to claim it. That is why we have been running a comprehensive communications campaign since April 2022. Earlier this year we boosted our campaign with extensive television adverts which highlighted that Pension Credit is worth £3,500 a year on average. Most recently on 17 July we launched a new and innovative Pension Credit “Invitation to Claim” trial which will involve DWP sending letters to approximately 2,500 pensioner households in 10 Local Authorities across Great Britain identified via Housing Benefit data as being most likely to be entitled to Pension Credit encouraging them to contact DWP and make a claim.
Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help increase the availability of childcare in Bexleyheath and Crayford constituency.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Shadow Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
In the government’s Spring Budget, on 15 March, the government announced a number of transformative reforms to childcare for parents, children, the economy and women. By 2027/28, the government will expect to be spending in excess of £8 billion every year on free hours and early education, helping working families with their childcare costs. This announcement represents the single biggest investment in childcare in England ever.
This measure will expand the free early education entitlements offer, so that eligible working parents in England will be able to access 30 hours of childcare per week, for 38 weeks of the year, from when their child is nine months old to when they start school.
This will be rolled out in stages:
The government will also substantially uplift the hourly rate paid to local authorities to increase hourly rates paid to childcare providers, to deliver existing free entitlements offers. In 2023/24 £204 million of additional funding will be provided, paid from September 2023, rising to £288 million by 2024/25.
This will include an average of 30% increase in the two-year-old rate from September 2023, and means that the average hourly rate for two year olds will rise from the current £6 per hour in 2023/24 to around £8 per hour. The average three to four year old rate will rise in line with inflation to over £5.50 per hour from September 2023, with further uplifts beyond this.
The early years workforce makes a huge contribution to young children’s lives. Supporting and growing this workforce to deliver the transformative reforms announced by the Chancellor in the Spring Budget is a priority for the department.
The department will launch a new national recruitment campaign early next year to support the recruitment and retention of talented staff. Alongside this, we will consider how to introduce new accelerated apprenticeship and degree apprenticeship routes so everyone from junior staff to senior leaders can easily move into a career in the sector.
The department has also launched a consultation on the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) to offer providers increased flexibility and alleviate known burdens, exploring giving providers more choice over how they operate and making it easier for them to deliver the EYFS. The intention is that these changes will support settings to deliver the new entitlements announced at the Spring Budget.
Under Section 6 of the Childcare Act 2006, local authorities are responsible for ensuring that the provision of childcare is sufficient to meet the requirements of parents in their area. Part B of the Early education and childcare statutory guidance for local authorities highlights that local authorities are required to report annually to elected council members on how they are meeting their duty to secure sufficient childcare, and to make this report available and accessible to parents. The guidance can be found at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1149556/Early_education_and_childcare_statutory_guidance_-_April_2023.pdf.
The department has regular contact with each local authority in England about their sufficiency of childcare and any issues they are facing, including Bexley local authority, who oversee the Bexleyheath and Crayford constituency.
Where local authorities report sufficiency challenges, the department discuss what action the local authority is taking to address those issues.
Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many foreign nationals given sentences of imprisonment for public protection have been deported in each of the last five years.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office publishes data on returns in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on returns of foreign national offenders (FNOs) are published in table Ret_D03 of the ‘Returns detailed datasets’.
Information on how to use the dataset can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of the workbook. The latest data relates to December 2022.
An FNO is someone who is not a British citizen and is, or was, convicted in the UK of any criminal offence, or convicted abroad for a serious criminal offence. We do not publish information about whether FNOs have served prison time or not.
Information on future Home Office statistical release dates can be found in the ‘Research and statistics calendar’.
Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many (a) primary and (b) secondary school students receive free school meals in the Bexleyheath and Crayford constituency.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department publishes figures on the proportion of pupils who are eligible for free school meals (FSM). The most recently published figures are available at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-pupils-and-their-characteristics. In the 2022/23 academic year, 1,557 primary and 1,350 secondary pupils were eligible for FSM in the Bexleyheath and Crayford constituency.
Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to improve social mobility among young people.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities
Alongside education, employment plays a crucial role in helping to improve social mobility among young people.
The DWP Youth Offer provides individually tailored Work Coach support to young people aged 16 to 24 who are in the Universal Credit Intensive Work Search group. This includes more intensive support early in their Universal Credit claim, Youth Employability Coaches for young people with additional barriers to finding work, and Youth Hubs across Great Britain.
Our Work Coaches support young people’s individual aspirations, identify and help address skills gaps and wider barriers to entering work or progressing in their careers. They are supported by a network of dedicated Jobcentre Plus outreach leads specialising in areas including support for young care leavers or who – in the case of our support for schools’ advisers – are helping young people in schools in disadvantaged areas develop successful career pathways.
Spring Budget confirmed that the Youth Offer will be extended to the end of the Parliament and – from Autumn – will be expanded so more young Universal Credit claimants can access this dedicated support.
DWP is a strong champion for social mobility and has met with the Social Mobility Commission and celebrated National Social Mobility Awareness Day. Alongside this, DWP has established the Social Mobility Pledge Consortium in partnership with Talk Talk.
The pledge asks businesses to make measurable commitments to diversify the backgrounds of their workforce and help vulnerable people progress. We celebrated some of the achievements our nearly 120 employer signatories have made over the last year at a national conference at the Tottenham Hotspur football stadium on Tuesday 20th June.
Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to improve the dementia diagnosis rate in the Bexleyheath and Crayford constituency.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Transport
In December 2022, the recovery of the dementia diagnosis rate to the national ambition of 66.7% was included in the NHS priorities and operational planning guidance as part of the refined mental health objectives for 2023/24. This reinforces the importance of dementia as a key priority for NHS England and provides a clear direction for integrated care boards to support delivery of timely diagnoses within systems.
Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to promote the use of urgent care centres.
Answered by Will Quince
A key aim of the Delivery plan for recovering urgent and emergency care services is making it easier for patients to access the right care. Urgent Treatment Centres (UTCs) are an important part of urgent and emergency care, providing patients with an alternative to accident and emergency, helping them get the right level of care and taking pressures off our Emergency Departments.
The NHS Directory of Services (DoS) enables referrals into the most appropriate urgent care service from 111 and 999, supporting better management of patients. Under the plan, a rebuild of the DoS platform will make it easier for staff in the NHS to direct people to the appropriate services.
NHS England will work with stakeholders to agree consistent approaches for patients who walk into hospitals, which will support patients to be seen in the most appropriate setting.
The plan sets out that integrated care boards (ICBs) should determine where UTCs will be most effective in their system. They may be co-located with the local emergency department or a standalone service either on or off a hospital site. Under the plan, ICB decisions about all existing services should be concluded through 2023/24.
Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the average funding per pupil in mainstream schools was in (a) Bexleyheath and Crayford constituency, (b) the London Borough of Bexley and (c) England in each of the last three years.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The table below shows the average funding per pupil provided for mainstream schools in the London Borough of Bexley, and England, through the Dedicated Schools Grant, the Schools Supplementary Grant (SSG) in 2022/23 only, and the Mainstream Schools Additional Grant (MSAG) in 2023/24 only, since the 2021/22 financial year.
Per pupil funding excludes growth funding.
Financial year | Bexley | England |
2021/22 | £5,211 | £5,212 |
2022/23 | £5,543 | £5,534 |
2023/24 | £5,890 | £5,839 |
The Department, through the schools National Funding Formula (NFF), calculates notional funding allocations for each mainstream school. These are then aggregated for each Local Authority. National and Local Authority average per pupil figures are based on the actual funding schools receive from these aggregated allocations.
Each Local Authority then determines individual schools’ final funding allocations through their own local formula. The Department does not hold this information, and therefore cannot calculate constituency-level per pupil averages.
The table below shows the average funding per pupil that mainstream schools in the Bexleyheath and Crayford constituency have attracted through the schools NFF since the 2021/22 financial year, rather than their actual allocations from their Local Authority.
Financial year | Bexleyheath and Crayford |
2021/22 | £5,285 |
2022/23 | £5,435 |
2023/24 | £5,738 |
On top of this funding through the schools NFF, all schools in Bexleyheath and Crayford received additional funding through the SSG in 2022/23, worth an average additional £159 per pupil, and are receiving funding from the MSAG in 2023/24, worth an average additional £195 per pupil.
Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what information his Department holds on Southeastern train punctuality on the Bexleyheath line since the new timetable was introduced in December 2022.
Answered by Huw Merriman
Southeastern introduced a new timetable on 11 December 2022. Since its introduction punctuality has significantly improved on the Bexleyheath Line.
The following table shows the industry measure of On Time (the percentage of recorded station stops where the train arrived less than one minute later than its advertised time) for each rail period since the new timetable was introduced.
Rail Period Bexleyheath Line
P2310 (10 Dec – 07 Jan) | 46.7% |
P2311 (08 Jan – 04 Feb) | 59.0% |
P2312 (05 Feb – 04 Mar) | 63.9% |
P2313 (05 Mar – 31 Mar) | 66.6% |
P2401 (01 Apr – 29 Apr) | 70.0% |
Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what information his Department holds on Southeastern train punctuality on the Woolwich line since the new timetable was introduced in December 2022.
Answered by Huw Merriman
Southeastern introduced a new timetable on 11 December 2022. Since its introduction punctuality has significantly improved on the Woolwich line.
The following table shows the industry measure of On Time (the percentage of recorded station stops where the train arrived less than one minute later than its advertised time) for each rail period since the new timetable was introduced.
Railway Period - Woolwich Line
P2310 (10 Dec – 07 Jan) | 56.3% |
P2311 (08 Jan – 04 Feb) | 55.9% |
P2312 (05 Feb – 04 Mar) | 61.8% |
P2313 (05 Mar – 31 Mar) | 63.6% |
P2401 (01 Apr – 29 Apr) | 70.4% |