Asked by: Debbie Abrahams (Labour - Oldham East and Saddleworth)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help ensure that schools have an active travel plan to increase the number of children who walk or cycle to school (including those who walk the last half-mile).
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The Education Act 1996 places a duty on local authorities to promote sustainable travel on journeys to and from places of education in their area. Sustainable travel in this context is that which improves the physical wellbeing of users, the environmental wellbeing of the area, or both.
On 12 December, Active Travel England announced £626 million of funding for local authorities from 2026/27 to 2029/30 to deliver walking, wheeling and cycling schemes. This will enable more children to walk and cycle to school. It is in addition to almost £300 million funding for active travel in 2024/25 and 2025/26 announced in February. This includes £30 million to provide Bikeability cycle training to children and £8.5 million for Cycling UK, Living Streets and Modeshift to deliver walking, wheeling and cycling initiatives in schools and communities. The Modeshift STARS Education scheme supports schools and local authorities to develop and monitor school travel plans.
Asked by: Debbie Abrahams (Labour - Oldham East and Saddleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of enclosing motorway systems in noise barriers on the suitability of land for housebuilding.
Answered by Matthew Pennycook - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
My Department has no current plans to make such an assessment.
The National Planning Policy Framework makes clear that planning policies and decisions should contribute to and enhance the natural and local environment by preventing new and existing development from contributing to, being put at unacceptable risk from, or being adversely affected by, unacceptable levels of noise pollution.
Planning policies and decisions should avoid noise giving rise to significant adverse impacts on health and the quality of life.
It is up to individual local planning authorities to determine what contributions should be sought to assist in mitigating the impact of unacceptable development to make it acceptable in planning terms.
Asked by: Debbie Abrahams (Labour - Oldham East and Saddleworth)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of requiring developers to ensure that the area of vegetation in developments is at least equal to the area of the site of (a) greenfield, (b) brownfield and (c) open space deficiency sites.
Answered by Matthew Pennycook - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) makes clear that planning policies should be based on robust and up-to-date assessments of the need for open space and should make sufficient provision for and maintain and enhance networks of green infrastructure, which includes areas of vegetation.
Natural England’s Green Infrastructure Framework helps to define what good green infrastructure ‘looks like’ for local planners, developers, and communities. The Green Infrastructure Framework includes a standard on accessible greenspace which sets criteria on size, proximity and quality.
The government is currently consulting on changes to the NPPF, including a new requirement for local plans to set out standards for green infrastructure, drawing upon Natural England’s Green Infrastructure Standards. These include a standard on accessible greenspace which sets criteria on size, proximity, and quality. The consultation can be found on gov.uk here and will remain open for responses until 10 March 2026.
Asked by: Debbie Abrahams (Labour - Oldham East and Saddleworth)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of regional variations in the level of public transport provision on (a) the number of people who rely on cars and (b) levels of rural poverty.
Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Government knows how important reliable public transport services are in enabling people to stay connected and access education, work and vital services across the country. We also know that local bus services can be a lifeline in rural areas and can be the only means for communities to stay connected.
The Government is taking ambitious steps to improve local bus services across the country, including introducing the Bus Services Act 2025 which puts passenger needs, reliable services and local accountability at the heart of local bus services by putting the power back in the hands of local leaders right across England.
We also recently confirmed long-term investment of over £3 billion from 2026/27 to support local leaders and bus operators across the country to improve bus services for millions of passengers. This includes multi-year allocations for local authorities under the Local Authority Bus Grant (LABG) totalling nearly £700 million per year, ending the short-term approach to bus funding and giving councils the certainty they need to plan ahead to improve services for local communities. LABG allocations have been calculated using a fair and transparent approach that considers population size, levels of deprivation, the extent of existing bus services, and rurality.
Greater Manchester Combined Authority will be allocated £133.5 million under the LABG from 2026/27 to 2028/29. This is in addition to the £46.8 million they are already receiving under the LABG this financial year.
The Department for Transport has developed and published a Connectivity Tool to measure people’s ability to get where they want and need to go, using walking, cycling and public transport to reach jobs, shops, schools, healthcare and other essential services in any location in England and Wales. The Connectivity Tool combines transport and land use data to generate a national measure of connectivity and provides new insights to those developing new transport schemes or planning for growth to more easily understand how new transport infrastructure can impact an area’s connectivity.
As announced in the Child Poverty Strategy, published on 5 December 2025, the Government will also develop a transport poverty tool, which will aim to capture where poor transport connectivity and affordability limits people’s access to employment and essential services.
Asked by: Debbie Abrahams (Labour - Oldham East and Saddleworth)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what discussions she has had with The Pensions Regulator on strengthening its Code of Practice to require large companies running trust-based pension schemes to establish and maintain an internal audit capability.
Answered by Torsten Bell - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
DWP officials work closely with the Pension Regulator on all its Codes of Practice to ensure they remain fit for purpose in a changing pensions landscape. In addition, both the Pensions Regulator and my officials have met with the Chartered Institute of Internal Auditors to listen to their considerations about pensions schemes and internal audit.
Asked by: Debbie Abrahams (Labour - Oldham East and Saddleworth)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps she plans to take to help improve living standards.
Answered by Emma Reynolds - Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
The Government has set out a Plan for Change, outlining our ambitious yet achievable milestones, including raising living standards in every part of the United Kingdom to ensure working people have more money in their pockets.
Specific actions already taken by the Government include: increasing to the National Living Wage from April 2025; extension of the Household Support Fund and Discretionary Housing Payments in England and Wales in 2025-26; and introduction of a new Fair Repayment Rate from April 2025 to cap debt repayments made through Universal Credit.
Asked by: Debbie Abrahams (Labour - Oldham East and Saddleworth)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she plans to take to ensure that the requirements of children with special educational needs and disabilities are included in the child poverty strategy.
Answered by Bridget Phillipson - Minister for Women and Equalities
Tackling child poverty is at the heart of breaking down barriers to opportunity and improving the life chances for every child. For too many children, living in poverty robs them of the opportunity to achieve and thrive.
On 23 October 2024 the government published ‘Tackling Child Poverty: Developing Our Strategy’. This report sets out how the government will develop the strategy, including an engagement plan, which will harness all available levers to deliver a reduction in child poverty this Parliament as part of an ambitious ten-year Strategy. The report is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/tackling-child-poverty-developing-our-strategy.
As part of the Taskforce’s engagement plan, a new forum of parents and carers living across the UK will be set up to ensure the experiences of children in poverty, including disabled children and those with special educational needs, are included. They will feed directly into the Strategy.
Asked by: Debbie Abrahams (Labour - Oldham East and Saddleworth)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether the (a) Integrated Risk and Intelligence Service, (b) Enhanced Checking Service, (c) Risk Review Team, (d) Enhanced Review Teams, (e) Universal Credit advances claims decision risk model, (f) Common Risk Engine, (g) General Matching Service, (h) Fraud Referral and Intervention Management System, (i) Targeted Case Review and (j) any other systems rely on artificial intelligence, machine learning or algorithmic processes for fraud detection.
Answered by Paul Maynard
As set out in the Department’s 2022/23 Annual Report and Accounts (page 308 to 310), DWP uses advanced analytics to tackle fraud and error. These analytics include a variety of sophisticated techniques including the use of machine learning to identify patterns in claims that could suggest fraud or error, so that these claims can be reviewed by relevant DWP teams such as the Enhanced Review Team. The final decision on benefit entitlement is made by a human caseworker.
The National Audit Office confirm that DWP have governance and processes in place to monitor the bias of these models.
Asked by: Debbie Abrahams (Labour - Oldham East and Saddleworth)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether any of the claim detection criteria in the targeted case review system are applied by or operated through artificial intelligence, machine learning or algorithmic processes.
Answered by Paul Maynard
As set out in the Department’s 2022/23 Annual Report and Accounts (page 308 to 310), DWP uses a range of advanced analytics to identify patterns in claims that could suggest fraud or error, so that these claims can be reviewed by relevant DWP teams including Targeted Case Review agents. The final decision on benefit entitlement is made by a human caseworker.
The National Audit Office confirm that DWP have governance and processes in place to monitor the bias of these models.
Asked by: Debbie Abrahams (Labour - Oldham East and Saddleworth)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to Q27 of the oral evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee on 10 January 2024, HC 417, what biases there are in the (a) AI and (b) machine learning systems used by his Department to detect and prevent fraud in the benefit system; and how these biases have been used to identify fraud.
Answered by Paul Maynard
Please be assured that assessments of bias have been conducted for all IRIS machine learning models and the screening to date has not identified any areas of concern. The outcomes will be published in summer 2024 within DWP’s Annual Report and Accounts.
The department always ensures appropriate safeguards are in place. There are detailed Data Protection Impact Assessments and Equality Analysis that accompany our machine learning models, and these are live documents that are kept updated. We also work closely with legal colleagues to ensure our use of machine learning is legal and proportionate. As an additional safeguard, all decisions on claims are made by DWP case workers based on all the facts and individual circumstances of the claim.