Asked by: Dehenna Davison (Conservative - Bishop Auckland)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of reducing taxes for families.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Government is committed to keeping taxes low to support individuals and families to keep more of what they earn.
This is why the Government has nearly doubled the income tax Personal Allowance since 2010 (30% higher in real terms), ensuring some of the lowest earners do not pay income tax. Thanks to the Personal Allowance, around 30% of individuals do not pay tax.
Furthermore, at the Autumn Statement, the Government announced a National Insurance contributions cut for 29 million working people by reducing the main NICs rate from 12% to 10%. This came into effect on 6 January and will result in a £450 annual tax cut for the average worker earning £35,400.
The Government keeps all tax policy under review and any decisions on future changes will be taken by the Chancellor in the context of wider public finances.
Asked by: Dehenna Davison (Conservative - Bishop Auckland)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure there is an adequate provision of SEND places in schools.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department recognises the importance of accessing timely and effective support to improving the experiences of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), and their families. Nationally, 17% of pupils are identified with some form of SEN, three quarters of whom receive SEN support from their mainstream school, funded from its own resources.
Local authorities must ensure that there are sufficient good school places for all pupils, including special schools and those with SEND. They are statutorily required to keep the services and provision for children and young people with SEND under review, including its sufficiency, working with parents, young people, and providers.
To support local authorities to meet this duty, in the SEND and Alternative Provision (AP) Improvement Plan, the department committed to investing £2.6 billion between 2022 and 2025 to fund new special and AP places and improve existing provision for children and young people with SEND, including announcing 41 new special free schools. This funding represents a significant, transformational investment in new high needs provision. As part of this investment, the department has published over £1.5 billion of High Needs Provision Capital Allocations for the 2022/23 and 2023/24 financial years. Of this, Durham has been allocated a total of £11.2 million. Local authorities can use their allocations to deliver new places in mainstream and special schools, as well as other specialist settings such as specialist post-16 institutions, and to improve the suitability and accessibility of existing buildings. This investment is on top of the department’s ongoing delivery of new special and AP free schools.
Through these reforms, the department wants to ensure that placements for children and young people with SEND are sufficient to meet need, allowing them to access the right support, in the right setting, at the right time.
Asked by: Dehenna Davison (Conservative - Bishop Auckland)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that families are supported in the event of a stillborn child.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
In 2023/24, NHS England is investing £5.9 million to support the delivery of daily bereavement care services for women and families who suffer pregnancy or baby loss and is growing the number of staff trained in bereavement care.
We are also looking to improve access to and the quality of perinatal mental health care for mothers and their partners. There are now 35 Maternal Mental Health Services across England which provide psychological therapy for women experiencing mental health difficulties related to their maternity experience including resulting from loss. Services are due to be implemented in every area of the country by March 2024.
Asked by: Dehenna Davison (Conservative - Bishop Auckland)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment her Department has made of the BBC’s compliance with the impartiality clauses in its charter.
Answered by Julia Lopez - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The BBC has a duty to deliver impartial and accurate news coverage and content under its Royal Charter. As such, the Government has been clear that the BBC must place a firm emphasis on impartiality and maintaining the highest editorial standards.
The Government welcomes that the BBC accepted the findings and recommendations of the Serota Review and has committed to reform through its 10 point Impartiality and Editorial Standards Action Plan. The BBC now needs to demonstrate clear and continued progress as the plan is embedded into business as usual.
The Government established Ofcom as the independent regulator of the BBC in 2017. Ofcom is responsible for holding the BBC to account against its impartiality responsibilities. It remains a priority for the Government to work with Ofcom to deliver an effective and proportionate regulatory framework that holds the BBC to account while maintaining its creative freedom and operational independence.
A key focus of the Government’s Mid-Term Review of the BBC is to look at the regulatory and governance measures which can enable progress on impartiality, more accountability for editorial standards, including the handling of complaints, and a BBC that represents the breadth of the audience it was established to serve.
Our work on the Mid-Term Review is ongoing. The Charter specifies that the review must take place between 2022 and 2024, and we will publish our findings and conclusions in due course.
Asked by: Dehenna Davison (Conservative - Bishop Auckland)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what steps her Department is taking to help support businesses to export their products.
Answered by Kevin Hollinrake - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The Department for Business and Trade helps businesses grow their business overseas by providing information, training, events and expert advice to both new and experienced exporters at all stages of their exporting journey.
Our range of support offers comprises a digital self-serve offer on great.gov.uk, and a wider network of support including domestic and overseas trade advisers, sector specialists, export champions, the Export Academy, International Markets network as well as through UK Export Finance. All this support is accessed through Great.gov.uk.
We also help businesses to benefit from new free trade agreements and work across Government to reduce barriers to exporting and simplify border processes.
Asked by: Dehenna Davison (Conservative - Bishop Auckland)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, if she will make an estimate of the UK's capacity for geothermal energy production in each of the next five years.
Answered by Amanda Solloway - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
We know there is promising potential for geothermal energy in the UK and particularly as a low carbon source of heat. The Government is supportive of geothermal projects, and we are exploring policy options in response to the report by the British Geological Survey issued earlier this year to understand how we can support the growth of the sector to maximise its potential in the UK. However, due to the nascency of the sector, there are no plans to estimate its capacity for energy production in the short term.
Asked by: Dehenna Davison (Conservative - Bishop Auckland)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps his Department is taking to help protect victims of targeted anti-social behaviour.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
On 27 March, the Government launched the Anti-social Behaviour Action Plan (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/anti-social-behaviour-action-plan) ensuring the police, local authorities and other relevant agencies have the tools and powers they need to tackle anti-social behaviour.
The plan is backed by £160m of funding. This includes up to £60m to fund an increased police and other uniformed presence to clamp down on anti-social behaviour, targeting hotspots. Initially we are working with 10 police force areas, including Durham. From 2024 we will be rolling out this hotspot approach across every police force area in England and Wales. We are also providing up to £50m to support the provision of Immediate Justice, by issuing out of court disposals with conditions to swiftly repair any damage. This has started in 10 initial trailblazer police force areas, including Durham, and will be rolled out nationally in 2024.
As part of the Action Plan, we re-launched the Community Trigger as the ‘Anti-social Behaviour Case Review’, which gives victims of persistent antisocial behaviour the right to request a multi-agency case review where a local threshold is met. The new guidance provides greater clarity on how and when it can be used and encouraging agencies to automatically conduct reviews once the threshold has been hit. We updated the gov.uk pages https://www.gov.uk/guidance/anti-social-behaviour-asb-case-review-also-known-as-the-community-trigger to raise awareness of this tool to give victims and communities a say in the way that complaints of ASB are dealt with.
Asked by: Dehenna Davison (Conservative - Bishop Auckland)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure that people sleeping rough have access to emergency accommodation.
Answered by Felicity Buchan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
The Rough Sleeping Initiative 2022-25 is investing over £530 million in funding to local authorities across England from April 2022 to March 2025. This includes an additional investment of £34.6 million announced in September 2023, to increase funding of rough sleeping services in local areas with the greatest need. The Rough Sleeping Initiative supports local authorities to develop their services from emergency interventions for rough sleepers to a focus on prevention, more sustained off-the-street accommodation offers and tailored support for those who are most vulnerable.
The Night Shelter Transformation Fund is investing £13 million to small – medium sized community and faith groups to increase the provision of quality single-room accommodation within the night shelter sector. The multi-year grant funding provides capital and revenue funding to support the sector to transform towards single-room year-round accommodation as the norm, as well as increasing the availability and quality of support for service users.
Asked by: Dehenna Davison (Conservative - Bishop Auckland)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to support more children with special education needs into mainstream schools.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
In the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision (AP) Improvement Plan, the department set out its ambition for more children and young people to have their needs met effectively in mainstream settings where it is possible for this to happen. For those children and young people with SEND who do require an Education, Health and Care (EHC) plan and specialist provision, the department will ensure that parents do not face an adversarial system to secure this.
The department will improve mainstream education by setting standards for the early and accurate identification of need, and for timely access to the support to meet those needs.
To deliver new national SEND and AP standards across EHC, the department is starting by building on existing best practice, including on early language support, autism and mental health and wellbeing. The department will publish three advisory practitioner standards by the end of 2025. The department will also publish a significant portion of the national standards by the end of 2025.
It is crucial that Speech Language and Communication Needs (SLCN) are identified early to enable the right support to be put in place. In partnership with NHS England, the department is funding the Early Language and Support for Every Child (ELSEC) pathfinders within its Change Programme.
Reaching over 70% of schools and further education colleges, the Universal Services Programme will help the education workforce to identify and meet the needs of children and young people with SEND, earlier and more effectively. The department is investing a further £21 million to train 400 more educational psychologists to increase capacity.
The department is introducing a leadership level new National Professional Qualification (NPQ) for SENCOs. This will replace the existing qualification and ensure that SENCOs receive consistent high-quality training. The department has also committed to funding training for up to 7,000 early years staff to gain an accredited Level 3 early years SENCO qualification.
Asked by: Dehenna Davison (Conservative - Bishop Auckland)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that patients affected by closures of NHS dental practices have adequate access to dental care.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England and integrated care boards across England work together to ensure that patients who are affected by closure of National Health Service dental practices will continue to have access to the dental care they need. This includes an assessment to identify potential gaps in NHS dental service provision and to consider what actions may be required.
NHS dentists are required to keep their NHS.UK profiles up to date so that patients can find a dentist more easily. This includes information on whether they are accepting new patients.
In circumstances where patients are unable to access an urgent dental appointment directly through an NHS dental practice, they should contact NHS 111.