Deirdre Costigan

The Department for Business has not made an assessment of the merits of creating a new employment right for Disability Leave.

The Government has set out its immediate priorities for reforming employment law in the Plan to Make Work Pay. The Plan includes a number of measures which will help disabled workers to enter, remain and progress in work - including making flexible working the default and introducing a right to switch off.

As outlined in the Plan to Make Work Pay, we will end exploitative zero hours contracts by giving workers the right to a contract that reflects the number of hours they regularly work. We will also introduce a new right to reasonable notice of shift patterns and a right to reasonable notice of changes to shifts, with compensation for shifts cancelled or curtailed at short notice.

These measures will end one-sided flexibility, ensuring all jobs provide workers with a baseline level of security and predictability.

Our Warm Homes Plan will transform homes across the country by making them cheaper and cleaner to run, rolling out upgrades from new insulation to solar and heat pumps. We have already launched the Warm Homes Plan: Local Grant, a government-funded scheme delivered by Local Authorities that will take the first steps to delivering on the ambitions of the Warm Homes Plan. It will provide grants for energy performance upgrades and low carbon heating to low-income households living in the worst quality, privately owned homes in England to achieve energy bill savings and carbon savings. These upgrades will be open to all fuel types, including on gas households (those heated by mains gas), and off gas households (those heated by electricity, oil, coal, or liquid petroleum gas).

We will set out the full details of our ambitious Warm Homes Plan next spring.

Heat batteries are one of the most promising alternative electric heating technologies, however, they are less efficient than heat pumps and will therefore use more energy to meet the same heating demand.

We expect most properties will ultimately switch to heat pumps as these are a proven technology and have been installed in high numbers in other countries. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme has also been designed to direct support towards technologies that offer the greatest carbon savings.

The Government will keep its position on alternative electric heating technologies under review as the supporting evidence base develops.

In an unstable world, the only way to guarantee our energy security and protect billpayers from future energy shocks is to speed up the transition away from fossil fuels and towards home‑grown clean energy. Through supporting the transition to clean energy, Great British Energy will save families money by ensuring electricity bills are no longer exposed to the kinds of gas price shocks which helped drive increases in the electricity price cap of over £1,300 for a typical household during winter 22/23.

The Government recognises the importance of providing access to the outdoors for people’s health and wellbeing, including that of young adults, and is working to ensure this is safe and appropriate. This is why we have set out our ambitious manifesto commitments to create nine new national river walks and three new national forests in England, expanding access to the great outdoors. We will make further announcements on plans to develop policy on access to nature in due course.

In addition the Government is providing funding to deliver a second phase of Generation Green, to help more disadvantaged children and young people experience the benefits of the great outdoors.

This Government also recognises the importance of youth services to help young people live safe and healthy lives. Youth services, including the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, utilise outdoor areas and waterways to provide young people with opportunities to take part in activities such as hiking, canoeing, kayaking, cycling and climbing, as well as a range of volunteering opportunities. These experiences help build participants' core skills for life and work and support their mental and physical well-being.

Use of inland waterways specifically for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award or other youth services, and any assessment of their social value for these purposes specifically, are matters for local arrangement with navigation authorities or other waterway owners.

Yes, because the government is committed to supporting the UK’s visual effects (VFX) industry. VFX is a part of the screen sector that is always on the cutting edge of innovation and creativity, and the UK is home to some of the world’s best VFX talent.

The government does and will continue to engage with both sector organisations such as the UK Screen Alliance and with individual VFX studios, to support and champion our award winning VFX talent and make the UK an attractive place to do business.

We will work to ensure that the VFX industry remains competitive and with international reach, so that it is able to provide high quality jobs and to fulfil its potential as a key part of the creative industries and the wider UK economy.

Schools and further education colleges are required to identify and address the special educational needs (SEN) of the children and young people they support. In the case of mainstream settings, they must use their best endeavours to make sure that a child or young person who has SEN gets the support they need.

Schools report on the pupils they identify with social, emotional and mental health needs through the School Census. In 2024, 316,327 pupils were identified as having a social, emotional and mental health need as a primary type of need.

I refer my hon. Friend, the Member for Ealing Southall to the answer of 14 November 2024 to Question 13149.

This government is committed to breaking down barriers to opportunity to enable every child to achieve and thrive, including through expanding access to sport and physical activity. This will support our cross-government missions and help to raise the healthiest and happiest generation of children ever.

Funding beyond 31 March 2025 is subject to the next government Spending Review taking place this autumn. The outcome of the review will be communicated in due course.

The department values the critical role educational psychologists play in the support available to children and young people, including those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). The deployment of educational psychology services is the responsibility of local authorities as the employers of educational psychology services.

The department is taking measures to support education settings to have improved access to educational psychology services by investing in growing the pipeline. The department is investing over £21 million to train 400 more educational psychologists from this year. This builds on the £10 million currently being invested in the training of over 200 educational psychologists who began their training in September 2023. This investment will help to make specialist expertise more widely available in mainstream settings.

The government is committed to breaking down barriers to opportunity and giving every child the best start in life. Breakfast clubs will remove barriers to opportunity by ensuring every child, no matter their circumstances, is well prepared for school and can achieve their full potential by providing a supportive start to the day.

The government has taken decisive action by announcing in the King’s Speech that, under the Children’s Wellbeing Bill, every primary school in England will offer a free breakfast club. The department will be working closely with the sector on the details of the programme.

The Government will deliver a resilient and healthy food system, with a new deal that ensures fairness in the supply chain across all sectors. Where farmers sell directly to retailers, their agreements will be covered within the scope of the sectoral regulations that we are introducing through powers in the Agriculture Act 2020. Farmers should always receive a fair price for their products and the Government is committed to tackling contractual unfairness wherever it exists

Farmers are not only an important part of our local economies and communities, they play a crucial role in tackling biodiversity loss; improving water and air quality and improving our resilience to climate change.

To us, food security is national security, and so it is important that we have a resilient and healthy food system that works with nature and supports British farmers.

We understand the importance of, and need for, continuity when it comes to traditional farming practices for certain landscapes. This government will work with the sector to optimise schemes, including the methods and actions they fund, making sure that they work for all farmers whilst delivering food security and nature recovery in a just and equitable way.

The Public Sector Equality Duty requires public sector organisations to have due regard to the provision of walking and wheeling infrastructure for those who are disabled or have reduced mobility.

The Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 introduced the need for local authorities to prepare and publish rights of way improvement plans explaining how improvements made by the local authority to the public rights of way network will provide a better experience for people with mobility problems.

There are no plans to make any further legislative changes in this area at this time.

In addition Natural England’s Green Infrastructure Standards for England sets out the principles for planning green infrastructure to deliver multiple benefits for people and nature.

Across the UK, it is estimated that approximately 4 billion plastic and 2.5 billion metal drinks containers are not recycled every year – a significant amount being littered.

Once the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS) for drinks containers is introduced, the Deposit Management Organisation will be required to reach a collection rate of 90% of DRS containers in year 3 of the scheme.

Further details, including monetary analysis on the reduction of disamenity of litter, will be provided in the DRS Final Impact Assessment. This will be published when the Statutory Instrument is laid in Parliament.

Protecting all communities around the country from flooding is one of the Secretary of State’s five core priorities. The new Government has established a Floods Resilience Taskforce, a key commitment that marks a new approach to preparing for flooding and working between national, regional and local Government, including the devolved administrations, and flood risk partners.

The Government is investing over £1.25 billion in 2024/25 to build and maintain flood defences to scale up national resilience including in urban areas and is strongly committed to requiring standardised sustainable drainage systems in new developments.

We need to see sustainable drainage systems in more developments; to designs that cope with changing climatic conditions, deliver wider water infrastructure benefits and help tackle our water pollution problems. We also need to ensure that appropriate adoption and maintenance arrangements are in place.

The responsibility for local flood risk management falls to lead local flood authorities. They do this in partnership with highways authorities and water companies.

Water and sewerage companies in England must prepare, publish and maintain Drainage and Wastewater Management Plans. They will help water and sewerage companies better plan for extreme weather, such as flooding, and take the actions necessary to mitigate these current and future risks over the next 25 years.

Re-use has a significant role to play in driving down unnecessary waste, and the introduction of Extended Producer Responsibility for packaging will encourage use of reusable and refillable packaging.

On 19 November 2024, Active Travel England and the Department for Transport published guidance for local authorities in England on how to set up and manage a School Streets scheme. The guidance can be viewed online at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-streets-how-to-set-up-and-manage-a-scheme.

The Highway Code was updated in 2022 to improve road safety for cyclists and pedestrians, by strengthening pedestrian priority on pavements and at crossings and introducing the Hierarchy of Road Users, which places those road users most at risk in the event of a collision at the top of the hierarchy. The Highway Code makes it clear that those in charge of vehicles that can cause the greatest harm in the event of a collision bear the greatest responsibility to reduce the danger they pose to others.

We expect operators to ensure their policy on ticketing is clear and fair for passengers at all times and have instructed an urgent review of the cases in question, with a view to resolving them.

Ticketing has become far too complicated, which is why we plan to simplify it as part of the biggest overhaul of our railways in a generation.

We expect operators to ensure their policy on ticketing is clear and fair for passengers at all times and have instructed an urgent review of the cases in question, with a view to resolving them.

Ticketing has become far too complicated, which is why we plan to simplify it as part of the biggest overhaul of our railways in a generation.

Active Travel England (ATE) works with all combined authorities and local authorities in England, providing funding and support with the intention being to encourage greater uptake of active travel. ATE is assuring the design quality of around £2 billion of active travel schemes and is working with authorities to boost officer capability to design schemes that improve safety of cyclists and pedestrians. This is being done through the provision of training and the development of specific guidance – including a rural design guide and a best practice guide to community consultation and engagement.

In addition to this, local authorities receive support through national training and engagement programmes, including Bikeability cycle training, Walk to School Outreach and Big Bike Revival.

As a statutory consultee in the planning system, ATE provides advice to local authorities on all planning applications for new development exceeding 150 dwellings, 7,500sqm of non-residential floorspace or 5 hectares in size. For applications outside of ATE’s remit, the agency has produced toolkits and guidance that can be used by local authorities to deliver improvements in active travel provision as part of new developments.

The Government recognises the environmental benefits from increasing active travel including improved air quality and reduced transport carbon emissions. The Department has published a range of reports which outline the environmental benefits from investment in active travel schemes and programmes.

We want new mothers to be able to take time away from work. Statutory Maternity Pay and Maternity Allowance rates are reviewed annually and were raised again by 6.7% in April 2024 from £172.48 to £184.03.

Maternity pay is primarily a health and safety provisions for pregnant working women. It is not intended to replace a woman's earnings completely, nor is it intended to assist with the costs associated with the birth of a new child or children. Rather it provides a measure of financial security to help pregnant working women take time off work in the later stages of their pregnancy and in the months following childbirth.

Statutory Maternity Pay and Maternity Allowance are not paid in respect of each child but in respect of each pregnancy. The qualifying conditions for both are generally based on a woman's recent employment and earnings.

Maternity pay represents only one element of state-funded support available to new families in the first years of their child’s life. Depending on individual circumstances, additional financial support, for example Child Benefits and Sure Start Maternity Grant, may also be available.

In terms of wider support for parents, the Government committed [ in its manifesto] to review parental leave to ensure that it best supports working families. Further details of the review will be announced in due course.

Entitlement to disability benefits is based on a functional assessment of the person’s ability to perform a range of activities relevant to the specific benefit.

Engaging in regular physical activity will not automatically result in reduction in benefit or trigger review or reassessment. It will, however, be considered when assessing the person’s functional ability.

It is regrettable to note - as reported in the ‘Activity Alliance Annual Disability and Activity Survey (June 2024)’ - that “around two-fifths (38%) of disabled people say that a fear of their benefits or financial assistance being taken away prevents them from trying to be more active”.

This government is committed to championing the rights of disabled people and to the principle of working with them, so that their views and voices will be at the heart of all that we do.

Entitlement to disability benefits is based on a functional assessment of the person’s ability to perform a range of activities relevant to the specific benefit.

Engaging in regular physical activity will not automatically result in reduction in benefit or trigger review or reassessment. It will, however, be considered when assessing the person’s functional ability.

It is regrettable to note - as reported in the ‘Activity Alliance Annual Disability and Activity Survey (June 2024)’ - that “around two-fifths (38%) of disabled people say that a fear of their benefits or financial assistance being taken away prevents them from trying to be more active”.

This government is committed to championing the rights of disabled people and to the principle of working with them, so that their views and voices will be at the heart of all that we do.

The Equality Act 2010 (the Act) protects disabled people against unlawful direct or indirect discrimination in employment, including by placing a duty on employers to make, on request, reasonable adjustments to any element of a job, job application or interview process, which may place disabled people at a substantial disadvantage compared to non-disabled people.

There are no current plans to amend the reasonable adjustments duty in the Act. In most cases, it is fairer to apply a “reasonableness” test which enables each situation to be considered on its merits, rather than impose rigid, universal requirements on employers and service providers. Where an employer takes an unreasonably long time to make a decision on a reasonable adjustment request, this omission could, of itself, potentially be considered a failure to make the adjustment, which could in turn be actionable by the affected person at an employment tribunal.

No one should be forced to choose between their health and financial hardship, which is why we plan to strengthen Statutory Sick Pay (SSP), so it provides a safety net for those who need it most. The Plan to Make Work Pay commits to remove the Lower Earnings Limit to make it available to all workers and remove the waiting period so that everyone receives fair earnings replacement when they have to take time off work.

Any changes to SSP will be accompanied by a full Regulatory Impact Assessment and Equalities Impact Assessment to assess the impact of the changes on a range of protected characteristics, but this will not directly assess the impact of the changes on the disability employment gap. However, we would expect that strengthening SSP would increase the overall employment rate of disabled people as well as reduce the difference between the employment rates of disabled and non-disabled people.

It is vital to move services from hospital to community. The Chancellor made funding available for 380,000 more talking therapies for patients and put in place a £26 million capital investment scheme for mental health crisis centres. A lot of work has been done, but there is a lot more still to do.

The National Health Service is committed to ensuring safe, high-quality care is available to patients seven days a week, whether they require emergency treatment or ongoing care. While there are natural variations in activity levels between weekends and weekdays, such as lower elective activity at weekends, hospital teams prioritise urgent care needs to ensure timely and effective treatment regardless of the day. Hospital staffing on weekends is designed to address the severity of patients' conditions and the demands on services.

The Department of Health and Social Care and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government have published guidance and supporting materials for health and care staff on discharging people at risk of, or experiencing homelessness. This ensures that every health and care interaction with a homeless person acts as an opportunity to provide support and signposting, with the aim of ending rough sleeping. The Department of Health and Social Care continues to work with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on the development of the Government’s plans for social and affordable housing. Further information on the published guidance and supporting materials for health and care staff on discharging people at risk of, or experiencing homelessness, is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/discharging-people-at-risk-of-or-experiencing-homelessness/discharging-people-at-risk-of-or-experiencing-homelessness

We recognise the importance of innovation and artificial intelligence (AI) in improving cancer diagnosis. We are supportive of the use of AI to support the diagnosis of many types of cancer, including bowel cancer. New AI technologies are being developed with the potential to accelerate the diagnosis and treatment for diseases such as cancer. The NHS AI Lab has provided £113 million, through the NHS AI Health and Care Awards, to 86 AI technologies, which are live in 40% of National Health Service acute trusts in England, and hundreds of Primary Care Networks across the United Kingdom. Many of these AI technologies are being tested to support with cancer diagnosis.

The Department is carrying out work to assess the barriers to effective adoption and improve the way AI tools are deployed across the NHS through a number of initiatives. The NHS AI Lab’s Ethics Initiative invests in research and practical interventions that could strengthen the ethical adoption of AI within health and care, and addresses risks and concerns over their use. Additionally, the NHS AI and Digital regulations service, in partnership with healthcare regulators, gives innovators and health and care providers a one-stop-shop for support, information, and guidance on the regulation and evaluation of AI technologies.

The Department does not publish data on future projections for colonoscopy procedures, including projections over the next five years. However, demand modelling is a routine part of our work.

The Government is committed to transforming diagnostic services, including for colonoscopies, and will support the National Health Service to increase capacity to meet the demand for diagnostic services.