Fabian Hamilton

The government recognises the importance of the UK’s copyright regime to the economic success of the creative industries, one of eight growth-driving sectors as identified in our Industrial Strategy. We are committed to supporting rights holders by ensuring they retain control over and receive fair payment for their work, especially as technology advances to include AI. We are actively working with stakeholders to ensure copyright protections remain robust and fit for purpose.

On the impact of AI, our next step is a 10-week consultation, published on Tuesday 17 December and closing 25 February, to engage AI and creative industries stakeholders widely on the impact of AI on the copyright regime.

Consultation responses will inform our approach to the design and delivery of a solution to the current dispute over the use of copyrighted material in AI training. Our aim is to clarify the copyright framework for AI – delivering certainty through a copyright regime that provides creators with real control, transparency, and helps them licence their content, while supporting AI developers' access to high-quality material.

Following the consultation we will continue to develop our policy approach in partnership with creative industries, media and AI stakeholders - supporting our brilliant artists and the creative industries to work together with the AI sector to harness the opportunities this technology provides.

The Government recognises concerns about overseas interference in our higher education sector, including those related to overseas funding. The Government works with the Office for Students, and other stakeholders to ensure that overseas funding does not interfere with academic freedom.

I refer my hon. Friend, the member for Leeds North East, to the answer of 13 May 2025 to Question 49523.

The department works closely with the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) on a wide range of matters to ensure the education system is supporting healthcare students, including student funding.

The government needs to ensure that the student funding system is financially sustainable, and funding arrangements are reviewed each year. We will continue to engage with the DHSC to consider the financial support that medical students receive.

Students attending the fifth and sixth years of undergraduate medical courses and years 2 to 4 of graduate entry medical courses qualify for NHS bursaries. The government has announced an increase to all NHS bursary maintenance grants and allowances for the 2025/26 academic year by forecast inflation, 3.1%, based on the Retail Price Index (RPIX) inflation index.

Medical students qualifying for NHS bursary support also qualify for non-means tested loans for living costs from the department. The government has announced that maximum loans for living costs for the 2025/26 academic year, including reduced rate non-means tested loans for students undertaking NHS bursary years, will also increase by 3.1%.

This government’s ambition is that all children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) receive the right support to succeed in their education and as they move into adult life.

Local authorities are responsible for transport to education and training for 16-19 year olds. Post-16 transport guidance requires local authorities to make the necessary transport arrangements or provide financial support to ensure young people can participate in education or training. The needs of young people with SEND should be specifically considered and the arrangements put in place for each group must be documented in local authority transport policy statements.

In addition to their statutory responsibilities, many local authorities do offer some form of subsidised transport which, combined with the 16-19 bursary, has been intended to provide financial support to students from low-income households. These decisions are best made locally, in consideration of local needs, the resources available and other local circumstances.

Apprenticeships are a great way for individuals to begin or progress a successful career in the hairdressing industry.

There have been over 135 starts in hairdressing and barbering apprenticeships within the Leeds local authority across the 2023/24 academic year and the 2024/25 academic year, up until January 2025.

To support smaller employers access apprenticeships, the government pays full training costs for young apprentices aged 16 to 21, and for apprentices aged 22 to 24 who have an education, health and care (EHC) plan, or have been in local authority care. Employers can benefit from £1,000 payments when they take on apprentices aged 16 to 18, or apprentices aged 19 to 24 who have an EHC plan or have been in local authority care.

Employers also benefit from not being required to pay anything towards employees’ National Insurance contributions for all apprentices aged up to age 25 where they earn less than £50,270 a year.

The overall budget for the adoption and special guardianship support fund (ASGSF) will be £50 million in the 2025/26 financial year, which has not been reduced from in the 2024/25 financial year. The changes made to the criteria for the ASGSF will enable the budget to be utilised by more children and families. This will ensure that each child can still access a significant package of support required for individual children and help to prevent breakdown of adoptive placements. Children who have previously been supported by the ASGSF can continue to access the fund under the new arrangements. The department always considers the impact of decisions on vulnerable children.

The department is committed to ensuring value for money and continuously evaluates contracts. Regular reviews are conducted to assess effectiveness. The ASGSF management contract has undergone open re-procurement during its term of operation. The department assess all its tenders on their merits, with the sourcing strategy for this service following Green Book guidance. We will also be reviewing the most effective and efficient way of managing the fund in future years.

We have published guidance to assist local authorities, other waste collectors and workplaces implement the Simpler Recycling requirements on GOV.UK. This includes guidance on:

• Simpler recycling: household recycling in England
• Simpler recycling: workplace recycling in England
• Collecting paper and card with other dry recyclable materials: written assessments
• Ensuring good waste collection services for households

We welcome stakeholder feedback, and we are working with our networks of local authority and waste collector stakeholders, as well as sector experts the Waste and Resources Action Programme, to identify and develop additional guidance where appropriate.

Regarding funding, Extended Producer Responsibility payments will be provided to local authorities for the costs of collecting and managing household packaging waste through efficient and effective services. This includes the collection of additional packaging materials for recycling such as plastic films and flexibles.

We have provided local authorities in England with £261.66 million in capital and £56.2 million in resource funding for the 2023/24 and 2024/25 financial years for the weekly collection of food waste from households. A second resource funding payment will be provided in the 2025/26 financial year. Ongoing resource funding from 1 April 2026 is subject to an agreement through a further spending review.

This is a devolved matter and the information provided therefore relates to England only, with the potential for relevant policy to extend and apply to Wales.

While the Government has no immediate plan to introduce a close season for hares in England, the policy remains under consideration as part of the Government’s plans to introduce the most ambitious programme for animal welfare in a generation.

The Government committed to banning the import of hunting trophies in its Manifesto. We intend to deliver on this and are currently considering the most effective way to do so.

Protecting and, where necessary, recovering our fish stocks is a priority for this Government, because fish is food and food security is national security. It is also committed to restoring and protecting nature at sea as well as on land. The Government is making progress delivering Fisheries Management Plans (FMPs) which set out how to maintain or restore fish stocks to sustainable levels. The sixth Defra-led FMP was published on 10 October, with consultations launched on a further five draft FMPs too.

Through fisheries negotiations with our international partners, our objective is to set Total Allowable Catches in line with the best available scientific advice to ensure that stocks are managed over the long term within sustainable limits. We are also introducing other fisheries management reforms domestically, including, for example, the introduction of Remote Electronic Monitoring, and action to reduce incidental bycatch in our fisheries.

The government is committed to delivering better bus services that meet passengers’ needs, including in rural areas, and has set out ambitious plans to reform bus services, including through the Bus Services (No.2) Bill and investing over £1 billion to support and improve bus services. The majority of bus services operate on a commercial basis, and decisions about the management and design of their bus fleet are for bus operators to make, including whether to install cycle racks.

The government recognises that bus services are part of a wider transport ecosystem, and it is vital to view them in the context of an integrated transport network designed with passengers as the priority. We have announced plans to develop an Integrated National Transport Strategy to set the long-term vision for transport in England. This will focus on how transport should be designed, built and operated to better serve the people who use it and ensure that the transport network is complementary, including the interaction between different modes of travel.

Transitional Protection is designed to give customers notified to move to Universal Credit time to adjust. It is not intended to permanently replicate legacy benefits and ends when there is no longer a meaningful comparison between a household’s final legacy benefit and Universal Credit awards, such as due to a relevant change in circumstances.

The relevant change of circumstances that end the Transitional Element include a sustained decrease in earnings, formation of a new benefit unit, such as a couple separating or a single customer becoming a member of a couple, or where a Universal Credit claim terminates.

There are no plans to review this loss of transitional protection even if one partner is a carer.

Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates are reviewed annually, usually at an Autumn fiscal event.

At last year’s Autumn Budget, the decision to maintain LHA at current levels for 2025/26 was taken after a range of factors were considered, including rental data, the impacts of LHA rates, rate increases in April 2024 and the wider fiscal context. The April 2024 one-year LHA increase cost an additional £1.2bn in 2024/25, and approximately £7bn over 5 years.

Any future decisions on LHA policy will be taken in the context of the Government’s missions, goals on housing and the challenging fiscal context.

Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs) are available from local authorities to those who face a shortfall in meeting their housing costs.

No assessment has been made using current economic assumptions and methodological practices.

However, the department has previously produced a poverty impact assessment using OBR economic assumptions from 30th October 2024 on an outdated version of the model. Using this methodology, the department has estimated the poverty impact of uprating the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) to the 30th percentile of rents in a Local Authority compared to freezing it. Uprating the LHA has been estimated to decrease the number of individuals in relative poverty after housing costs by 50,000 (0.1%) individuals in 25/26 and 100,000 (0.1%) individuals in 28/29 compared to freezing it.

Estimates have been rounded to the nearest 50,000 and are on a UK basis. The poverty impacts are independent of the underlying trends in poverty so they are not an estimate of the total change in poverty over time.

Since this version of the model, the move to UC acceleration announced at Autumn Budget has been incorporated into the model and the economic assumptions have been updated to OBR's Spring Statement 2025 Round 2 assumptions.

The causes of homelessness are multi-faceted and often complex, they interact dynamically making it difficult to isolate the relative importance of individual factors. Therefore, no assessment has been made on this basis for the impact on homelessness.

At last year’s Autumn Budget, the Secretary of State’s decision to maintain Local Housing Allowance (LHA) at current levels for 2025/26 was taken after a range of factors were considered, including rental data, the impacts of LHA rates, the fact that rates were increased in April 2024, and the wider fiscal context. The April 2024 one-year LHA increase cost an additional £1.2bn in 2024/25, and approximately £7bn over 5 years.

Any future decisions on LHA policy will be taken in the context of the Government’s missions, goals on housing, and the fiscal context.

For those who need further support, Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs) are available from local authorities. DHPs can be paid to those entitled to Housing Benefit or Universal Credit who face a shortfall in meeting their housing costs.

DWP offers employment support for eligible older people through the network of Jobcentres across the UK.

The White Paper published on 26 November focuses on support for people who are
economically inactive, people who are looking for work or want to progress, and people who are at risk of economic inactivity despite having a desire to stay in work. This includes and goes beyond people who are claiming benefits. The new national jobs and careers service will be instrumental in achieving this objective. This service will be available for anyone, including older people, who wants to look for work, wants help to increase their earnings, or who wants help to change their career or re-train. The service will be tailored to local needs.

We are committing to the establishment of ‘collaboration committees’ to further develop the reforms set out in our Pathways to Work Green Paper. These we will bring together groups of people for specific work areas, collaborating with civil servants to provide discussion,
challenge, and recommendations. Each group will have a different mix of people including older people.

The department also engages with employers to ensure their recruitment practises attract and support the retention of older people and encouraging employers to sign the Age-Friendly
employer pledge.

Recruitment and deployment of additional resources is taking place to enable the Carer’s Allowance (CA) unit to meet the consistent increased demand, which should reduce the clearance times for new claims to CA.

DWP has reviewed its communications to ensure the increase in the CA earnings threshold from 7 April 2025 is clearly visible. These include:

• Advice on GOV.UK,
• Annual benefit uprating notification letters. These are issued to customers over a 7-week period from the beginning of March, and include the new weekly rate of CA and the new earnings limit,
• Use of our advocates’ platform, such as Carers UK,
• Clerical claim form supporting notes,
• Upskilling our telephony agents who deal with inbound customer enquiries,
• Focussed media coverage on the CA threshold increase - press releases, Facebook etc.