Asked by: Graham Stuart (Conservative - Beverley and Holderness)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will take legislative steps to ensure all domestic insurers offer Build Back Better policies to protect victims of flood damage in Beverley and Holderness constituency.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Build Back Better (BBB) was introduced in 2022 to allow and encourage the insurance industry to provide their claimants with the opportunity to install flood resilient measures when repairs to their property are made.
Insurers representing some 75% of the domestic home insurance market have already signed up to offering BBB. Flood Re has taken several steps to encourage the take up of BBB, including running a series of workshops for insurance company staff and developing a toolkit for insurers.
I will be meeting with representatives of the insurance industry in September to explore with them how they can work with householders to encourage a high take up of the Build Back Better offer, ensuring as many householders as possible benefit.
Asked by: Graham Stuart (Conservative - Beverley and Holderness)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of re-allocating the SEND per pupil funding allocation for the East Riding in line with other local authorities.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
The department will take time to consider whether to make changes to the high needs national funding formula (NFF) that is used to allocate funding for children and young people with complex special educational needs and disabilities. The department will also consider the impact of any formula changes on local authorities, including East Riding of Yorkshire Council. It is important that there is a fair education funding system that directs funding to where it is needed.
Budgets for the 2025/26 financial year have not been set, which means that decisions on the high needs NFF and the publication of allocations for that year will not be to the usual timescales.
Asked by: Graham Stuart (Conservative - Beverley and Holderness)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what plans she has to fund the Hull and East Riding Mayoral Combined Authority.
Answered by Jim McMahon - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
We want to see devolution extended to every corner of England, and have invited local areas without a devolution agreement to come forward with proposals on a sensible geography.
We recognise that in some parts of the country, such as Hull and East Yorkshire, local authorities had already worked with the previous government to develop devolution deals, which were put on hold over the general election.
We will work with local leaders, members of parliament and stakeholders, including those in Hull and East Yorkshire over the coming months, to ensure that our ambition for deeper and impactful devolution is expanded across the country.
Asked by: Graham Stuart (Conservative - Beverley and Holderness)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how much she plans to provide East Riding of Yorkshire Council from the Local Transport Fund.
Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The previous government made a number of funding commitments in the Network North Command Paper and these will be examined closely by the government in the coming months.
Asked by: Graham Stuart (Conservative - Beverley and Holderness)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, if he will make it his policy to require fixed line operators to share infrastructure to help tackle the proliferation of telegraph poles.
Answered by Chris Bryant - Minister of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
We understand concerns about the excessive deployment of telegraph poles, and are urgently considering options to address this.
Telegraph poles can play an important role in delivering affordable connectivity to communities, and competition can offer consumers greater choice and cheaper rates. However, it is vital that operators share infrastructure wherever possible, as the last thing anyone wants is for our towns and villages to be littered with countless unnecessary competing telegraph poles.
Existing regulations require operators to share infrastructure where practicable, and the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act 2022 made it easier to upgrade and share existing apparatus.
In addition, the Communications (Access to Infrastructure) Regulations 2016 are designed to facilitate sharing for physical infrastructure.
Asked by: Graham Stuart (Conservative - Beverley and Holderness)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to reform the provision of dental care.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government plans to tackle the challenges patients face when trying to access National Health Service dental care with a rescue plan to provide 700,000 more urgent dental appointments, and to recruit new dentists to the areas that need them most. To rebuild dentistry in the long term, we will reform the dental contract, with a shift to focus on prevention and the retention of NHS dentists.
Asked by: Graham Stuart (Conservative - Beverley and Holderness)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of a windfall tax on investment plans of electricity generators.
Answered by Lucy Frazer
Within the Economy Update on 26th May, the Chancellor announced the Government is urgently evaluating the scale of extraordinary profits in the energy generation sector and the appropriate next steps.
As part of this process, officials are currently engaging with industry stakeholders, to gather evidence on energy generator’s level of profitability and the operation of their business models.
The PM’s ten-point plan and recent energy security strategy has set the UK on a pathway to a significant movement away from gas generation and towards renewables and low-carbon technologies.
The Government recognises that any measures, tax or otherwise, need to be proportionate and avoid creating undue distortion or impacts on UK investment.
Asked by: Graham Stuart (Conservative - Beverley and Holderness)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of including projects on protecting farmland from flooding in the next allocation round of Levelling Up funding.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
The Levelling Up Fund will support urban and rural communities to deliver benefits across the United Kingdom. It is for bidding authorities to put forward the bids that they feel will best support their Levelling Up ambitions across the themes of Regeneration, Culture and Transport.
Local authorities can also use their UK Shared Prosperity Fund allocation for this type of intervention. This includes funding for new, or improvements to existing, community and neighbourhood infrastructure projects including those that increase communities' resilience to natural hazards, such as flooding. This could cover capital spend and running costs.
Asked by: Graham Stuart (Conservative - Beverley and Holderness)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the (a) availability of pain services and (b) Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Alliance’s core offer for pain services.
Answered by Gillian Keegan
No specific assessment has been made. The majority of routine treatment and support for people with chronic pain is provided by local primary, community and secondary care services and commissioned via clinical commissioning groups. For patients with severe and complex pain, NHS England commissions specialised care. Upon referral to specialist centres, patients can access a range of health professionals, including consultant specialists, clinical nurse specialists, psychologists and physiotherapists and receive specialised treatment.
The core offer for pain services produced by the Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Alliance is informing guidance on the provision of high-quality services for people living with long-term pain conditions currently being produced by NHS England.
Asked by: Graham Stuart (Conservative - Beverley and Holderness)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure adequate support is provided to people who live with severe chronic pain.
Answered by Gillian Keegan
The majority of routine treatment and support for people with chronic pain is provided by local primary, community and secondary care services and commissioned via clinical commissioning groups. For patients with severe and complex pain, NHS England commissions specialised care. Upon referral to specialist centres, patients can access a range of health professionals, including consultant specialists, clinical nurse specialists, psychologists and physiotherapists and receive specialised treatment.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence published guidance on chronic pain in April 2021, which includes recommendations on how chronic pain can be managed through pharmacological and non-pharmacological approaches, such as exercise programmes, acupuncture and psychological therapy.
NHS England has established a task and finish group to produce guidance on the provision of services for people living with long-term pain conditions by September 2022. The guidance is aimed at integrated care systems, to provide core principles which can be used to inform the development of local models of care for complex pain.