Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to her letter to the Environmental Audit Committee dated 30 January 2026, what steps she is taking to increase funding for flood risk management in local authority areas in instances where revenue funding from the Local Government Finance Settlement is being reduced.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Delivering on the Plan for Change, this Government is investing at least £10.5 billion until 2036 to construct new flood schemes and repair existing defences.
In October 2025 the Government announced major changes to its flood and coastal erosion funding policy – optimising funding between building new defences and maintaining existing ones. Deprived communities will continue to receive vital investment - at least 20% of future investment will help protect the most deprived communities over the next ten years. New projects will be prioritised based on value for money. The list of projects to receive Government funding will be agreed in the usual way, on an annual basis, through Regional Flood and Coastal Committees, with local representation. The final list of schemes to benefit in 2026/27 will be published in March 2026.
Alongside our £10.5 billion investment, the Local Government Finance Settlement for 2025-26 makes available over £69 billion, a 6.8% cash terms increase on 2024-2025. The majority of local Government funding is not ringfenced, recognising that local authorities are best placed to decide how to meet the rising service pressures in their local areas, including on flood risk management.
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when she will be providing guidance to local authorities on the floods funding criteria that will be in place for the 2026-27 financial year.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
As part of the Environment Agency's wider programme of improvements to implement the new Defra flood funding policy, the Environment Agency will publish updated project funding guidance for practitioners before 1st April 2026.
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of foundation pharmacists beginning their training in 2025 had been assigned a Designated Prescribing Practitioner.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Foundation trainee pharmacists who have graduated against the 2021 standards for the initial education and training of pharmacists are required to have a Designated Prescribing Practitioner (DPP), a healthcare professional with independent prescribing rights, such as a doctor, pharmacist, or nurse, to support the supervision and assessment of prescribing activities during their foundation year.
Under the Foundation Trainee Pharmacists National Recruitment Scheme, training providers are required to ensure that trainees have access to a DPP and to submit DPP details to NHS England once the trainee pharmacist is in post.
Of the 2,894 graduates in England who began foundation pharmacist training in 2025/26, 2,417 trained against the 2021 standards and therefore require a DPP. As of February 2026, 2,013 of these trainees, approximately 83%, had submitted details of an assigned DPP to NHS England.
By training window, 1,814 of 2,119 summer starters, or 85.6%, and 199 of 318 autumn starters, or 62.5%, had submitted DPP details. Autumn starters typically undertake prescribing later in the training year, and some may not yet have been required to submit DPP information. NHS England continues to monitor this.
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
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 the timely delivery of NHS mail to patients.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Whilst there is an increasing move towards digital National Health Service communications via the NHS App, texts, digital telephony, and emails, NHS letters remain crucial for many patients, particularly those who may be digitally excluded.
All NHS organisations are now required to use NHS Notify to send out patient communications. This service makes sure that patients get messages from NHS organisations in the best channel for their needs and ensures the NHS effectively delivers its services. This is done by routing messages to the secure NHS App, falling back to SMS, email, and letters if they do not, based on a central source of contact details, additional needs, and NHS numbers. By doing this once from a single service, the NHS can make sure the most secure, rapid, reliable, accessible, and cost effective channel of communication is used.
NHS England and Royal Mail have been working together to ensure NHS providers continue to have a choice of both price and speed when sending letters, and to improve how NHS letters are sent to patients across the United Kingdom. There is now a Royal Mail NHS barcode, which was announced in April 2025. The barcode is designed to mitigate the impact on NHS letters by helping to optimise their delivery at times of local and national disruption. Further information may be found on the Royal Mail website, at the following link:
https://www.royalmailwholesale.com/news/nhs-mail-new-barcode-solution
This describes the process by which the prioritisation of NHS communication happens.
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
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 potential impact of hospital handover delays on ambulance response times in (a) Shropshire and (b) the West Midlands.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
No such assessment has been made. Ambulance handover and response times for ambulance trusts, including for the West Midlands Ambulance Service, are published monthly by NHS England. This information can be accessed via the Ambulance Quality Indications dataset at the following link:
Our Urgent and Emergency Care Plan for 2025/26 sets out clear actions to deliver improvements this winter and make services better every day, including reducing ambulance handovers to a maximum of 45 minutes, helping get more ambulances back on the road for patients, and reducing Category 2 ambulance response times to 30 minutes on average. NHS England continues to monitor average hospital handover times, sharing data with regions to support focussed discussions and identify improvement actions with those trusts not achieving handovers in 45 minutes.
The 2025 Medium‑Term Planning Framework commits to faster ambulance responses, aiming for 20‑minute Category 2 times by 2026/27 and 18 minutes by 2028/29.
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much funding his Department has provided to community pharmacies through the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework in real terms in each year since 2016.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The following table shows the nominal and real terms funding provided through the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework each year since 2015/16:
| Nominal value (£m) | Gross domestic product deflator at December 2025 | Real terms value 2025/26 prices (£m) |
2015/16 | 2,800 | 72.46 | 3,864 |
2016/17 | 2,687 | 73.91 | 3,636 |
2017/18 | 2,592 | 74.85 | 3,463 |
2018/19 | 2,592 | 76.55 | 3,386 |
2019/20 | 2,592 | 78.57 | 3,299 |
2020/21 | 2,592 | 82.68 | 3,135 |
2021/22 | 2,592 | 82.87 | 3,128 |
2022/23 | 2,592 | 88.70 | 2,922 |
2023/24 | 2,592 | 93.38 | 2,776 |
2024/25 | 2,698 | 97.14 | 2,777 |
2025/26 | 3,073 | 100.00 | 3,073 |
In 2025/26, the funding for the core community pharmacy contractual framework was increased to £3.1 billion. This represented the largest uplift in funding of any part of the National Health Service at the time, over 19% across 2024/25 and 2025/26. Additional funding was also made available, for example, for pharmacies delivering Pharmacy First consultations and flu and COVID-19 vaccinations.
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to issue guidance to NHS commissioners to help ensure community eyecare services are commissioned across England to help improve equality in access to care.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for commissioning primary and secondary eye care services to meet the needs of their local population. National Health Service sight tests are widely available across the country, with no known access issues. ICBs can also commission enhanced eye care services in the community.
ICBs are required to work with local authorities to assess the current and future health, care, and wellbeing needs of their local population. They will then set out in joint local health and wellbeing strategies how they will meet those needs, which could include addressing any identified inequalities in accessing services.
The Department worked with the eye care sector to develop a standard clinical specification for the commissioning of Community Minor and Urgent Eye Care Services, and this was published in February 2024. The specification can be found at the following link:
https://locsu.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/1.-CUES-Service-specification-vs-1.43-Feb-2024.pdf
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure equitable access to community eye care services across England.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for commissioning primary and secondary eye care services to meet the needs of their local population. National Health Service sight tests are widely available across the country, with no known access issues. ICBs can also commission enhanced eye care services in the community.
ICBs are required to work with local authorities to assess the current and future health, care, and wellbeing needs of their local population. They will then set out in joint local health and wellbeing strategies how they will meet those needs, which could include addressing any identified inequalities in accessing services.
The Department worked with the eye care sector to develop a standard clinical specification for the commissioning of Community Minor and Urgent Eye Care Services, and this was published in February 2024. The specification can be found at the following link:
https://locsu.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/1.-CUES-Service-specification-vs-1.43-Feb-2024.pdf
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what consultation her Department has had with counterparts at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the withdrawal of the visa concession for temporary employment as sheep shearers.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Immigration Rules concessionary arrangements are temporary and subject to regular Ministerial review. The sheep shearing concession had been operating for 14 years and closed after the 2025 shearing season as it reasonable to expect that over this period a long-term sustainable solution had been found to fill this workforce gap. To provide plenty of time to plan and transition to new arrangements DEFRA officials were informed last year that the concession would not be renewed again.
Ministers regularly meet with their DEFRA counterparts to discuss a wide range of issues, including the closure of this concession.
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the withdrawal of the visa concession for temporary employment as sheep shearers on the sheep industry.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
Immigration Rules concessionary arrangements are temporary and subject to regular Ministerial review. The sheep shearing concession had been operating for 14 years and closed after the 2025 shearing season as it reasonable to expect that over this period a long-term sustainable solution had been found to fill this workforce gap. To provide plenty of time to plan and transition to new arrangements DEFRA officials were informed last year that the concession would not be renewed again.
Ministers regularly meet with their DEFRA counterparts to discuss a wide range of issues, including the closure of this concession.