Ian Roome

The Government set out clear priorities for the reset with the EU in the manifesto. There are no plans for a Youth Mobility Scheme.

The Civil Contingencies Act and accompanying non-legislative measures deliver a single framework for civil protection in the UK.

The Government has a legal obligation to review the Act every five years. The most recent Review was published in March 2022 and concluded that the Act continues to achieve its stated objectives but also set out recommendations to strengthen the system. The review found no evidence to recommend a statutory duty for community resilience.

Several of the mandatory requirements of the Civil Contingencies Act already support community resilience building, including the publication of risk and emergency management information, warning and informing the public about emergencies, and providing business continuity advice for private and voluntary organisations. The National Resilience Standards and the Community Resilience Development Framework set out good practice for Local Resilience Forums to build community resilience.

However, in light of the recent Inquires including COVID and Grenfell, it is right that we seek to continue to improve resilience across the whole of the UK to ensure it meets the needs of the evolving risk landscape. Through the resilience review announced by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in July, we are considering a range of options for how we can help Local Resilience Forums build resilience throughout their communities.

The Government aims to boost all businesses, across key policy areas to build business capabilities, and a strong business environment. The Government works closely with the British Business Bank to enhance small business's access to finance through targeted interventions. Under the umbrella of the Export Academy, UK Export Finance and the newly announced Business Growth Service, businesses can access support, information, training, events, and expert support from business and International Trade advisors to overcome trading and export barriers.

The UK follows the agreed international approach for setting targets, and reporting greenhouse gas emissions, which is for countries to report the emissions produced within their territories.

However, consumption-based emissions, which factor in overseas emissions associated with imports, are reported by Defra (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uks-carbon-footprint ) and considered in policy making where relevant and material.

DESNZ also publish conversion factors for company reporting which include well-to-tank emissions factors for LNG (https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/government-conversion-factors-for-company-reporting). The latest published factors are based on 2022 data but the values are updated annually, allowing for changes in the sources of imported gas, particularly LNG, to be reflected.

The Government is continuing to deliver the Warm Home Discount which provides an annual £150 rebate off energy bills for eligible low-income households.

In November Energy UK, in collaboration with the Government, published a Winter 2024 Commitment which promises £500m of industry support to billpayers this winter. It also outlines how 15 energy suppliers representing almost the entire market will continue to provide a range of financial support tailored to the needs of their customers.

The Department of Culture, Media and Sport has not made an assessment of the potential merits of a TV licence exemption for UK Armed Forces personnel resident in service accommodation.

As part of the next Charter Review, the Government will engage with the BBC and others to consider how to ensure the BBC thrives well into the next decade and beyond. This will include discussions on a range of important issues, including how we ensure that there is a sustainable funding model that is fair for those who pay for it.

To date, DCMS has invested £20.65 million in the 2025 Women’s Rugby World Cup. This includes £12.13 million of funding towards the tournament's legacy and impact programme, ‘Impact 25’. This is supporting women's and girls' clubs across the country as part of the Rugby Football Union’s ambition to widen female participation in England. This is part of our strategic approach to ensuring we maximise the socio-economic benefits of major sporting events.

In addition, the Governments arm’s length body for grassroots sport, Sport England, has awarded the Rugby Football Union £13.8 million for the period 2022-27, as one of their long-term system partners who have responsibility to support grassroots rugby union.

Apprenticeships and skills will play a critical part in the government’s mission to drive growth across the country, supporting people to get better jobs and improve their standard of living.

The government has established Skills England to form a coherent national picture of skills gaps and help shape the technical education system so that it is responsive to skills needs. This will include advising on priorities for the new growth and skills offer.

Skills England engaged with employers and other key partners regarding early priorities for the new growth and skills offer, including proposals to ask more employers to step forward and fund more level 7 apprenticeships themselves.

Skills England spoke to over 700 stakeholders before Christmas as part of their engagement exercise, and have shared their findings with the department. Its findings from this engagement process will be published in early 2025.

This government is determined to tackle the generational challenge of school absence, which is a fundamental barrier to learning and life chances. Missing school regularly is harmful to a child’s attainment, safety and physical and mental health, which limits their opportunity to succeed. There is evidence that more students are attending school this year compared to last, thanks to the efforts of families and school staff, although around 1.6 million children remain persistently absent and miss 10% or more of lessons.

Central to the department’s approach to tackling absence are stronger expectations of local authorities and schools, as set out in the ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance, which was made statutory on 19 August 2024. The guidance promotes a 'support first' approach and sets out clear expectations on how schools, trusts, local authorities and wider services should work together and with families to address attendance barriers and provide the right support, including where a pupil is not attending due to special educational needs.

Every state school in England should now be sharing their daily attendance register data with the department, local authorities and trusts. These bodies can access this data through a secure, interactive dashboard which is maintained by the department, allowing them to target attendance interventions more effectively.

The department recognises the importance of creating opportunities within the sector to share existing best practice on how to improve attendance. This is why the department set up a network of 31 attendance hubs, who have offered support to 2000 primary, secondary and alternative provision schools and shared their strategies and resources for improving attendance.

In addition to this work, the department also aims to improve the existing evidence on which interventions work to improve attendance. Over £17 million is being invested across two mentoring projects that will support at least 12,000 pupils in 15 areas. These programmes will be evaluated and the effective practice will be shared with schools and local authorities nationally.

From early 2025, new Regional Improvement for Standards and Excellence (RISE) teams will support all state schools by facilitating networking, sharing best practice across areas including attendance and empowering schools to feel they can better access support and learn from one another. For schools requiring more intensive support, RISE teams and supporting organisations will work collaboratively with their responsible body to agree bespoke packages of targeted support, based on a school’s particular circumstances.

School attendance is also supported by broader investments, such as funded breakfast clubs across all primary schools to ensure children start their day ready to learn.

The department is working across government on plans to provide access to specialist mental health professionals in every school, new Young Futures hubs, access to mental health support workers and an additional 8,500 new mental health staff to treat children and adults.

Schools can also allocate pupil premium funding, which has now increased to over £2.9 billion for the 2024/25 financial year, to support pupils with identified needs to attend school regularly.

All state-funded schools are required to teach about good oral hygiene as part of statutory health education. Pupils should know about dental health and the benefits of good oral hygiene and dental flossing, including the need for regular check-ups at the dentist.

Departmental officials regularly meet with officials from the Department for Health and Social Care to discuss oral health in schools and this government’s commitment to introduce a national supervised toothbrushing scheme targeted at 3 to 5-year-olds living in the 20% most deprived areas of England. Further details on this scheme will be published in due course.

The government is committed to spreading opportunities and economic growth supported by a strong skills system.

This government has an extremely challenging fiscal inheritance. There are tough choices that need to be taken on how funding should be prioritised in order to generate opportunities for young people that enable them to make a start in good, fulfilling careers, and the department will therefore be asking more employers to step forward and fund a significant number of level 7 apprenticeships outside of the levy-funded growth and skills offer.

The department will take advice from Skills England, who are currently engaging with employers on this matter, and expects to make a final decision on affected apprenticeships in the new year.

The department recognises that for some employers level 7 apprenticeships form an important part of their workforce and career development offers. Employers will still be able to offer and invest in these apprenticeships where they feel they provide a good return on their investment.

The department is committed to improving inclusivity and expertise in mainstream schools, as well as ensuring special schools cater to those with the most complex needs, restoring parents’ trust that their child will get the support they need. This includes strengthening accountability for inclusivity, including through Ofsted, and encouraging schools to set up resourced provision or special educational needs (SEN) units to increase capacity in mainstream schools.

High quality teaching is central to ensuring that all pupils, including those with special educational needs and disabilites (SEND), are given the best possible opportunity to achieve in their education and as they move into adult life. The department is committed to recruiting an additional 6,500 new expert teachers over the course of this parliament. To support all teachers, the department is implementing a range of teacher training reforms to ensure teachers have the skills to support all pupils to succeed, including those with SEND.

On 1 September 2024, the government introduced a new mandatory leadership level qualification for special educational needs co-ordinators (SENCOs). The qualification will play a key role in improving outcomes for pupils with SEND, by ensuring SENCOs consistently receive high quality, evidence-based training on how best to support children with SEND.

High needs funding will also increase by almost £1 billion in 2025/26 compared to 2024/25, and we have announced £740 million of capital funding to create more specialist places, including in mainstream schools.

An answer to Question 26922 was published on 27 February 2025. I apologise for the delay in responding to the hon. Member.

At January’s Oxford Farming Conference, as part of the Government’s New Deal for Farmers, the Government announced a series of reforms, including, where possible, backing British produce. It was also announced that for the first time ever, the government will review food currently bought in the public sector and where it is bought from. This work will start right away and be a significant first step in understanding how to capitalise on the Government’s purchasing power: informing any changes to public sector food procurement policies in due course.

The introduction of a digital waste tracking service will play an important role in supporting our transition to a Circular Economy that protects our natural resources and mitigates the effects of their extraction and disposal.

Having listened to feedback from our stakeholders across the waste sector and following a review of our original plans and timelines, we are developing plans to allow us to prepare for implementation, allow for greater levels of engagement and training with those concerned and ensure better system development and testing.

The Government is committed to setting a clear roadmap to a circular economy – a future where our resources are used as efficiently and productively as possible for as long as possible, and waste is reduced. Defra is reviewing policies to address the challenges associated with tackling food waste in the supply chain.

The Government’s commitment to British farmers, including family farms, remains steadfast. We will always champion British farming to boost rural economic growth, strengthen food security and improve the environment.

In the Budget announced last month, the Government committed £5 billion to the farming budget over two years, including more money than ever for sustainable food production: £1.8 billion for environmental land management schemes in 2025/26. This enables us to keep momentum on the path to a more resilient and sustainable farming sector.

We’re also optimising our farming schemes, so they work efficiently for all farmers, food security and the environment, especially for those that are too often ignored such as small, grassland, upland and tenanted farms.

The Department for Transport has not made an assessment of the effectiveness of AI road cameras at reducing road crashes in high-risk areas.

However, trials of new technology including the use of AI cameras in small scale operational activity has been carried out under the Roads Policing Review. Evidence from these is being considered.

National Highways has also worked with police forces to understand the role of technology to detect and enforce mobile phone and seatbelt violations.

At present, bus services in England outside London are predominantly run on a commercial basis by private operators, and the level at which bus operators set their fares is a commercial decision.

The government is committed to delivering better bus services for passengers, including making them more reliable and affordable, because we know how important this is for communities. The Department for Transport has issued to guidance to local transport authorities and bus operators to support the development of local Bus Service Improvement Plans (BSIPs). This makes clear that fares policy should be an integral part of BSIPs, and that they should set out ambitions and proposals for extending youth fares for younger people.

This government is determined to seize the opportunities of emerging micromobility and tackle any negative impacts which may arise. We actively monitor the industry and the new vehicle types and business models being developed while carefully considering policy steps to ensure these are operating safely and in the interests of our communities. A key part of these considerations will be how new technologies can benefit disabled people.

We will turn on WCA reassessments at scale as we build up capacity to do so.

We will initially prioritise reassessments for people who are most likely to have had a change in their circumstances including those who have short-term prognoses, for which we can reasonably anticipate a change in health condition has occurred (e.g., those with risks from pregnancy complications or those who have recovered following cancer treatment).

Over time, we will then prioritise available reassessment capacity for other cohorts who are likely to change award.

My Rt. Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, set out a credible and deliverable plan for the new hospital schemes in the New Hospital Programme (NHP) on 20 January 2025, following the conclusion of the review of the NHP. The Plan for Implementation was laid in the House Library and is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/new-hospital-programme-review-outcome

Estimated costs for each scheme are set out in the publication. However, these are estimates and the exact funding for schemes will be determined through the review and agreement of a Full Business Case, as is usual for large infrastructure projects.

Funding has been agreed with HM Treasury to cover 2025/26. Funding beyond this will be agreed in the Spending Review in spring 2025.

I remain committed to visiting North Devon District Hospital. Ministers regularly consider visits across the country to see the impact of their policy areas. Any plans to visit specific locations will be notified to the relevant Members of Parliament in advance.

We are aware of the challenges faced in accessing a dentist particularly in rural areas. The Government plans to tackle the challenges for patients trying to access National Health Service dental care with a rescue plan to provide 700,000 more urgent dental appointments and recruit new dentists to the areas that need them most. To rebuild dentistry in the long term, we will reform the dental contract with the sector, with a shift to focus on prevention and the retention of NHS dentists.

The responsibility for commissioning primary care services, including NHS dentistry, to meet the needs of the local population has been delegated to the integrated care boards (ICBs) across England.

The additional 700,000 appointments will be available across the country, with specific targets for each region. These targets are more heavily weighted towards those areas where they are needed the most. Further information is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/arrangements-for-nhs-urgent-primary-dental-care-during-2025-26-and-confirmation-of-the-closure-of-the-new-patient-premium-scheme/#annex-a-distribution-of-700k-additional-appointments

ICBs have started to advertise posts through the Golden Hello scheme. This recruitment incentive will see up to 240 dentists receiving payments of £20,000 to work in those areas that need them most for three years.

Practices are contractually obliged to provide full prospective record access to all patients, for those aged 16 years old and above, unless exceptions apply or if the patient has informed the practice that they do not, or no longer, wish to have access.

Since 2022, functionality and supporting guidance was successfully tested with early adopter general practice (GP) sites, and was rolled out nationwide to give all patients access to new health record entries online. This guidance is available at the following link:

https://digital.nhs.uk/services/nhs-app/nhs-app-guidance-for-gp-practices/guidance-on-nhs-app-features/online-access-to-gp-health-records/what-general-practice-staff-should-know/prospective-record-access-manually-enabling-patient-access#:~:text=Practices%20are%20contractually%20obliged%20to,longer%2C%20wish%20to%20have%20access.

In addition, NHS England worked with GPs and GP IT suppliers on the steps to take to restrict access to health records for vulnerable patients. NHS England has also provided guidance on its website on how anyone can request access to their GP record, using an online account such as the NHS App.

The Government is committed to raising the healthiest generation of children and tackling the three biggest killers which will require effort from across society on not just obesity but alcohol and smoking. We have made a start with Tobacco and Vapes Bill and will continue to speak to partners across industry and civic society to best understand what actions help to change behaviours in a way that puts power in the hands of consumers.

As part of the Government’s Plan for Change, we are committed to achieving our health mission to build a National Health Service fit for the future, and under the 10-Year Health Plan to shift from ‘sickness to prevention’. Making the healthier choice the easier choice is a major part of creating a food environment that is fairer, with the fewest lives lost to the biggest killers and where everyone lives well for longer. Obesity is one of the key drivers of ill health, economic inactivity and premature mortality, as highlighted in the recently published Get Britain Working White Paper.

As part of considerations around mandatory healthiness targets, the Food Data Transparency Partnership (FDTP) was created prior to the 2024 General Election; this was a shared programme of work across the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, and the Food Standards Agency. The FDTP was paused at the election and is being reviewed alongside other obesity policies.

The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) are currently undertaking a number of reviews. Their current review of shortages in IT and engineering occupations includes scope to consider whether the Immigration Salary List should remain in its current form. We will consider future reviews of the list once this review has been concluded.

Since their introduction, Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) have brought greater local accountability to policing and we recognise the important role they play as the elected voice of their local communities.

The English Devolution White Paper sets out an ambition that where geographies of mayoral strategic authorities align with police forces, Mayors will, by default, exercise PCC functions. This does not abolish the role of Police and Crime Commissioner, but rather incorporates the functions as part of the role of the mayor, where one is established. We believe this offers wider levers to tackle and prevent crime and anti-social behaviour, whilst preserving directly elected oversight for policing.

Government will engage with partners across England, including in Devon and Cornwall, to agree devolution proposals that are right for the area.

The Ministry of Defence takes a number of steps to ensure our equipment is interoperable with NATO allies. These include leading on the development, ratification, and implementation of NATO standards; participation in joint exercises and training such as Formidable Shield; and promoting and encouraging allies to jointly procure and integrate capabilities, including through the UK-led NATO Multinational Procurement Initiatives and DIAMOND. We are also working with allies and industry to ensure the implementation of NATO’s Defence Production Action Plan, which places strong emphasis on the need to ensure the interoperability of existing and future military capabilities.

£941.2 million has been spent on the delivery of T23 upkeeps completed since 2014. A further £63.7 million is currently contractually committed for the delivery of T23 upkeeps. These are a planned series of upkeep periods in order to maintain ship condition and to introduce, where appropriate, capability updates.

It should be noted that the figure given includes upkeeps undertaken to two ships that started prior to 2014. Because of the length of time passed it is not possible to break down the figures further.

Statistics relating to the Ministry of Defence's expenditure with industry, including Small and Medium Enterprises, can be found in the 'MOD regional expenditure statistics with industry: 2023/24' publication hosted on gov.uk:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/mod-regional-expenditure-statistics-with-industry-202324

No decision has been made on the future of HMS Argyll.

As with all decommissioned ships, a full suite of options is being assessed to ensure that the disposal achieves value for money and is policy compliant (safety, environmental and security).

The Ministry of Defence has neither held discussions, nor has any current plan to hold discussions, with the TV Licencing Agency regarding an Armed Forces discount to the TV Licence or an exemption for personnel living in Service accommodation.