Asked by: James Davies (Conservative - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, if she will make an estimate of the number of days that Avanti staff worked on previously booked rest days between June and August 2022.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Department does not hold this information across all staff grades at Avanti West Coast (AWC).
On 30 July 2022, AWC experienced a near total cessation of drivers volunteering to work passenger trains on rest days. As noted by Avanti in its stakeholder bulletin of 8 August, it had regularly and reliably seen approximately 400 services a week worked by drivers on their rest day. This figure fell suddenly by 90 per cent.
Daily driver rest day working has remained minimal since then.
Asked by: James Davies (Conservative - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether her Department holds data on how many and what proportion of staff have regularly worked on their rest days per quarter over the last three years in (a) each train operating company and (b) Avanti.
Answered by Kevin Foster
It is the responsibility of train operating companies to ensure they have adequate staffing to resource their operations.
Asked by: James Davies (Conservative - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent assessment his Department has made of the value for money of subsidies given for the use of biomass for electricity generation.
Answered by Graham Stuart - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The Government has in place conditions to ensure generators only receive subsidies for biomass that complies with the UK’s strict sustainability criteria. In 2021, biomass made up 12.9% of total electricity generation.
Asked by: James Davies (Conservative - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of biomass used for energy generation on (a) biodiversity and (b) the UK’s overseas land footprint.
Answered by Graham Stuart - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The UK sustainability criteria are some of the most stringent in the world and include requirements under the land criteria and GHG (greenhouse gas) criteria. The land criteria take into account a range of social, economic, and environmental issues, including protecting biodiversity and land use rights.
Where biomass is sourced from forests, the land criteria include requirements around regeneration rates and sustainable harvesting in the sourcing regions, requiring that the carbon stock of the forest from which biomass is derived is not decreased.
Asked by: James Davies (Conservative - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many (a) phase I, (b) phase II and (c) phase III clinical trials for dementia have been hosted in Wales in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The information requested on clinical trials hosted in Wales and Scotland is not held centrally. A table showing the number of phase one, two and three clinical trials supported by the National Institute for Health and Social Care Research Clinical Research Network in England for dementia from 2012/13 to 2021/22 is attached.
Asked by: James Davies (Conservative - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to extend the eligibility for the spring booster vaccine to people with motor neurone disease who are clinically extremely vulnerable to covid-19.
Answered by Maggie Throup
On 21 February 2022, the Government accepted advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) to offer a COVID-19 booster vaccination to specific vulnerable groups. This included residents in care homes for older adults; adults aged 75 years old and over; and individuals aged 12 years old or over who are immunosuppressed.
On 15 July 2022, the Government accepted advice from the JCVI to offer a booster vaccination to additional vulnerable patient cohorts in autumn 2022. This includes all clinical risk groups and those with motor neurone disease.
Asked by: James Davies (Conservative - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps NHS England is taking to ensure standardised approaches to developing radioligand therapy services across the country.
Answered by James Morris
NHS England is appointing a new National Specialty Advisor for Nuclear Medicine to ensure the opportunities for radioligand therapies approved by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence are realised.
Asked by: James Davies (Conservative - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the 10 Year Cancer Plan will include provisions on expanding system infrastructure to deliver innovative cancer treatment such as radioligand therapy.
Answered by James Morris
I refer the hon. Members to the answer I gave to the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper MP) on 19 July 2022 to Question 33937.
Asked by: James Davies (Conservative - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps the Government is taking to increase public access to (a) first aid kits and (b) defibrillators in public locations.
Answered by James Morris
With St John Ambulance, NHS England is co-ordinating skills development to increase the use of automated external defibrillators by individuals in community settings, supported by confident cardiopulmonary resuscitation skills. This will include a national network of community advocates to champion the importance of first aid and training 60,000 people to save up to 4,000 lives each year by 2028.
The Government encourages organisations in England to consider purchasing a defibrillator as part of first-aid equipment, in particular for locations where there are high concentrations of people. Many community defibrillators have since been provided through national lottery funding, community fundraising schemes, workplace funding or by charities in public locations, such as shopping centres.
Asked by: James Davies (Conservative - Vale of Clwyd)
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 make its policy to introduce a Great British rainforests strategy.
Answered by Steve Double
The international importance of temperate rainforests (also termed Atlantic woodland) in supporting rare and threatened species has been recognised in domestic biodiversity policy for many decades. Many temperate rainforests are protected by existing policy. Many are ancient woodlands, which are protected from development in all but wholly exceptional circumstances. We have also committed in the England Trees Action Plan to increase protections in the planning system for long established woodland in situ since 1840. Many of our temperate rainforests support rich assemblages of species and are in our series of Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). SSSI selection guidelines for woodlands are focused on securing a representative series rather than protecting every example.
This government has made a world-leading commitment to halt the decline in nature by 2030, which will rely on the restoration and creation of habitats across the country. This will be supported by funding from the Nature for Climate Fund, future farming schemes including Landscape Recovery, and new funds such as the Big Nature Impact Fund. We will consider, while designing and rolling out these schemes, how they might support the protection and restoration of certain types of woodlands including ‘temperate rainforest’. We also provide financial support to the buffering and expansion of valuable woodlands such as temperate rainforests through the England Woodland Creation Offer, and funding for the improvement and restoration of temperate rainforest sites through the Regional Restoration Funds.
We are currently working on the revision of the 25 Year Environment Plan, the next Environmental Improvement Plan, due January 2023. This is the overarching strategy for the environment, as set out in the Environment Act, and where relevant we will consider the role of temperate rainforest in helping to meet our substantial environmental commitments.
Forestry policy is devolved, so the protection and restoration of temperate rainforests outside England is a matter for the devolved authorities.