Asked by: James MacCleary (Liberal Democrat - Lewes)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment she has made of the impact of the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme on the preservation of historic churches; and whether her Department plans to renew the scheme beyond March 2025.
Answered by Chris Bryant - Minister of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Department monitors the implementation and impact of the grant scheme through the regular reporting of the grant administrator. Since 2010, the grant scheme has returned over £350 million to listed places of worship including churches.
Departmental settlements have been set following the Budget announcement on October 30. Individual programmes will now be assessed during the departmental Business Planning process.
Asked by: James MacCleary (Liberal Democrat - Lewes)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if her Department will make an assessment of the potential merits of removing the 10% commission charge on the sale of park homes.
Answered by Matthew Pennycook - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
I refer the hon Member to the answer given to Question UIN 11995 on 6 November 2024.
Asked by: James MacCleary (Liberal Democrat - Lewes)
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 improve support for families affected by baby loss including (a) access to counselling services, (b) support for siblings and (c) training for healthcare professionals in providing compassionate care.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England’s Three Year Delivery Plan for Maternity and Neonatal services sets out how the National Health Service will make care safer, more personalised, and equitable. The plan includes a commitment to provide compassionate and high-quality care for bereaved families.
To deliver on this commitment, NHS England has made additional funding available to ensure all trusts can offer a seven day a week bereavement service. NHS England has also invested in Maternal Mental Health Services to provide care for women with moderate to complex or severe mental health difficulties, and published the Core Competency Framework for providers, to address known variation in multi-professional training and competency assessment, including for bereavement care.
Additionally, the National Bereavement Care Pathway (NBCP) aims to reduce the variation in the quality of bereavement care provided by the NHS to ensure that parents receive quality and consistent care after pregnancy or baby loss. The pathway acts as a set of standards and guidance that trusts should follow when a patient has suffered a pregnancy or baby loss, with the aim of ensuring that all bereaved parents are offered equal, high quality, individualised, safe, and sensitive care. Since June 2024, all NHS England trusts had signed up to the NBCP.
To support NHS staff to handle a range of difficult situations, NHS England has also launched an e-learning module, Handling difficult situations – Caring for yourself and others with compassion, for NHS staff in frontline, patient facing roles. This e-learning module, which is available for free, aims to help upskill colleagues in how to handle difficult situations with compassion, using appropriate communication techniques and active listening skills.
Asked by: James MacCleary (Liberal Democrat - Lewes)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of providing additional funding to local authorities to support them to meet their statutory homelessness duties effectively.
Answered by Rushanara Ali - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
Homelessness levels are far too high. This can have a devastating impact on those affected, especially children. Too many families are spending years in temporary accommodation, at a point in a child’s life when they need space to play and develop, nutritious food to thrive and access to education.
We must address this and deliver long term solutions. The Government is looking at these issues carefully and will develop a new cross government strategy, working with mayors and councils across the country to get us back on track to ending homelessness once and for all. This includes a dedicated Inter-Ministerial Group, chaired by the Deputy Prime Minister, bringing together ministers from across government.
More widely, we are taking action to tackle the root causes of homelessness by delivering the biggest increase in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation and building 1.5 million new homes over the next parliament. The government is also abolishing Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions, preventing private renters being exploited and discriminated against, and empowering people to challenge unreasonable rent increases.
We are already taking the first steps to get back on track to ending homelessness. As announced at the Budget, funding for homelessness services is increasing next year by £233 million compared to this year (2024/25). This increased spending will help to prevent rises in the number of families in temporary accommodation and help to prevent rough sleeping. This brings total spend to nearly £1 billion in 25/26. Allocations for individual local authorities in England will be set out later in December.
The department regularly collects homelessness data, including on out of area placements, which can be found here in table TA 1 and are published quarterly: Statutory homelessness in England: April to June 2024 - GOV.UK. Records on the location of accommodation where accommodation is secured to end the prevention or relief duties, including where that accommodation is out of area, are published annually and can be found in tables P4 and R4 here: Detailed_LA_20232024.xlsx.
Asked by: James MacCleary (Liberal Democrat - Lewes)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what assessment he has made of (a) the potential effectiveness of carbon capture technologies in reducing emissions and (b) whether investment in such technologies is the most (i) efficient and (ii) cost-effective way to meet the climate targets.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage (CCUS) technology has been proven in many countries across the world, and the Climate Change Committee have described it as a “necessity not an option” for reaching Net Zero. As a part of the initial assessment for choosing the first CCUS clusters, projects were assessed against five criteria including deliverability, under which technical viability was considered. It enables the lowest cost pathway to Net Zero and is a tried and tested technology that has been deployed across industry and power generation at scale. Geological carbon storage is a proven technology that has been in operation globally for decades.
Asked by: James MacCleary (Liberal Democrat - Lewes)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if she will support investment in (a) community-led developments and (b) co-housing.
Answered by Matthew Pennycook - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The government recognises that community-led housing delivers a wide range of benefits, including additional housing supply, empowering communities, achieving high quality design and strengthening the co-operative economy.
Our recent consultation on proposed reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework specifically included proposals designed to strengthen support for community-led housing, including changes to the size limit on community-led exception sites and a broadening of the definition of organisations able to deliver community-led housing. The consultation closed on the 24 September and officials in my department are currently analysing responses with a view to publishing a government response before the end of the year.
I am committed to working with representatives of the sector to consider how the government may support the growth of community led housing over the long term and I recently met with the Chief Executive of the Community Land Trust Network and other stakeholders to that end.
Asked by: James MacCleary (Liberal Democrat - Lewes)
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 (a) prevent heart disease and stroke, (b) prioritise timely NHS heart care and (c) accelerate research into future treatments and cures.
Answered by Andrew Gwynne - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We are committed to ensuring that fewer lives are lost to the biggest killers, such as heart disease, which includes cardiovascular diseases (CVD), and stroke.
The NHS Health Check, England’s flagship CVD prevention programme, engages over 1.3 million people each year and prevents approximately 500 heart attacks or strokes. To improve access and engagement to this life saving check, we are developing a digital NHS Health Check, a service which people can use at home to understand and act on their CVD risk, providing people with a more flexible, accessible, and convenient service. We are also piloting a new programme to deliver more than 130,000 lifesaving heart health checks in workplaces across the country.
The NHS Long Term Plan (NHS LTP) is committed to improving the care and outcomes for people with CVD through enhanced diagnostic support in the community, better personalised planning, and increased access to disease-specific rehabilitation. NHS England’s stroke priorities include rapid diagnosis and increased access to time-dependent acute stroke care, as well as facilitating ambulance service use of pre-hospital telemedicine, and supporting access to the use of artificial intelligence decision support tools for brain imaging.
Asked by: James MacCleary (Liberal Democrat - Lewes)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help prevent joint mortgages being used as a method of financial abuse.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Government recognises the devastating impact financial and economic abuse can have on victims, which extends far beyond the impact to their finances and includes the use of joint mortgages to control or exploit victims.
We continue to work closely with and fund organisations that seek to promote awareness of economic abuse to improve the public and private sector’s response. This includes funding Surviving Economic Abuse (SEA), which supports victims of economic and financial abuse, with £200,000 this year to help improve the response to economic abuse and provide vital support and economic safety for victims.
Asked by: James MacCleary (Liberal Democrat - Lewes)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has made an assessment of the potential impact of the UK leaving the EU on the number of seasonal agricultural workers in each of the countries of the UK.
Answered by Seema Malhotra - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Education) (Equalities)
The Government keeps the Seasonal Worker route under close ongoing review and is carefully considering the Migration Advisory Committee’s review of the Seasonal Worker route and will announce a detailed response in due course.
The Home Office and the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) monitor the scheme closely to ensure they are operating in the best interests of the UK when it comes to future recruitment. This Government recognises and values the important contribution workers from overseas make to our economy and public services throughout the UK. Legal migration must be controlled and managed through a fair system.
Asked by: James MacCleary (Liberal Democrat - Lewes)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an estimate with Cabinet colleagues of the potential impact of existing youth mobility schemes on economic growth in each (a) country of the UK and (b) year since 2010.
Answered by Seema Malhotra - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Education) (Equalities)
The Youth Mobility Scheme (YMS) provides valuable cultural exchange opportunities for young people aged 18-30 (or 18-35 for some nationalities) to experience life in another country for up to two or three years, and to make lifelong ties and friendships overseas.
Each YMS is subject to a bilateral, reciprocal arrangement designed to offer cultural exchange. It is therefore not designed, nor intended, to be a route for economic growth or to address any specific labour shortages, although individuals participating in the scheme are able to work if they wish to do so.