Asked by: Jane Hunt (Conservative - Loughborough)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether her Department is taking steps to implement the recommendations in the report by the Children's Commissioner entitled Beyond the Labels: A SEND system which works for every child, every time, published on 14 November 2022.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Shadow Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
The department welcomes the Children's Commissioner's report, a response to the department’s consultation, which provided a range of recommendations for the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system. This includes improving the education, health and care (EHC) plan process and the support that is available for through alternative provision (AP) providers. The SEND and AP Green Paper set out the department’s proposals for how the SEND system can be improved, so that it delivers improved outcomes, experiences and financial sustainability. The department will publish a SEND and AP Improvement Plan that will set out the consultation feedback and our next steps in due course.
Asked by: Jane Hunt (Conservative - Loughborough)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what estimate she has made of when the full electrification of the Midland Mainline will be complete.
Answered by Kevin Foster
The Integrated Rail Plan published in November 2021, set out the electrification of the Midland Mainline is planned to be completed around 2030 (subject to business case approvals).
Asked by: Jane Hunt (Conservative - Loughborough)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of extending the back dating time limit for claiming Bereavement Support Payment.
Answered by Claire Coutinho - Shadow Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero
The time limits for claiming Bereavement Support Payment are already generous in that an individual would need to be 21 months late in claiming to forfeit the entire benefit. The existing three-month time limit for the monthly instalments is consistent with other social security benefits, and for the lump sum the time limit is 12 months; we believe these are reasonable lengths of time to make a claim.
Asked by: Jane Hunt (Conservative - Loughborough)
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 merits of extending the Energy Bill Relief Scheme to businesses that signed fixed contracts before 1 April 2022.
Answered by Graham Stuart
The Government announced it would expand the eligibility criteria to include all fixed contracts signed from 1 December 2021, to ensure that the support offered through the Energy Bill Relief Scheme to businesses and other non-domestic energy users covers all recent energy price increases.
Asked by: Jane Hunt (Conservative - Loughborough)
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 it his policy to impose a moratorium on new build incinerators and withhold any increase in capacity requests to licences already in place until additional research on incinerator overcapacity has been concluded.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
Defra has no plans to introduce a moratorium on new energy from waste (EfW) capacity in England. In the Resources and Waste Strategy we committed to monitoring residual waste treatment capacity and we intend to publish a fresh analysis over coming months. Local authorities are responsible for determining their waste treatment capacity needs at a local level via Waste Local Plans and need to factor national policy measures being implemented into their forward planning. A proposed plant must not result in overcapacity of EfW waste treatment at a national or local level.
Asked by: Jane Hunt (Conservative - Loughborough)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to manage the capacity of existing waste incinerators throughout the country so that over capacity does not encourage waste destruction rather than repair, reuse and recycling.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
Energy from waste should not compete with greater waste prevention, reuse or recycling. Defra is currently working to set the long-term commitments of the Resources and Waste Strategy for England (RWS) into legislation under the 2021 Environment Act through legally binding targets, including a target on waste reduction. Defra continues to engage with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities regarding planning for waste infrastructure and, as per the RWS commitment, continues to monitor England's waste infrastructure capacity and associated infrastructure requirements.
Asked by: Jane Hunt (Conservative - Loughborough)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the absence rates from education of blind and partially sighted pupils at (a) primary and (b) secondary school were in each year from 2012 to date.
Answered by Will Quince
The department publishes annual statistics on absence from school broken down by pupils’ type of special educational need (SEN). The most recent figures, for the 2020/21 academic year, are published here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/pupil-absence-in-schools-in-england.
The publication includes figures for pupils whose type of SEN is visual impairment. The figures for primary and secondary schools are available here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/34b7634d-01b2-45bb-be2e-5003ac8ea73f. For comparative purposes, ‘Total’ includes all pupils, including those who have no SEN.
The figures do not include the 2019/20 academic year, because the publication was cancelled that year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Asked by: Jane Hunt (Conservative - Loughborough)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people had gained employment through the Way to Work scheme as of 13 June 2022.
Answered by Mims Davies - Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities
As of 21 June, we estimate that at least 485,000 unemployed Universal Credit claimants and Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) claimants have moved into work during the Way to Work Campaign between 31 January and the end of 19 June 2022.
This total figure is composed of our into work measure to the end of May (over 386,000) and our internal management information up to 19 June (46,000). We are now also able to include JSA claimants who have moved into work between 31 January and 9 June 2022 (29,000) into our total. Furthermore, we have also included those claimants with a sanction in place that moved into work during the period of the campaign up to 19 June (24,000). Both these figures were not part of our previous reported totals as the data was not available. Figures are rounded to the nearest 100.
The management information presented here has not been subjected to the usual standard of quality assurance associated with official statistics but is provided in the interests of transparency and timeliness.
Asked by: Jane Hunt (Conservative - Loughborough)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to support new entrants into farming.
Answered by Victoria Prentis
Attracting new talent into food and farming is vital for a sustainable and productive agriculture sector. As set out in the Agricultural Transition Plan 2021 – 2024, this Government will provide funding to create lasting opportunities for new entrants to access land, infrastructure and support to establish successful and innovative businesses.
The new entrant scheme is being developed through a co-design process with stakeholders, including representatives of local authorities with council farm estates, new entrants, providers of innovation support, cooperative and community land organisations and private landowners.
In January 2022 the Secretary of State announced plans for pilot incubators to support new entrants to trial some of the solutions emerging from the co-design process. The details of these pilots are being worked up, with the aim to launch the pilot scheme this year.
Asked by: Jane Hunt (Conservative - Loughborough)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of requiring all new build domestic properties to be fitted with rainwater harvesting tanks.
Answered by Stuart Andrew - Opposition Chief Whip (Commons)
Following DEFRA’s consultation ‘measures to reduce personal water consumption’, Government made a commitment to develop a roadmap towards greater water efficiency in new developments and retrofits, including the exploration of revised building regulations and how the development of new technologies can contribute to meeting these standards. We will ensure that the underlying legislation can, where appropriate, accommodate any potential future expansion of rainwater harvesting, water re-use and storage options. The full written ministerial statement by the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs can be found here: https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail/2021-07-01/hcws140