Asked by: Jeevun Sandher (Labour - Loughborough)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what steps he plans to take to support the home-grown hydrogen fuel cell sector in the proposed Hydrogen strategy.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The Industrial Strategy, through the 10 Year Clean Energy Industries Sector Plan, already backs hydrogen as a frontier technology. It clarifies how Government will capitalise on the enormous growth and jobs potential. The associated Action Plan gives the green light to industry investors and the supply chain. It provides a clear deployment timeline for our hydrogen allocation rounds and announces new investment rounds and policies to turbocharge growth in the sector.
Our Hydrogen Strategy, which we intend to publish in Autumn 2025, will build on this long-term infrastructure investment to realise the value of the hydrogen economy for the UK, optimising the job creation and economic benefits that brings.
Asked by: Jeevun Sandher (Labour - Loughborough)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that home-grown hydrogen fuel cell developers are supported by the (a) Modern Industrial Strategy and (b) Clean Energy Industries sector plan.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
As part of the Modern Industrial Strategy, the Government’s Clean Energy Industries Sector Plan re-iterates our commitment to driving long-term, sustainable growth in hydrogen. It provides deployment certainty with clear timelines for future deployment and clarifies how Government will capitalise on the enormous growth and jobs potential. It includes our ambition to ensure hydrogen benefits from the comprehensive public finance institution support package for clean energy industries including a £1 billion Great British Energy supply chain fund and empowering the National Wealth Fund with £27.8 billion in capital.
Asked by: Jeevun Sandher (Labour - Loughborough)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much of the flood risk and coastal erosion risk management budget has been allocated to nature based solutions in the current financial year.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Many projects in the Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Capital Investment Programme deliver a combination of nature-based solutions (NBS) and hard defences, and we do not explicitly capture the expenditure on NBS separately. Due to this, we are unable to separate spend on NBS into each financial year.
For the years available, the total investment across the Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Capital Investment Programme from April 2021 to March 2024 was £3.5 billion, with approximately £40.6 million spent on NBS. The total forecast investment across the Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Capital Investment Programme for the current financial year, 2025/26, is £1.1 billion, with an estimated £24.8 million allocated for schemes that include NBS.
Asked by: Jeevun Sandher (Labour - Loughborough)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much and what proportion of the Flood Risk and Coastal Erosion Risk Management budget was spent on nature based solutions in the (a) 2022-23, (b) 2023-24 and (c) 2024-25 financial year.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Many projects in the Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Capital Investment Programme deliver a combination of nature-based solutions (NBS) and hard defences, and we do not explicitly capture the expenditure on NBS separately. Due to this, we are unable to separate spend on NBS into each financial year.
For the years available, the total investment across the Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Capital Investment Programme from April 2021 to March 2024 was £3.5 billion, with approximately £40.6 million spent on NBS. The total forecast investment across the Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Capital Investment Programme for the current financial year, 2025/26, is £1.1 billion, with an estimated £24.8 million allocated for schemes that include NBS.
Asked by: Jeevun Sandher (Labour - Loughborough)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when his Department plans to implement the proposed land use framework.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government ran a consultation on land use in England from January to April this year. The responses to this consultation, and feedback from supporting workshops, are being analysed. These responses and outputs will inform the preparation of the Land Use Framework, which will be published in due course.
Asked by: Jeevun Sandher (Labour - 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 land owners to implement nature based solutions to (a) drainage and (b) flood management.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Farmers and landowners have an increasingly important role to play in reducing the risk of flooding and coastal erosion, through measures such as nature-based solutions (NbS).
To support this the Government is investing in NbS measures, such as natural flood management (NFM), via its Environmental Land Management schemes and floods investment programme.
On 3 June we launched a consultation on reforming our approach to investing in flooding and coastal erosion for communities across the country. The proposals will enable a broader range of resilience interventions and will make it easier to invest in natural flood management schemes that also boost nature, water resources and fight climate change.
Asked by: Jeevun Sandher (Labour - Loughborough)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he plans to bring into force the legislative provisions of schedule 3 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 for the adoption of sustainable draining systems in England.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This Government is committed to requiring standardised Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) in new developments. These should be to designs that cope with changing climatic conditions as well as delivering wider water infrastructure benefits, reduce run off and help to improve water quality, amenity, and biodiversity. It is also important to ensure appropriate adoption and maintenance arrangements are in place.
Asked by: Jeevun Sandher (Labour - Loughborough)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of undertaking a National Mesothelioma Clinical Audit to (a) identify gaps in mesothelioma care, (b) optimise allocation of resources and (c) help tackle regional inequalities in care.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Reducing unwarranted variation in cancer care and treatment is a priority for the Government. In December 2024, my Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care committed to developing a National Cancer Plan.
The National Cancer Plan will have patients at its heart and will cover the entirety of the cancer pathway, from referral and diagnosis to treatment and ongoing care, and will apply to all cancer types, including mesothelioma. It will seek to improve every aspect of cancer care, including experiences and outcomes and addressing inequalities in care. Our goal is to reduce the number of lives lost to cancer over the next 10 years.
In October 2022, the NHS Cancer Programme commissioned the Royal College of Surgeons to deliver six new cancer clinical audits on primary breast cancer, metastatic breast cancer, ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and kidney cancer. These were in addition to four ongoings clinical audits on lung, bowel, prostate and oesophago-gastric cancer. The new audits, commissioned in 2022, released their first annual State of the Nation report in Autumn 2024, which is available at the following link:
https://www.natcan.org.uk/audits/
Asked by: Jeevun Sandher (Labour - Loughborough)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to increase the number of construction apprenticeships.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
This government has an ambitious plan for re-building Britain, delivering 1.5 million homes in England in this Parliament.
Around 5,000 more construction apprenticeship places will be made available per year by the 2027/28 financial year thanks to an £140 million industry investment to get Britain building again.
32 new Homebuilding Skills Hubs will deliver fast-track training in critical areas such as bricklaying, groundwork, and site carpentry, to boost housebuilding and drive forward the government’s growth mission.
Asked by: Jeevun Sandher (Labour - Loughborough)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he plans to expand the Flood Resilience Scheme to households which (a) have been affected outside named storms and (b) are at risk of flooding in the future.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
To ensure we protect the country from the devastating impacts of flooding, we will invest £2.4 billion in 2024/25 and 2025/26 to improve flood resilience, by building, maintaining, and repairing flood defences.
Included in this programme, the Environment Agency is working proactively with local authorities to deliver Property Flood Resilience (PFR) projects, where it is cost beneficial to do so, in areas where PFR is the best solution for reducing flood risk. The EA’s PFR programme is focused on reducing risk to those households and businesses at the highest risk.
Separately, we continue to support those who were affected by last year’s Storms Babet and Henk thought the PFR grant scheme, which can provide up to £5000 for eligible households and businesses to install PFR measures.