Jeremy Hunt

The Department has continued to deepen its collaboration with Anthropic as part of its broader strategy to strengthen the UK’s sovereign AI capabilities. This partnership forms part of the Government’s commitment to ensuring the UK is an AI maker, not just a taker. Through the Sovereign AI Unit, DSIT is working with Anthropic and other frontier AI companies to shape the development of strategically important capabilities, leveraging the UK’s strengths in talent, data and investment to secure economic and technological advantage.

Through the Shared Rural Network, we are continuing to deliver 4G connectivity where there is limited or no coverage.

Beyond this, our ambition is for all populated areas, including rural communities, to have higher quality standalone 5G by 2030.

We are working with Ofcom and the industry to ensure we have the right policy and regulatory framework to support investment and competition in the market, including more accurate coverage reporting.

This government has a driving mission to break down barriers to opportunity, which starts by ensuring every child has the best start in life. It is our ambition for all families to have access to high quality, affordable and flexible early education and care, improving life chances for children and work choices for parents.

The government is committed to delivering a modern childcare system from the end of parental leave to the end of primary school, providing every child with a firm foundation which sets them up for life and ensures parents are able to work the jobs and hours they choose, breaking down the barriers to opportunity for every family.

From September 2024, eligible working parents of children aged nine months and above have been able to access 15 hours of government funded childcare per week (over 38 weeks a year), and from September 2025 working parents will be able to access 30 hours per week (over 38 weeks a year) for children from aged nine months to when they start school.

As announced at the Autumn Budget 2024, we expect to provide over £8 billion for the early years entitlements in 2025/26, which is around a 30% increase compared to 2024/25, as we continue to deliver the expansion to eligible working parents of children aged from nine months.

The new government is improving access to high quality childcare and early education and will be allocating funding for the first phase of new or expanded school-based nurseries, with 300 ready for September 2025.

To support working families with primary-school-aged children, the National Wraparound Childcare programme is improving the availability of before and after school childcare to ensure that parents have the flexibility they need to care for their children, delivering 200,000 additional childcare places. The government is going further to deliver universal free breakfast clubs in every primary school starting with 750 early adopter schools from April 2025, to ensure children are set-up for the day and ready to learn, whilst supporting parents to have greater work choices.

In addition to the entitlements, parents may also be eligible for childcare support through Tax-Free Childcare or Universal Credit Childcare. Parents can check what childcare support they are entitled to via the Childcare Choices website, which can be accessed here: https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk.

The feasibility work for Ash Vale station is underway and we expect all 50 of the feasibility studies announced last year to be complete in the spring. We expect to be able to confirm which stations will move forward over the summer. The Access for All programme continues to be heavily oversubscribed.

We remain committed to improving the accessibility of the railway and recognise the valuable social and economic benefits this brings to communities.

The Government is carefully considering the valuable work done by the Patient Safety Commissioner and the resulting Hughes Report, which set out options for redress for those harmed by valproate and pelvic mesh. This is a complex area of work, involving several Government departments, and it is important that we get this right. We will be providing an update to the Patient Safety Commissioner’s report at the earliest opportunity.

The Patient Safety Commissioner was not asked to look at redress for hormone pregnancy tests as part of her recent report. The causal link between the use of hormone pregnancy tests during pregnancy and adverse outcomes in pregnancy has not been demonstrated. However, we are committed to reviewing any new scientific evidence that comes to light.

We remain hugely sympathetic to the families who believe that they or their children have suffered following the use of hormone pregnancy tests.

The Government is supportive of the review it inherited into the effectiveness and implementation of the statutory duty of candour for health and social care providers.

We are clear that the duty needs to act as a catalyst for providers to improve openness and commit to a learning culture. The aim of the review is to examine how all providers and their leaders can act upon that duty consistently and effectively.

We are using the findings of our consultation on manager regulation, which closed on 18 February 2025, to help inform the final response to the review on the statutory duty of candour. The Government is preparing its consultation response, and we intend to publish the final duty of candour review report once the consultation response has been published.

NHS England commissions Kings College London and its partners to analyse data from the publication, Learning from Lives and Deaths: People with a Learning Disability and Autistic People. The annual report is published by Kings College London, which is currently working on the next annual report and NHS England advises it will publish this shortly. The last report was published in November 2023 and is available at the following link:

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/ioppn/assets/fans-dept/leder-2022-v2.0.pdf

This information is not collected centrally. All National Health Service trusts, apart from NHS ambulance trusts, are required to meet the reporting requirements in The National Health Service (Quality Accounts) (Amendment) Regulations 2017 relating to national learning from deaths policy. These reporting requirements are set out in the National Guidance on Learning from Deaths, published in March 2017. The guidance is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/nqb-national-guidance-learning-from-deaths.pdf

The reporting requirements on learning from deaths for NHS ambulance trusts are set out in National Guidance for Ambulance Trusts on Learning from Deaths, published in July 2019, and are available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/learning-from-deaths-guidance-for-ambulance-trusts.pdf

Under the NHS Standard Contract, trusts are required to comply with national guidance on learning from deaths where applicable.

The National Maternity Safety Ambition was launched in 2015 and will end in 2025. As part of our consultation on the 10-year health plan, we will first consider the best ways to improve maternity safety so that the NHS has the tools it needs to deliver improved safety outcomes for women and their babies and to meet any associated targets.

The UK’s tariff schedule, known as the UK Global Tariff (UKGT), adheres to global classification standards. Those classify mastectomy bras under a commodity code that covers a range of other textiles.

We continue to monitor the UKGT to ensure our Most Favoured Nation tariff schedule functions as effectively as possible, supports domestic priorities, and provides a stable operating environment for businesses.

Businesses are able to request the partial or full liberalisation of the import duty applied to the products under this commodity code, including mastectomy bras, either through the online feedback form or the next business suspensions window.

We recognise the Ukrainian government’s desire for the future return of its citizens to Ukraine to assist in the rebuilding of that country. It is important our approach respects these wishes.

This is why the temporary Ukraine Schemes do not lead to settlement in the UK.

We will, of course, continue to keep the Ukraine schemes under review in line with developments in Ukraine.

There are other routes available for those who wish to settle in the UK permanently, if they meet the requirements.

This year the UK will give more military support to Ukraine than ever before, with a £4.5 billion boost.

At the 27^th Ukraine Defence Contact Group meeting, we announced a rapid surge in support, valued at around £450 million. This follows the £2.26 billion loan agreement with Ukraine earmarked for military spending.

We are absolutely committed to securing a just and lasting peace in Ukraine.

As set out in previous replies to the Rt Hon Member on this subject, my Department is continuing to review the issues highlighted in the correspondence shared as part of the government’s commitment to strength the existing system of developer contributions.

I would be more than happy to meet with the Rt Hon Member and my office has contacted his with a view to finding a mutually convenient date and time.