Jim Dickson

The National Security and Investment (NSI) Act 2021 does not define "critical national infrastructure".

My Department has not carried out an assessment of the impact of delays at the Dartford Crossing on local businesses. However, area teams in my Department engage closely with local stakeholders, including businesses, to support delivery of their economic plans.

As set out in the Government’s response to the consultation on the statutory levy, the levy will for the first time provide dedicated, statutory investment for prevention activity in the gambling space. This could include a range of projects and services to increase awareness of risks and prioritising early intervention measures. To guarantee sufficient accountability and transparency within the new system, including the use of funding allocated for prevention alongside research and treatment, we will establish appropriate governance arrangements consisting of a Levy Board for the UK, Scottish and Welsh governments to monitor the health and impact of the levy system, and an Advisory Group to provide informal advice to lead commissioning bodies regarding strategic and funding priorities. The UK government will also formally review the statutory levy system within five years with the first formal review expected by 2030.

The schools national funding formula (NFF) distributes core funding for 5 to 16-year-old pupils in mainstream state-funded schools in England.

The vast majority of funding is allocated based on pupil numbers and characteristics. This means that, where pupil numbers are increasing, local authorities and schools will see a commensurate increase in school funding the following year.

In addition to funding through the pupil-led factors in the NFF, the department also allocates growth funding to local authorities. Local authorities can use this funding to support schools experiencing significant growth in pupil numbers, until the lagged funding system catches up.

The Department has had a number of meetings with Kent County Council (KCC) on this matter and I visited the road in question in September. The Department is waiting for KCC to submit an analysis of the costs and benefits of different options to inform a decision on any Government support.

Following any major incident National Highways carry out a full debrief to ensure any lessons are learnt to improve future incident management. National Highways is committed to implementing improvements based on their findings to ensure effective management of traffic during both planned and unplanned disruptions.

National Highways has not conducted a specific assessment regarding the impact of recent traffic disruptions on the local economy in the Dartford constituency. National Highways is responsible for the operation of the strategic road network and monitoring and improving performance indicators related to delay, journey time reliability, and incident clearance, which are reported publicly.

The A226 Galley Hill Road is a local road for which Kent County Council, as local highway authority, has responsibility. The Department for Transport has had regular discussions with Kent County Council to help understand the issue and is currently waiting for them to complete a detailed options analysis.

NHS England is responsible for delivering the NHS Cervical Screening Programme, and works to ensure that core public information on screening is easily accessible and understandable to the public. NHS England regularly reviews key public information across National Health Service screening programmes.

NHS England has advised that they are currently updating the Cervical screening: helping you decide leaflet, and that the draft update already addresses the concerns raised, making it clear that cervical screening does not screen for other cancers of the reproductive system. The final updated version is expected to be published in early 2025, and the current leaflet is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cervical-screening-description-in-brief/cervical-screening-helping-you-decide--2

We have taken tough decisions to fix the foundations in the public finances at the Autumn Budget, and this enabled the Spending Review settlement of a £22.6 billion increase in resource spending for the Department from 2023/24 outturn to 2025/26.

NHS Kent and Medway will in turn receive a share of this additional funding. NHS England is responsible for funding allocations to integrated care boards. This process is independent of the Government, and NHS England takes advice on the underlying formulae used to help determine allocations from the independent Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation.

The formulae are based on independent academic research and include factors statistically associated with higher or lower need per head for National Health Services. The formulae produce a target allocation, or ‘fair share’ for each area, based on a complex assessment of factors such as demography, morbidity, deprivation, and the unavoidable cost of providing services in different areas.

The Government plans to tackle the challenges for patients trying to access National Health Service dental care with a rescue plan to provide 700,000 more urgent dental appointments and recruit new dentists to the areas that need them most. To rebuild dentistry in the long term and increase access to NHS dental care, we will reform the dental contract, with a shift to focus on prevention and the retention of NHS dentists.

The responsibility for commissioning primary care services, including NHS dentistry, to meet the needs of the local population has been delegated to integrated care boards (ICBs) across England. For the Dartford constituency, this is the NHS Kent and Medway ICB.

The data regarding cancelled and missed appointments at Darent Valley Hospital on 21 October 2024 is not currently available to the Department.

Data on the number of people hospitalised or admitted is not recorded. Finished Admission Episodes (FAE) are recorded, although these are not substitutions for counts of people, as the same person may have been admitted to hospital on more than one occasion within any given time period.

The following table shows a count of FAEs where there was a primary diagnosis of all respiratory conditions, for patients aged 70 years old or over, at Darent Valley Hospital for the period 2014/15 to 2023/24:

The following table shows a count of FAEs where there was a primary diagnosis of asthma, for patients aged zero to 17 years old, at Darent Valley Hospital for the period 2014/15 to 2023/24:

The following table shows a count of FAEs where there was a primary diagnosis of all respiratory conditions, for patients aged less than one years old, at Darent Valley Hospital for the period 2014/15 to 2023/24:

Dialogue is critical to achieving a peaceful resolution to the conflict in the North-West and South-West regions of Cameroon. The UK Government is committed to supporting efforts which will bring a peaceful solution through inclusive dialogue but we believe it is important that these efforts are owned and led by Cameroonians. We are also aware of the impact of the conflict on the regions' civilian populations, and urge that all perpetrators are held to account for violence against civilian communities.

The Home Secretary has already announced that central government funding for policing will increase by over half a billion pounds in 2025-26; this includes an increase of over £260m in the core grant for police forces, additional funding for neighbourhood policing, and for the NCA and counter terrorism.

Force level funding allocations for the financial year 2025-26 will be confirmed at the forthcoming police funding settlement. Funding for future years beyond 2025-26 will be set out in phase 2 of the Spending Review.

This Government is committed to resetting the relationship between local and regional government to establish partnerships built on mutual respect, genuine collaboration and meaningful engagement. We are keen to work with any local authorities facing challenges to support recovery and reform.

As part of the sector support programme the ministry funds the Local Government Association (LGA) to deliver a Corporate Peer Challenge (CPC) review programme. Local authorities are subject to scrutiny from a number of government bodies, including inspectorates and ombudsmen. External audit is also important, which is why, on 30 July, the Government announced measures to tackle the local audit backlog we inherited. We will also update the House in the autumn on longer-term plans to fix the local audit system.

It is important that Government can act where local authorities may need more intensive support or intervention in order to meet their Best Value Duty. The Secretary of State has a set of tools and statutory powers, detailed in the statutory guidance ‘Best value standards and intervention’. This includes a statutory power to commission inspections of local authorities in relation to their compliance with the Best Value Duty. Decisions about statutory inspections are taken based on the circumstances of each case following an evidence based assessment.

Public access to council meetings is an essential part of ensuring accountability and transparency at the local level. Except where specific exemptions apply, the Local Government Act 1972 is clear that all council meetings are open to the public.

Under the current rules it is for individual local authorities to agree and determine the provisions for remote public access to local authority meetings through their standing orders.

Many councils already broadcast their meetings online, which the public can attend, and meeting agendas and papers are routinely shared in advance of meetings on council websites.

On 30 July we opened an eight week consultation on a revised National Planning Policy Framework.

As well as reversing the damaging anti-supply changes made by the previous government in December 2023, proposed reforms include making housing targets mandatory, strengthening policy support for brownfield development, and the targeted release of low-quality grey belt land within the green belt.

The consultation will run until Tuesday 24 September.