Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether she will consider extending the proposed alignment of the personal allowance for pensioners with the new State Pension rate.

Answered by Torsten Bell - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)

As announced at the Budget, the government will ease the administrative burden for pensioners whose sole income is the basic or new State Pension without any increments so that they do not have to pay small amounts of tax via Simple Assessment from 2027-28.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the implications for his Department’s policies of the reports by the UK Covid-19 Inquiry.

Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Government welcomes the inquiry’s investigations, including the recent Module 2 report. The Government thanks Baroness Hallett and her team for their thorough work on these serious issues. We will consider the findings and recommendations in detail and respond in due course. The Government remains committed to learning the lessons needed from the COVID-19 Inquiry to protect and prepare us for the future.

The Government will also provide regular progress updates on commitments made following reports. The first progress update, on the Inquiry’s Module 1 report on resilience and preparedness, was published 8 July 2025, and is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-government-response-to-the-covid-19-inquiry-module-1-report/uk-government-uk-covid-19-inquiry-response-module-1-implementation-update

It included an update on the Department’s commitments, such as the intention to publish a health and care pandemic preparedness strategy. The next update is scheduled for January 2026.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that the findings and recommendations of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry are incorporated into future pandemic planning and preparedness exercises.

Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

Ensuring the United Kingdom is prepared for a future pandemic is a top priority for the Government, and we are embedding lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic within our pandemic preparedness. We aim to have flexible, adaptable, and scalable capabilities that can respond to any infectious disease or other threat, along all routes of transmission, rather than relying on plans for specific threats.

The Government is committed to learning the lessons from the United Kingdom COVID-19 Inquiry to protect and prepare us for the future. On 16 January 2025, the Government published its response to the inquiry’s module one report on resilience and preparedness. The Department has committed, as part of this response, to publishing a new pandemic preparedness strategy that will show how we are embedding our new approach to pandemic preparedness. The response is published online and is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-government-response-to-the-covid-19-inquiry-module-1-report/uk-government-response-to-the-covid-19-inquiry-module-1-report-html

In Autumn 2025, the Department and the UK Health Security Agency conducted Exercise PEGASUS, a national exercise on the UK’s preparedness for a pandemic, which concluded live participation on 5 November. It aimed to test our ability to respond to a pandemic, involving all regions and nations of the UK, as well as thousands of participants. The exercise has provided valuable experience which is being used to inform our strategy and planning.

Exercises like this are an essential and valuable tool to test our preparedness, capabilities, and response arrangements in the context of a pandemic. Future domestic and international exercises to test our preparedness and defences to biological threats, including pandemics, should factor in findings and lessons from a variety of sources to inform their design. This was an important part of the design of Exercise PEGASUS, the tier one pandemic preparedness exercise, where a variety of lessons, including from previous pandemic exercises such as Exercise CYGNUS, as well as recommendations from the COVID-19 Inquiry, were factored into the exercise’s design and planning.

Found: Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) Jesse Norman (Conservative; Hereford and South Herefordshire) Jo Platt

Found: Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) Jesse Norman (Conservative; Hereford and South Herefordshire) Jo Platt

Found: Jo Platt: You have mentioned the postcode lottery of expectations.

Found: Q50 Jo Platt: You have mentioned the postcode lottery of expectations.

Found: Jo Platt: You have mentioned the postcode lottery of expectations.

Found: Q50 Jo Platt: You have mentioned the postcode lottery of expectations.