Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if she will make an estimate of the number of households that will be affected by the proposed change to the eligibility criteria for Winter Fuel Payments in (a) South Holland and the Deepings constituency and (b) Lincolnshire.
Answered by Emma Reynolds - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Pension Credit data that is used is based on the 2010 Westminster Parliamentary constituencies, not 2024, in order to be comparable with the Winter Fuel Payments statistics. The Pension Credit & Winter Fuel Payments statistics aren’t available for Lincolnshire. Therefore, to obtain the below figures, the Winter Fuel Payment & Pension Credit figures for the following parliamentary constituencies have been combined: Boston and Skegness, Gainsborough, Grantham and Stamford, Lincoln, Louth and Horncastle, Rutland and Melton, Sleaford and North Hykeham, and South Holland and The Deepings.
Around an estimated 15,000 and 120,000 households in South Holland and the Deepings constituency, and Lincolnshire, respectively, will be affected by the proposed change to the eligibility criteria for Winter Fuel Payments. These are based on the 22/23 Winter Fuel Payment statistics and Feb-24 Pension Credit statistics (sources shown below).
This estimation is calculated by subtracting the number of Pension Credit recipients for South Holland and the Deepings constituency, and Lincolnshire from the number of Winter Fuel Payment recipients for South Holland and the Deepings constituency, and Lincolnshire. This is essentially the number of Winter Fuel Payment recipients pre-policy change not claiming Pension Credit, as an estimate of those who will no longer receive Winter Fuel Payment.
Also, the above figures do not take into account any potential increase in Pension Credit take-up we might see as a result of the Government’s Pension Credit Awareness Campaign. We do not have data on those additional Pension Credit claims by Parliamentary constituencies or local authorities.
Furthermore, Pension Credit claimants are the majority of those that will be eligible for Winter Fuel Payments, not all. There are other pensioners who are eligible for Winter Fuel Payments (as they claim other means tested benefits) but they are not considered in these figures as it is not possible to do so.
Source:
The Winter Fuel Payments statistics are published here:
Winter Fuel Payment statistics for winter 2022 to 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Pension Credit data is published here: Pension Credit – Data from May 2018
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether she has had recent discussions with the Victims' Commissioner on the potential impact on victims of her Department's scheme to temporarily reduce the proportion of some custodial sentences served in prison from 50% to 40%.
Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Ministers and officials regularly meet with the Victims’ Commissioner. I can confirm recent meetings have included discussions about the impact on victims of the prison capacity measures announced on 12 July, and the processes in place to ensure that victims have access to information and support they may need.
Victims who are eligible for and have opted into either the Probation Service’s Victim Contact Scheme or Victim Notification Scheme are provided with updates about an offender that perpetrated crimes against them, including when these offenders are due to be released from custody. This includes providing these victims with the opportunity to make representations as to the licence conditions that they would like to be in place on an offender’s release such as an exclusion zone.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the real-term funding per pupil in (a) primary and (b) secondary schools in South Holland and the Deepings constituency was in each financial year since 2010.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
Local authorities receive their core funding for schools through the dedicated schools grant (DSG). Local authorities are then responsible for designing a local formula, within certain parameters, to distribute the funding that they receive from the department to schools in their area. This local formula is used to determine funding for both the maintained schools and academies in each area.
As the DSG is allocated at local authority level, DSG allocations are not available broken down to the level of individual constituencies. The individual allocations that schools within South Holland and The Deepings constituency receive are determined, each year, by the local funding formula set by Lincolnshire local authority.
The table below provides the cash per pupil funding levels from 2018/19 to 2024/25 for Lincolnshire local authority. The department cannot provide comparable funding data back to 2010, due to the changes in the funding system since that time. In particular, funding for schools was only identified separately from funding for high needs or early years in 2013, and funding for central school services provided by local authorities was split out from the schools block funding in 2018/2019.
The figures below represent the core funding schools receive through the schools block of the DSG. All the figures in the table exclude growth and premises funding. They also do not include additional funding that schools have received for pay and pensions or other funding streams such as the pupil premium.
DSG Schools Block Per Pupil Funding: Lincolnshire Local Authority | ||
Year | Primary per pupil funding | Secondary per pupil funding |
2018/19 | £3,811 | £4,933 |
2019/20 | £3,914 | £5,069 |
2020/21 | £4,184 | £5,279 |
2021/22 | £4,570 | £5,724 |
2022/23 | £4,735 | £5,899 |
2023/24 | £4,993 | £6,216 |
2024/25 | £5,278 | £6,552 |
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, whether Mission Delivery Boards have met since 5 July 2024.
Answered by Ellie Reeves - Minister without Portfolio (Cabinet Office)
All Mission Boards have met since 5 July 2024.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many people in South Holland and the Deepings constituency claimed pension credit in the 2023-24 financial year.
Answered by Emma Reynolds - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
Caseload statistics are routinely published and made publicly available via DWP Stat-xplore. At February 2024, there were 2,340 people claiming Pension Credit in South Holland and the Deepings constituency (2010 Boundries).
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
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 reduce accident and emergency waiting times at Peterborough City Hospital.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government has committed to supporting the National Health Service to improve performance and achieve the standards set out in the NHS Constitution, which includes that 95% of patients attending accident and emergency are admitted, transferred, or discharged within four hours.
As a first step, my Rt hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care appointed the Professor Lord Darzi to lead an independent investigation of NHS performance. The investigation’s findings were published on 12 September 2024, and will feed into the Government’s work on a 10-year plan to radically reform the NHS and build a health service that is fit for the future.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
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 reduce accident and emergency waiting times at Pilgrim Hospital in Boston.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government has committed to supporting the National Health Service to improve performance and achieve the standards set out in the NHS Constitution, which includes that 95% of patients attending accident and emergency are admitted, transferred, or discharged within four hours.
As a first step, my Rt hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care appointed the Professor Lord Darzi to lead an independent investigation of NHS performance. The investigation’s findings were published on 12 September 2024, and will feed into the Government’s work on a 10-year plan to radically reform the NHS and build a health service that is fit for the future.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether her Department informs victims when perpetrators of crimes against them are due to be released under her Department's scheme to temporarily reduce the proportion of some custodial sentences served in prison from 50% to 40%.
Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
Ministers and officials regularly meet with the Victims’ Commissioner. I can confirm recent meetings have included discussions about the impact on victims of the prison capacity measures announced on 12 July, and the processes in place to ensure that victims have access to information and support they may need.
Victims who are eligible for and have opted into either the Probation Service’s Victim Contact Scheme or Victim Notification Scheme are provided with updates about an offender that perpetrated crimes against them, including when these offenders are due to be released from custody. This includes providing these victims with the opportunity to make representations as to the licence conditions that they would like to be in place on an offender’s release such as an exclusion zone.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many vacant state secondary school places there were in (a) Lincolnshire County Council and (b) South Holland and The Deepings constituency on 6 September 2024.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
The department does not hold data on places vacant on 6 September 2024.
Information on unfilled state secondary school places, as at May 2023, is published in the School Capacity statistics publication here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-capacity.
For ease, local authority level information within the publication for Lincolnshire local authority can be accessed here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-tables/permalink/62411dcf-5a26-4262-e175-08dccd7b577b.
School level information is available here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/data-catalogue/data-set/5f26c269-bf72-41ab-8292-e17b58ed7c98. This information can be aggregated to borough and parliamentary constituency level by linking to here: https://get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/.
In summary, for South Holland and The Deepings parliamentary constituency, there were 605 unfilled secondary school places (8%) in May 2023.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, whether minutes from mission delivery boards will be made publicly available.
Answered by Ellie Reeves - Minister without Portfolio (Cabinet Office)
It is a long-established precedent that information about the discussions that have taken place in Cabinet and its committees - including mission boards - is not normally shared publicly.