Jonathan Davies

Details of Ministers' and Permanent Secretaries' meetings with external individuals and organisations are published quarterly in arrears on GOV.UK.

The impacts, including visual, of energy infrastructure projects on the landscape are important considerations in decision-making, and the National Policy Statements (NPS) for energy set stringent requirements and standards on developers. Proposals for projects that are subject to the Infrastructure Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2017 must be accompanied by an Environmental Statement describing the aspects of the environment, including landscape and visual impacts, likely to be significantly affected. The NPSs also set the criteria for good design for energy infrastructure, including consideration of visual appearance and how it relates to the landscape it sits within.

Officials continue to engage with the British Hydropower Association regarding the future role the UK’s remaining small-scale hydropower resource, including sites of historic watermills, can play in the UK energy system.

The Smart Export Guarantee came into force on 1 January 2020 and requires major electricity suppliers to offer a tariff to buy electricity exported by small low-carbon generators, including small hydro.

This Government is committed to making sure that cultural venues up and down this country are supported to reach their full potential.

That is why the Secretary of State announced a new £270 million Arts Everywhere Fund on the 20th February, to support museums, arts venues, libraries, and heritage sites nationwide. This major investment will create jobs, boost local economies, and expand access to arts and culture for communities.

As part of this package, £45 million will be going to local and civic museums through the Museum Renewal Fund and Museum Estate and Development Fund to help tackle urgent infrastructure issues, preserve community programmes and protect these treasured institutions for generations to come. This is a major step being taken by this Government to support regional museums.

The large, diverse collections held by civic museums serve as a rich source of creativity and inspiration, fuelling our Creative Industries ecology and inspiring the creatives of tomorrow. Museum and industry partnerships can be hugely beneficial. To give a local example, Derby’s Museum of Making has a well-established partnership with Rolls Royce, supporting its ‘Institute of Steam’ learning programme, aiming to equip young people with crucial design, technology and engineering skills.

The Secretary of State announced a new £270 million Arts Everywhere Fund on 20 February. This will include support to museums, arts and music venues across the country and is a critical step that this Government is taking to help create jobs, boost local economies, and expand access to arts and culture for communities.

This is in addition to steps already being taken to support arts and culture via the Arts Council England (ACE). In the East Midlands, ACE is providing regular National Portfolio funding to 72 organisations from 2023-2027. This includes more than £8.7 million to nine museum services including Derby Museums and Creswell Crags. £4.8 million has been awarded to eight music organisations including Derby based Baby People and Sinfonia Viva (the orchestra of the East Midlands).

Across the East Midlands, since 2021, ACE has also awarded £37.5 million to music organisations and projects via the Grassroots Music Fund, and £7.5 million to regional museum projects via the Museum Estate and Development Fund.

In the Mid Derbyshire constituency, ACE has supported eight individual artists since 2021 through its Developing your Creative Practice grants, providing a total of £73,111 of funding across visual arts and music. ACE has also made six awards across combined arts, literature, theatre and museums in the constituency through National Lottery Grants, totalling more than £272,000.

The Government has set out its ambition for the United Kingdom to welcome 50 million international visitors per year by 2030, as part of its plans for the country to remain one of the most visited worldwide, driving economic growth. The new Visitor Economy Advisory Council has been appointed to identify ways to drive economic growth and remove barriers to opportunities in DCMS sectors.

Many tourists cite our vibrant culture and heritage offer as one of their main motivators for visiting the UK. We are providing additional support to our national museums and galleries with a 5% uplift to their budgets, along with £120m for critical estates maintenance in 2025/26, to help our most visited sites across the country to continue to be open to the world.

Our historical and creative heritage are crucial in driving tourism to all parts of the country; alongside continued Arts Council England and Local Authority investment, we are also supporting our regional museums via the new £20 million Museum Renewal Fund, and a new £25m round of the Museum Estate and Development Fund.

Tackling child poverty is at the heart of breaking down barriers to opportunity and improving the life chances for every child. For too many children, living in poverty robs them of the opportunity to learn and to prosper.

A new Ministerial Taskforce, led by my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education has begun work on a child poverty strategy.

This taskforce will harness all available levers to drive forward short-term and long-term actions across government to reduce child poverty, with a child poverty strategy published later this spring. Additional information regarding this strategy is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/tackling-child-poverty-developing-our-strategy/tackling-child-poverty-developing-our-strategy-html.

It is important that all children can attend school in a clean, affordable uniform. School leaders are well placed to manage uniform standards, including hygiene.

The National Behaviour Survey (NBS), delivered through the department’s omnibus panel surveys, is the department’s vehicle to gather evidence on pupil behaviour and to understand how it potentially impacts on learning.

The behaviour survey questions allow the department to build up a national picture over time and act as a signpost to what schools need. In May 2024, teachers reported that for every 30 minutes of lesson time, 7 minutes were lost due to misbehaviour.

The department will continue to use data from the NBS to inform future strategy and policy improvements on behaviour.

High and rising school standards, with excellent foundations in reading, writing and mathematics, are at the heart of the government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity and give every child the best start in life.

In recognition of this, the department has implemented a range of measures to support reading for pleasure. The English Hubs programme supports the teaching of phonics, early language development and reading for pleasure, with a further £23 million committed for the 2024/25 academic year to support this work. Furthermore, the government’s reading framework provides guidance on improving the teaching of reading, to ensure that every child is not only able to read proficiently but also develops a genuine love of reading.

On 5 February, the government announced a £2 million investment to drive high and rising standards in reading and writing. Building on the success of phonics, teachers will receive additional training to help children progress from the early stages of phonics in reception and year 1 through to reading fluently by the time they leave primary school. This will be delivered through the English Hubs programme. In secondary school, teachers will be offered new training and resources this year to help them support readers at all levels, and next year the department will commission further training that will be focused specifically on struggling readers in secondary school who are at risk of falling behind. The department will also publish a writing framework in the summer, which will be a first step to support schools in delivering high quality writing provision across England.

The government has also established an independent Curriculum and Assessment Review, which will look closely at the key challenges to attainment for young people, in line with the government’s ambition for a curriculum that delivers excellent foundations in reading, writing and mathematics.

Headteachers have autonomy to decide how best to spend the core schools funding that the department allocates. This school funding can be used to fund books, librarians, school libraries and book corners. In Autumn Budget 2024 an additional £2.3 billion was announced for schools for the 2025/26 financial year, compared to 2024/25, bringing the total core schools budget to almost £63.9 billion in 2025/26. Public libraries complement school libraries in giving pupils access to a range of books and other kinds of texts, both in and out of school.

The independent Curriculum and Assessment Review will support the innovation and professionalism of teachers, enabling them to adapt how they teach the curriculum to their students’ lives.

The Review Group will publish an interim report in early spring setting out its interim findings and confirming the key areas for further work, and publish its final report with recommendations this autumn.

The department respects the autonomy of teachers in terms of what resources they choose to use or recommend to their individual pupils, based on individual need in their own educational context and circumstances.

Trail Hunting is a devolved matter with regard to Scotland and Northern Ireland; hunting with dogs is a reserved matter with respect to Wales and therefore, the information provided relates to England and Wales only.

The Government made a manifesto commitment to ban Trail Hunting as part of a set of measures to improve animal welfare. Work to determine the best approach for doing so is ongoing. Announcements will be made in due course.

The Government also committed to a hunting trophy import ban in its manifesto and we intend to deliver on this. We are currently engaging with relevant stakeholders to ensure that we can deliver on this commitment in the most effective way.

This is a devolved matter with regard to Scotland and Northern Ireland; hunting with dogs is a reserved matter with respect to Wales and therefore, the information provided relates to England and Wales only.

The Government made a manifesto commitment to ban Trail Hunting as part of a set of measures to improve animal welfare. Work to determine the best approach for doing so is ongoing. Details on the implementation and enforcement of the policy are part of this policy development. Announcements will be made in due course.

As part of the Government’s New Deal for Farmers, it was announced that, where possible, we will back British produce, including that grown in Derbyshire. Over the next year, for the first time ever, the Government will review food currently bought in the public sector and where it is bought from. This work will start right away and be a significant first step in understanding how to capitalise on the Government’s purchasing power: informing any changes to public sector food procurement policies in due course.

Our biosecurity is paramount – it underpins safe food; protects human, animal and plant health; and supports a prospering economy and trade. We have in place robust measures to maintain and improve our ability to understand, detect, prevent, respond and recover from outbreaks, both those that affect animals and those that affect plants.

The government has announced it will set up a new National Biosecurity Centre, which will strengthen the UK's defences against animal diseases that threaten farming, food security, trade and public health.

As the Chancellor announced in the Autumn 2024 budget, there is £208 million in funding over 2024-2026 to transform the Animal & Plant Health Agency (APHA) animal health facility at Weybridge.

Defra is playing its part in responding to the recommendations of Module 1 of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry. We have been reviewing our plans and processes within the department which will be tested through the upcoming national pandemic response exercise.

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) aims to make a licensing decision within 90 working days in 90% of cases where a medical condition(s) must be investigated before a licence can be issued. During this financial year the average time to make a licensing decision in such cases is 44 working days.

The DVLA’s online services are the quickest way to apply for a driving licence and drivers with diabetes, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, visual impairments, sleep conditions, or heart conditions can apply online. However, the DVLA is very often reliant on receiving information from third parties, including doctors, other healthcare professionals or the applicant themselves, before a decision can be made on whether to issue a driving licence. To help with this, the DVLA has introduced a simplified licence renewal process for drivers with glaucoma and some mental health conditions. This has significantly reduced the need for the DVLA to seek further information from medical professionals and enabled more licensing decisions to be made based on the information provided by the driver. The DVLA will consider including more medical conditions in this simplified process, as well as adding more medical conditions to its online channels.

There is no target timeframe for completing investigations into estates of deceased individuals, some cases are more complex than others and take time to conclude. The Recovery from Estates (RFE) team within Debt Management contacts executors to provide historic financial information in order to carry out posthumous reviews of benefit entitlement. This often takes time to progress, which can extend the customer journey.

There has been an increase in the number of DWP RFE cases which has impacted on the length of time to respond to customers. More staff have been trained to deal with the increase in cases and delays to customer responses are being reduced. We are also reviewing our current processes to identify any further improvements to continue to reduce the time to process RFE cases.

I refer the honourable member to the answer given on 5 December 2024 to question UIN 16635.

The Department funded the Cancer 2.0 initiative in 2021, delivered by Genomics England in close partnership with NHS England. The three-year programme demonstrated that nanopore sequencing-based brain tumour classification demonstrates significant promise for the National Genomic Test Directory. Full validation is required before full clinical implementation can be considered.

Other genomic testing for brain cancer is already included in the National Genomic Test Directory. This testing can be delivered using a range of technologies, including whole genome sequencing (WGS) or Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technology, namely large cancer gene panels, to ensure that a patient receives the most appropriate genomic testing depending on their individual circumstances.

To date no application has been made to NHS England to evaluate nanopore sequencing-based brain tumour methylome classification. If an application were received, NHS England would assess the evidence in line with the Test Directory policy.

The Government is committed to improving the lives of those living with rare diseases, such as cauda equina syndrome. The UK Rare Diseases Framework sets out four priorities collaboratively developed with the rare disease community: these include improving access to specialist care, treatments, and drugs.  We remain committed to delivering under the Framework and published the annual England action plan in February 2025.

The Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) programme is a national NHS England programme designed to improve the treatment and care of patients through in-depth review of services, benchmarking, and presenting a data-driven evidence base to support change.

GIRFT has worked collaboratively with a multidisciplinary group of more than 60 health professionals to develop an interactive pathway for those patients with suspected cauda equina syndrome, designed to support clinical teams to diagnose and treat the condition without delay and improve patient outcomes. The pathway offers best practice along all stages of the patient pathway, including post-operative care and best practice for surgical techniques, pain control and other post-operative support, which includes a section on finances. More information is available at the following link:

https://girft-interactivepathways.org.uk/cauda-equina-1/

The Government recognises the importance of effective communication between general practice (GP) surgeries and pharmacies, to ensure safe and coordinated patient care. Over recent years, several digital initiatives have been introduced to reduce the reliance on fax and paper, and to enhance this communication, including NHSmail, the Electronic Prescription Service, and the Summary Care Record. These systems allow pharmacists to access patient information and support prescription processing.

GP Connect is a national service introduced in 2018, and further strengthened in the 2025/26 GP Contract, that allows authorised health and social care workers in a variety of care settings to access their patients' GP records. The aim of GP Connect is to support better, more joined-up clinical care by opening up information and data held within GP IT systems, so that registered community pharmacists can view and update records. This initiative supports the Pharmacy First service, which empowers pharmacists to offer a full consultation and provide treatment for seven common health conditions.

The Community Pharmacy Information Standard informed the plan to recover access to primary care published in May 2023. This set out a range of actions to improve communication between GP surgeries and community pharmacies, harnessing digital technology to streamline referrals, increase access to clinical information to support patient care and update the patient record in an efficient and timely way. The Government remains committed to strengthening primary care integration and to fixing the front door of the National Health Service.

Prescription Prepayment Certificates (PPCs) are issued by the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) on behalf of the Department. The following table shows the number of three and 12 month PPCs issued in England over the last five years, as well as the current financial year up to 27 February 2025:

It has not been possible to collate data for the Mid Derbyshire area alone, as this would require the NHSBSA to hold postcodes for all addresses in this area, which it does not have. However, the following table shows the number of PPCs issued in the NHS Derby and Derbyshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) over the last five years, as well as the current financial year up to 27 February 2025:

In addition, the following two tables show the number of hormone replacement therapy PPCs issued since its launch, in England and the NHS Derby and Derbyshire ICB, respectively, for the financial year 2023/24 and the current financial year up to 27 February 2025:

Intellectual property rights in the United Kingdom are not condition specific. The Government considers the UK’s current patent system to strike the right balance between incentivising research and innovation and supporting access to medicines for the National Health Service.

The new Government inherited a crisis in recruitment and has made it a priority to address this with a series of work streams designed to improve Armed Forces recruitment, modernising and refining our policies and processes to attract the best possible talent. Our actions are designed to deliver the widest positive impact across our Armed Forces, but we also pursue activities aimed at the specific requirements of the single Services to maximise effect.

To provide the widest benefit across the Armed Forces, we have delivered a 35 per cent pay increase for new recruits; one of the largest pay increases in the last 20 years for existing personnel; scrapped over 100 outdated medical policies; introduced a new military direct-entry cyber pathway which is now recruiting; and set an ambition to make a conditional offer of employment to candidates within 10 days, and a provisional training start date within 30 days.

Furthermore, we have announced the award of the contract for the new tri-service Armed Forces Recruiting Service (AFRS) which will join the recruitment activity of the Services together. AFRS will provide a streamlined, single-entry point for prospective recruits, recruiting from the broadest spectrum of society to attract the best talent from across the country.

Midlands Engine have undertaken a range of valuable work and have supported collaboration on shared growth opportunities.

The English Devolution White Paper published in December 2024 last year sets out our intention in future to support mayors in working together across boundaries.

We have now consulted on our minded to decision not to extend funding for the six pan-regional partnerships beyond the agreed allocations to the end of the 2024-25 financial year. We are currently considering the responses received, and we expect to announce our decision very soon.