Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of the resilience of UK critical digital services in relation to the level of concentration in the cloud infrastructure market.

Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)

In July last year, the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) cloud market investigation identified a number of potential competition concerns which may impact the resilience of UK’s digital infrastructure. The CMA recommended that its Board consider prioritising a future Strategic Market Status (SMS) investigation into cloud services under its new digital markets powers.

The Government is committed to promoting a competitive and innovative digital economy and therefore prioritised the commencement of these powers last year, alongside a clear expectation that they be used to support competition and innovation in digital markets. The CMA is independent of Government, and decisions on which markets to investigate are a matter for its Board alone.

Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment she has made of the impact of delays to competition solutions in the cloud services market on market concentration; and what consideration she has given to the implications for growth and innovation in the technology sector.

Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)

In July last year, the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) cloud market investigation identified a number of potential competition concerns. The CMA recommended that its Board consider prioritising a future Strategic Market Status (SMS) investigation into cloud services under its new digital markets powers.

The Government is committed to promoting a competitive and innovative digital economy and therefore prioritised the commencement of these powers last year, alongside a clear expectation that they be used to support competition and innovation in digital markets. The CMA is independent of Government, and decisions on which markets to investigate are a matter for its Board alone

Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what discussions her Department has had with the Competition and Markets Authority on the proposed timetable for the next stages of its cloud market investigation; and what assessment she has made of the implications of that timetable for competition enforcement in digital infrastructure markets.

Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)

In July last year, the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) cloud market investigation identified a number of potential competition concerns. The CMA recommended that its Board consider prioritising a future Strategic Market Status (SMS) investigation into cloud services under its new digital markets powers.

The Government is committed to promoting a competitive and innovative digital economy and therefore prioritised the commencement of these powers last year, alongside a clear expectation that they be used to support competition and innovation in digital markets. Neither the Secretary of State nor Ministers have discussed future SMS prioritisation decisions with the CMA. The CMA is independent of Government, and decisions on which markets to investigate are a matter for its Board alone.

Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what the value of exports facilitated by his Department was in each of the last five financial years by destination country.

Answered by Chris Bryant - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)

The Department supported businesses to deliver export wins worth £16.9bn in 2020/21, £17.3bn in 2021/22, and £19.6bn in 2022/23. In 2023/24 over £36bn and almost £24bn in 2024/25 export wins were delivered.

The Department does not provide country-specific wins due to the risk of disclosing commercially sensitive deals.

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what timeline and industry roadmap he has established for ending male chick culling.

Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

The Government has set out in the recently published Animal Welfare Strategy that it will encourage the egg industry to move away from the practice of killing day-old chicks. The Government will discuss with them a roadmap to reach the objective of ending male chick culling.

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps National Highways is taking to ensure the provision of timely and accurate physical diversion signage during planned and unplanned road closures.

Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

National Highways follows the standards GG903 and GG907 outlined in the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges (DMRB) for diversion routes for unplanned events and planned works and activities.

These standards require NH to coordinate with customers and local traffic authorities and to conduct Customer Audits and annual engagements. National Highways monitor diversion routes for unplanned events through the National Highways operational reporting team.

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps her Department is taking to help ensure that National Highways' contractors adhere to reporting requirements when closing sections of the Strategic Road Network; and what data National Highways holds on contractor compliance with those requirements in the last 12 months.

Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

National Highways requires its contractors to inform National Highways’ Regional Operations Centres before closing any part of the SRN to allow appropriate signs, signals, and customer communications to be put in place.

In the financial year 24/25, over 90% of the overnight closures planned by early afternoon went ahead as expected. National Highways’ traffic monitoring systems allows them to verify the status of road closures in real time.

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether National Highways is required to ensure that all planned and emergency road closures are integrated into live satellite navigation systems.

Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

There are no requirements for National Highways to ensure that all planned and emergency road closures are integrated into live satellite navigation.

However, National Highways publishes information detailing all its planned and emergency work closures. Where available these details are published in advance.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether a dedicated teacher retention strategy will be informed by evidence on teacher mental health and workplace wellbeing.

Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)

A well supported, high-quality education workforce is critical to our mission to break down the barriers to opportunity for children and young people, which is why recruiting and retaining our expert teachers is at the heart of the government’s Plan for Change. Detailed plans on how we will recruit and retain more teachers in our 6,500 additional teachers delivery plan are available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/every-child-achieving-and-thriving.

We will promote best practice in workload and wellbeing management, including flexible working opportunities, and tackle the external pressures where schools are filling the gaps.

We will invest in a new programme that provides training, resources and peer support to help schools learn from each other, to normalise flexible working and manageable workloads. We will also invest £1 million additional funding each year for wellbeing support, providing up to 2,500 leaders annually with a safe and confidential space to develop new strategies to manage their resilience and capacity to thrive in their role.

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Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of changes to SEND funding on mainstream school budgets in Maidenhead.

Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)

Nationally, mainstream school funding allocated through the dedicated schools grant (DSG) is increasing by 2.6% per pupil, from £6,608 in 2025/26 to £6,778 in 2026/27. This brings total funding for mainstream schools through the DSG schools block to £50.5 billion in 2026/27. This will support mainstream schools with ongoing costs and deliver an excellent education for all, including pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

From 2026/27 onwards, we will provide £1.6 billion for a new Inclusive Mainstream Fund over three years.

We will provide more details on how this funding will be distributed in the coming weeks.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many directors with responsibility for human resources are employed across their department and its executive agencies; and how many of those directors hold professional HR qualifications from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development or equivalent professional bodies.

Answered by Olivia Bailey - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Education) (Equalities)

Organograms for the department, including senior civil service posts, are published on GOV.UK here: https://www.data.gov.uk/dataset/5a1f3831-86d6-4979-9164-99e982361ca4/organogram-department-for-education. The data sets out director-level roles and responsibilities across the core department, including for our Executive Agencies.

Information on the professional qualifications of individual employees is personal data, and it would not be appropriate to release this at an individual level. However, all directors appointed with responsibility for human resources would be expected to have the appropriate skills, experience and, where relevant, professional qualifications necessary to undertake the role effectively, including experience aligned with Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CPID) standards or equivalent professional bodies in line with requirements set out by the Government People Group.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what level of recurrent funding has been identified by NHS England to fund the recommendations of new treatments considered by NHS England’s next Clinical Priorities Advisory Group Prioritisation meeting in Spring 2026.

Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

NHS England is not able to provide the level of recurrent funding identified at this point to support the next Clinical Priorities Advisory Group prioritisation meeting. This would risk disclosing commercially confidential information.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if NHS England Specialised Commissioning will consider a second prioritisation meeting this year of the Clinical Priorities Advisory Group to reduce the 20 treatments currently being considered, in addition to the meeting in Spring 2026.

Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

NHS England’s Clinical Priorities Advisory Group (CPAG) prioritisation meetings are held annually and are aligned to NHS England's annual financial planning cycle.

The next prioritisation meeting is planned for spring 2026, where policies that are ready and require investment decisions will be considered. It is expected that up to 20 such policies will be considered at that meeting. CPAG also meets monthly to consider clinical policies and service specifications that are categorised as cost saving or cost neutral, enabling progress to be made outside of the annual prioritisation round.

There are currently no plans to hold an additional prioritisation meeting this year beyond the meeting scheduled for spring 2026.

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, when his Department last reviewed the Child Maintenance Service’s policy framework for modern shared‑care arrangements; and whether the Service plans to reform its policies on cases where both parents actively share day‑to‑day parenting responsibilities.

Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

The Government recognises that shared care arrangements can play an important role in supporting children to maintain relationships with both parents after separation.

In the child maintenance system, shared care is reflected in the maintenance calculation. Where a child stays overnight with the paying parent for at least one night a week on average, the amount of maintenance due is reduced to reflect the care provided.

If the Child Maintenance Service is satisfied that both parents have equal day-to-day care for the child, in addition to sharing overnight care, there is no requirement for either parent to pay child maintenance.

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what plans his Department has to review the internal complaints process of the Child Maintenance Service.

Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS), as part of the Department for Work and Pensions, follows the Department’s standard complaints procedure.

The CMS regularly reviews complaint data, including insights from the Independent Case Examiner, to identify key themes and trends, which they use to drive improvements to the complaint handling process. Furthermore, lessons learned are regularly presented to operational teams, supporting them to deliver effective interventions at the initial stage of the complaint and thereby improve the overall customer experience.

The CMS remains focussed on taking pro-active steps to improve the customer experience, developing its customer service strategy to focus on improving current and future service throughout the customer journey.

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she is taking to ensure that Ofwat's successor regulator has sufficient powers to place a failing water company into Special Administration on grounds of environmental non-compliance, as well as insolvency.

Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

As set out in the Water White Paper, we will create a powerful new regulator, bringing together the relevant functions from the existing regulators (of Ofwat, the Drinking Water Inspectorate, the Environment Agency and Natural England) into one new body. The new regulator will be able to deliver better services for customers, joined-up regulation and a cleaner environment for nature and the public.

The bar for the Special Administration Regime is high. As per existing legislative requirements, evidence is needed that a company is insolvent or they are in such serious breach of their principal statutory duties or an enforcement order that it is inappropriate for the company to retain its licence.

As set out in the White Paper, to ensure the regulator can act decisively should the high bar for Special Administration be met, we will ensure companies have appropriate contingency Special Administration Regime (SAR) plans, setting out how they would ensure that any special administrator, once appointed, would be able to maintain delivery of critical services and facilitate restructuring or sale if SAR is triggered.

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what the average time is between a parent with care requesting a Financial Investigation Unit referral and the referral being actioned; and how the Department monitors compliance with internal timeframes.

Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

Data on the average time from a parent initiating a referral request to the Financial Investigation Unit (FIU) and that referral being actioned are not held centrally and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.

All cases which are accepted by the Financial Investigation Unit (FIU) for investigation are assessed, and appropriate evidence obtained to fully inform the course of FIU action. The length of time required to complete the FIU action will depend on the complexity of fraud. Criminal cases of course can take much longer, due to their complexity.

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, in the past year what has the average time been for the Child Maintenance Service to obtain a verified address for a paying parent once a caseworker identifies that one is missing; and what processes are in place to minimise delays where child maintenance arrears are accruing.

Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

The Government is committed to ensuring parents meet their financial obligations to their children. Where a paying parent fails to take responsibility for paying their child maintenance and cannot be traced, the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) will take immediate action and do everything within its powers to trace the paying parent. In addition to information provided by parents, CMS undertakes a series of trace checks to verify the paying parent’s address. These checks draw on several approved information sources, including; cross government databases, real time information from HM Revenue & Customs, credit reference agencies, employers and Local Authorities.

The CMS have a range of strong enforcement powers that can be used against those parents who consistently refuse to meet or evade their obligations to provide financial support to their children. We are committed to using these powers fairly and in the best interests of children and separated families to ensure compliance.

The statistical information requested in not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps the Child Maintenance Service takes to (a) verify and (b) obtain up‑to‑date addresses for paying parents in cases where enforcement action cannot proceed due to the absence of a confirmed address.

Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

The Government is committed to ensuring parents meet their financial obligations to their children. Where a paying parent fails to take responsibility for paying their child maintenance and cannot be traced, the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) will take immediate action and do everything within its powers to trace the paying parent. In addition to information provided by parents, CMS undertakes a series of trace checks to verify the paying parent’s address. These checks draw on several approved information sources, including; cross government databases, real time information from HM Revenue & Customs, credit reference agencies, employers and Local Authorities.

The CMS have a range of strong enforcement powers that can be used against those parents who consistently refuse to meet or evade their obligations to provide financial support to their children. We are committed to using these powers fairly and in the best interests of children and separated families to ensure compliance.

The statistical information requested in not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many cases in the last three years involved child maintenance payments being incorrectly refunded to the paying parent due to clerical error; and what steps the Department is taking to reduce such errors.

Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

This information is not readily available and providing it would incur disproportionate cost.

The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) works to ensure cases are kept up to date and payments are processed accurately, with controls in place to minimise incorrect refunds. The introduction of the View Parent Finances screen further improves clarity and compliance by giving caseworkers a clearer, simplified view of complex financial information.

Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department has taken to communicate to mortgage lenders the Government's guidance that buildings under 11 metres in height do not require an EWS1 form.

Answered by Samantha Dixon - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)

Officials in my department have regular engagement with financial sector stakeholders. Lenders have been encouraged to move away from the use of EWS1 forms for buildings of all heights, and instead to rely on a Fire Risk Appraisal of External Walls (FRAEW). An EWS1 form is not a government, legal or regulatory requirement. Not all lenders ask for an EWS1, but whether they do, remains a commercial decision.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of the student loan repayment threshold remaining at its current level on (a) graduates in lower-paid or insecure employment, (b) social mobility and (c) students from lower-income backgrounds.

Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

It was announced at the Autumn Budget that the repayment and interest thresholds for Plan 2 student loans will be frozen from the 2026/27 financial year until April 2030, when they will increase annually by inflation.

The department has produced the attached analysis regarding the impact of freezing the repayment and interest thresholds.

If a borrower is earning above the repayment threshold and their income stays the same, then their repayments will remain the same. If a borrower is not earning above the repayment threshold and their income remains the same, they will continue to not be required to make any repayments.

Rural postal services

Heating oil financial support

Newbury Fire Station’s fundraising efforts

Visa concessions for sheep shearers (No. 2)

Waste crime

Cyprus and UK Sovereign Base Areas

King's Guard's ceremonial bearskin caps

Ané Kritzinger Physics Gold Medal at STEM for BRITAIN Awards

Online abuse and exploitation of Ukrainian refugees

NHS funding for mental health services

25th anniversary of the Voluntary Initiative

Sign Language Week

Funding for rural Britain

Windermere

Conflict in Lebanon

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At a Joint Summit in May 2025, the UK and EU agreed to a Security and Defence Partnership, and published a “Common Understanding”, setting out shared commitments to deepen cooperation. Progress since that initial summit has been limited, with core areas for agreement still to conclude. 

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The Business and Trade Committee is conducting its bi-annual stock take on the UK-US economic and trade agreements, building on its baseline report US Economic Prosperity Deal (HC 1306, 2024–26).