Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that (a) remote and (b) other hard-to-reach properties are provided access to reliable fibre broadband.

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

Project Gigabit is the Government’s programme to deliver gigabit-capable broadband to UK premises that are not included in suppliers' commercial plans. Our goal is for nationwide gigabit coverage by 2032, ensuring at least 99% of UK premises can access a gigabit-capable connection.

More than £2.4 billion of Project Gigabit contracts have already been signed to connect over one million more premises with gigabit-capable broadband. These premises fall predominantly in rural areas.

However, our expectation is that some remote premises will remain too expensive to build a gigabit connection to. We continue to consider what can be done to further enable alternatives to fibre connections.

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether she has made an assessment of the potential implications for her policies of the report by CenTax entitled A fair solution to inheritance tax on farms and small businesses, published on 15 August 2025.

Answered by Dan Tomlinson - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)

The Government believes its reforms to agricultural property relief and business property relief from 6 April 2026 get the balance right between supporting farms and businesses, and fixing the public finances. The reforms reduce the inheritance tax advantages available to owners of agricultural and business assets, but still mean those assets will be taxed at a much lower effective rate than most other assets. Despite a tough fiscal context, the Government will maintain very significant levels of relief from inheritance tax beyond what is available to others and compared to the position before 1992. Where inheritance tax is due, those liable for a charge can pay any liability on the relevant assets over 10 annual instalments, interest-free.

The report by the independent Centre for the Analysis of Taxation (CenTax) supports the Government’s analysis of these reforms, including the number of estates affected in 2026-27, and concludes that half of these estates will see an increase in their effective inheritance tax rate of less than 5 percentage points, and almost 90 per cent of these estates could pay their entire inheritance tax bill out of non-farm assets. In CenTax’s opinion, the Government’s proposed reforms improve on the current position and are expected largely to meet the Government’s objectives.

CenTax did suggest the Government could consider amending the policy to introduce a “minimum share rule” or an upper limit on relief. However, as the report acknowledges, there are challenges with those approaches too and they are not a “silver bullet”, in CenTax’s own words.

The Government will invest more than £2.7 billion a year in sustainable farming and nature recovery from 2026-27 until 2028-29. This includes the largest financial investment into nature-friendly farming ever.

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to her Department's press release entitled Transport Secretary acts to make thousands of extra driving tests available each month, published on 23 April 2025, how many driving test places have been available to book in each the last six months for which data is available.

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

The table below shows the number of car practical driving tests provided for the months April 2025 to September 2025.

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 is taking to ensure that cladding remediation works on high-risk buildings are not subject to avoidable delays in the building control approval process by the Building Safety Regulator.

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

The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) has established a dedicated external remediation team who assess all building control approval applications for cladding remediation. The team is already delivering engagement events to improve developers’ understanding of the requirements, and therefore increase the quality of applications and approval rates.

The BSR is also in the process of establishing a remediation enforcement unit, to oversee escalations from government/partner regulators where remediation is not progressing quickly enough. The unit will have access to additional, dedicated resources for building control work to deal with the increasing demand, and to help increase the pace of remediation works.

We recognise that delays in assessing Gateway approval applications are unacceptable, which is why we announced reforms on 30 June including carving out the BSR from the Health and Safety Executive and establishing the Regulator as a standalone body with a clear focus on building safety.

The BSR is already making operational and policy changes to speed up decision making, particularly on building control approval, including through the introduction of an Innovation Unit. Early signs are positive with all applications in the Innovation Unit so far on track to exceed or meet the 12-week SLA as they progress through the application process.

In addition to this, BSR has initiated a new approach of batching applications so they can be processed by multidisciplinary teams formed by Registered Building Control Approvers with oversight from BSR.

The BSR is continually improving the suite of guidance that supports those with duties in understanding what the law requires of them and how they can comply. New guidance with the Construction Leadership Council (CLC) has been published to help applicants better understand what’s needed for a successful submission.

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of increasing the rate of office-to-residential asset conversions to accelerate the delivery of social housing.

Answered by Matthew Pennycook - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)

Under nationally set permitted development rights a wide range of commercial buildings such as offices and shops are able to change use to residential without the need for a planning application.

The government continues to keep permitted development rights under review.

Found: Lamont (Conservative; Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) Tom Morrison (Liberal Democrat; Cheadle) Lee Pitcher

Found: Chair); James Asser; Sir Christopher Chope; Mary Kelly Foy; Gurinder Singh Josan; John Lamont; Lee Pitcher

Found: Lamont (Conservative; Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) Tom Morrison (Liberal Democrat; Cheadle) Lee Pitcher

Found: Bambos Charalambous; Lee Dillon; Mary Kelly Foy; Gurinder Singh Josan; John Lamont; Tom Morrison; Lee Pitcher