Leigh Ingham

We remain firmly committed to maintaining and improving animal welfare and want to work closely with the farming sector to deliver high standards. Defra’s statutory welfare Code of Practice for Pigs states that the aim is for farrowing crates to no longer be necessary and for any new system to protect the welfare of the sow as well as her piglets. Whilst the farrowing crate reduces the risk of piglet mortality, it also restricts sow movement, preventing her from turning around and performing normal behaviours such as nest building. The use of farrowing crates for pigs is an issue we are currently considering very carefully.

The Autumn Statement on 30 October confirmed Defra’s budgets for 2024-25 and 2025-26. Funding allocations for individual programmes for the next financial year will be determined through the department’s business planning exercise.

The Department are working closely with the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government and will update on the Rural England Prosperity Fund in due course.

Defra currently has two active Property Flood Resilience (PFR) Grant schemes running, one for Storm Babet from October 2023 and a second for Storm Henk from January 2024. Staffordshire County Council are participating in both.

PFR Grant schemes run for 18 months. Final data on the number of properties receiving Defra PFR grants after Storms Babet and Henk will not be available until both the schemes close later in 2025.

All flood and coastal risk management investment schemes are carefully assessed to make sure they benefit the most people and property.

As I announced on 13 November, additional financial support will be provided to rural communities, recognising the significant impact of flooding on farmers. £50 million will be distributed to internal drainage boards (IDBs), and £60m will be paid to farmers impacted by last year’s severe weather: Written statements - Written questions, answers and statements - UK Parliament.

The Department recognises the importance of having a well-connected, integrated and accessible transport provision available across the country. We are developing a long-term transport strategy to set the vision for domestic transport in England which will consider the variances in transport needs among different communities, including towns and cities.

The Department sought clarification from Fenland District Council of its decision not to permit passage, and the Council confirmed that its decision had been made on the basis of a risk assessment by qualified advisers. The Department remains committed to its ‘water-preferred’ abnormal load movement policy.

National Highways manage the High and Heavy Loads Grid on behalf of the Department to facilitate the movement of abnormal indivisible loads. Management of assets (such as bridges) is a devolved matter with responsibility falling to the relevant owner, such as National Highways for those on the Strategic Road Network, or a local transport authority for local roads. All special-order proposals require case-by-case consultation with National Highways’ central team and a special-order permit to be issued. That team co-ordinate the route clearance with every road and structure owner and police authority along a suggested route to gain approval, taking into account the dimensions of a proposed vehicle configuration. Only when all affected parties give their approval that the proposed route is safe to traverse can a special-order permit be issued.

For the 2024/25 financial year, the previous Government allocated Staffordshire County Council £28.935 million for local highway maintenance. For the 2025/26 financial year, this Government is providing Staffordshire County Council with £39.4 million, an increase of around £10.5 million, for local highway maintenance.

The Department advocates a risk-based whole life cycle asset management approach to local authority highway maintenance programmes. This considers all parts of the highway network, such as bridges, cycleways and lighting columns – not just the fixing of potholes. Funding is not ring-fenced, and it is entirely a matter for Staffordshire County Council to determine how the money is best spent to improve its local highway network according to local needs and circumstances.

This Government takes the condition of local roads very seriously and is committed to maintaining and renewing the local highway network. Staffordshire County Council is the local highway authority for the Stafford constituency, and they are therefore responsible for the condition of their local network.

This Government has a commitment to enable local highway authorities in England to fix up to a million more potholes a year. At Budget 2024, the Chancellor announced an extra £500 million for local highway maintenance for the 2025/26 financial year, an increase of nearly 50% compared to the current financial year. The Government will confirm funding allocations to English local highway authorities, including Staffordshire County Council, in due course.

The Government publishes data annually on the condition of the local road network in England, including Staffordshire, and these are available on gov.uk.

Supporting everyone to find good, meaningful work and helping them to progress is vital for economic growth. Stafford Jobcentre works in partnership with local employers, the NHS, colleges and the voluntary sector on initiatives that support people to get into and on at work.

Through our plans to create a new jobs and careers service we will transform our ability to support people into work, help those on low pay to increase their earnings, and create a more flexible workforce for a fast changing, higher skilled jobs market. This transformation is expected to contribute significantly to economic growth by addressing local skills gaps and providing tailored support to meet the needs of local labour markets.

We are currently considering our evaluation strategy to assess the effectiveness, efficiency and impact of the new jobs and careers service. This includes funding in 2025/26 to take forward the first steps of building the new service through a pathfinder, as set out in the Get Britain Working White Paper.

On 27^th February we published Pension Credit applications and award statistics. This publication provides application volumes up to 23 February 2025. Pension Credit Applications - February 2025

We do not hold data at regional or constituency level for applications made. We do hold Pension Credit caseload data by Parliamentary constituency. You can find the latest available data held on Stat-Xplore - Home which shows Pension Credit caseload data by Parliamentary constituency up to August 2024.

Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for commissioning services to meet the needs of their local communities, as they are best placed to take those decisions. In doing so, ICBs – including NHS Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent ICB, which is responsible for services in Staffordshire – consider how best to provide urgent care, including Urgent Treatment Centres, to meet patient demand.

Our Urgent and Emergency Care Plan, published in June 2025, set out the steps we are taking to ensure that patients will receive better, faster and more appropriate emergency care this winter, backed by a total of nearly £450 million of funding. This includes the expansion of Urgent Treatment Centres to allow for the effective streaming of patients, helping to reduce waiting times and overcrowding.

We have been taking key steps to ensure the health service is prepared for the colder months. This includes taking actions to try and reduce demand pressure on Accident and Emergency departments, increasing vaccination rates and offering health checks to the most vulnerable, as well as stress-testing ICB and trust winter plans to confirm they are able to meet demand and support patient flow.

We are committed to transforming National Health Service diagnostic services and ensuring timely access to diagnostic tests, including blood tests and that patients have the best possible experience of care.

The Elective Reform Plan published in January 2025 sets out the productivity and reform efforts needed to return to the 18-week constitutional standard by the end of this parliament. To achieve this, the plan commits to transform and expand diagnostic services and speed up waiting times for tests.

Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs), including Cannock Chase CDC in Staffordshire, are supporting one of the Government’s key strategic shifts – moving care from the hospital to the community. CDCs offer local populations a wide range of diagnostic tests, including phlebotomy, closer to home and greater choice on where and how they are undertaken. Cannock Chase CDC has delivered 21,673 phlebotomy tests since July 2024.

We are continuing to invest in expanding diagnostic capacity in the NHS. As set out in the Elective Reform Plan, we plan to build up to five more CDCs in 2025/26, alongside increasing the operating hours of existing sites so that more offer services 12 hours a day, seven days a week. This is backed by part of the £600 million capital investment for diagnostic services announced at the October Spending review.

We are also funding all pathology networks to increase digital capabilities by March 2026. This will reduce unnecessary waits and repeat tests to ensure that patients receive their blood test results sooner, including in Staffordshire.

The Government is committed to addressing longstanding concerns around the safety of the cosmetics sector. On 7 August we announced our plans to introduce legal restrictions which will ensure that the highest risk cosmetic procedures are brought into Care Quality Commission regulation and can only be performed by specified regulated healthcare professionals.

In addition, the Government has also committed to legislating to introduce a licensing scheme for lower risk procedures through powers granted through the Health and Care Act 2022. Under the proposed scheme, which will be operated by local authorities, practitioners will be required to obtain a licence to perform specified cosmetic procedures, and the premises from which they operate will also need to be licensed. To protect children and young people, the Government is also committed to mandating age restrictions for cosmetic procedures.

Further details of the Government’s commitments are available in the Government’s response to the 2023 consultation on the licensing of non-surgical cosmetic procedures in England, which is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/licensing-of-non-surgical-cosmetic-procedures

The Department does not have data on the annual costs to the National Health Service of treating complications from cosmetic procedures. We are exploring ways to improve our understanding of the scale of the cost to the NHS.

We recognise the importance of supporting children's right to play as games and play help build social-skills and support children’s wellbeing. In October 2025, the Starlight Children's Foundation will mark Play in Healthcare Week, celebrating 50 years of play and highlighting its importance for children in healthcare settings. Together with NHS England, Starlight co-published the Play Well Toolkit, which is designed to help services enhance the quality of health play provision.

The Department remains supportive of the Starlight Foundation and NHS England’s work to champion that toolkit and promote child-centred care across healthcare settings and encourages work to publicise its use during this week.

We recognise the importance of supporting and maintaining children’s right to play, as games and active play in all settings build social skills and support children’s wellbeing. The Play Well toolkit that was recently jointly launched by NHS England and the charity Starlight helps services to identify opportunities to improve health play services.

While funding decisions for health play services remain the responsibility of local commissioners, the Department remains supportive of NHS England’s work to continue to champion the toolkit and the importance of child-centred care across healthcare settings.

To support implementation, NHS England is promoting the Play Well toolkit to managers of health play services across a wide range of settings, including community clinics, emergency departments, children’s hospices, and acute paediatric wards.

A range of communication channels have been used to raise awareness, including engagement with services via professional bodies, messaging via the Chief Nursing Officer, and a forthcoming blog post and press release in partnership with Starlight. Starlight will be co-leading a webinar with NHS England this month to raise awareness of the toolkit.

I refer the Hon. Member to the answer of 15 September to Question 77707.

The UK is working with other governments globally to protect and progress sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) including through diplomacy and ODA programming. In December 2024, the Prime Minister announced the Grassroots and Counter Rollback Programme, which includes support to high-level cross country political coordination to defend and progress SRHR. The programme also works with other government donors in support of pooled funds, including the Robert Carr Fund, which strengthens, connects and amplifies bottom-up efforts to change laws and policies, improve accountability and expand access to services, including for the most marginalised people.

The Foreign Secretary appointed Baroness Harman as Special Envoy for Women and Girls on 08 March 2025. She met international counterparts and programme partners at a Wilton Park meeting on SRHR in June 2025.

The UK is proud to defend and promote universal and comprehensive Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR). Official Development Assistance (ODA) is one of multiple levers to achieve this. Over the coming months, we will work through how the ODA budget will be used in future years, informed by internal and external consultation and consideration of equalities impact assessments ahead of making decisions on budgets for individual programmes in the autumn.

The transition to spending 0.3 per cent of Gross National Income (GNI) on ODA requires significant shifts in the shape and scale of the work we do. However, we will continue to work with international and national partners and use targeted funding, technical partnership and diplomatic engagement to provide leadership on SRHR.

The UK remains committed to tackling global health challenges and will continue to work with all international partners towards the collective goal of a healthier, safer and more prosperous world. We have long been a strong supporter of the Global Fund and are proud to be co-hosting the 8th replenishment this year in partnership with South Africa. Over the coming months, we will work through decisions on how the Official Development Assistance budget will be used, and the impact on specific programmes, informed by internal and external consultation and impact assessments.

We are strongly committed to standing up for the rights of women and girls, including sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). We are proud of the UK's long history as an influential global leader on gender equality and SRHR. We will continue to use our diplomacy with partners to defend and champion these fundamental rights in international fora. We will also make strategic use of our funds and technical partnerships.

For example, in December 2024, the Prime Minister announced the Grassroots and Counter Rollback programme. This strengthens local and national civil society organisations' and movements' ability to expand access to SRHR and counter rollback. It focuses on neglected issues, including safe abortion, and marginalised groups whose rights and access to services are denied or being attacked. As the largest donor to the UNFPA Supplies Partnership (£60 million in 2024), the UK continues to ensure SRHR commodities reach where they are needed most.

On International Women's Day, I appointed Harriet Harman to be the new UK Special Envoy on Women and Girls, progressing our foreign policy and development objectives to protect women and girls' rights, including sexual and reproductive health and rights, access to education and freedom from gender-based violence. Following this appointment, she spoke at a UK co-hosted event at the Commission on the Status of Women to galvanise renewed action to end child marriage. She also launched a Signature Initiative to champion the vital role of women's rights organisations and drive a focus on supporting them across our policy and programming.