Asked by: Lewis Cocking (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of palliative care services in Broxbourne constituency.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is developing a Palliative Care and End of Life Care Modern Service Framework for England, due to be published in Spring 2026. I refer the hon. Member to the Written Ministerial Statement HCWS1087 I gave to the House on 24 November 2025.
We are supporting the hospice sector with a £100 million capital funding boost for eligible adult and children’s hospices in England to ensure they have the best physical environment for care. St Clare Hospice, which cares for patients from the Broxbourne constituency, is receiving £579,780 from this funding.
We are also providing £80 million for children’s and young people’s hospices over the next three financial years, giving them stability to plan ahead and focus on what matters most, caring for their patients. Haven House Children’s Hospice and Noah’s Ark Children's Hospice near Broxbourne will both benefit from this funding.
Asked by: Lewis Cocking (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 14 November 2024 to Question 88403 on Social Security Benefits: Foreign Nationals and with reference to the Universal Credit statistics, 29 April 2013 to 12 June 2025, published on 15 July 2025, what progress his Department has made on producing Immigration and Nationality statistics for (a) Universal Credit and b) other benefits.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Since first publishing the Universal Credit statistics by immigration status and nationality group on 15 July 2025, the Department has published regular updates, with the latest, published on 11 November 2025, covering statistics to October 2025.
The Department checks immigration status when assessing eligibility for benefits, but this information is not collated centrally across all benefit lines and hence is not readily available.
Asked by: Lewis Cocking (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much funding has been provided to schools to support pupils for whom English is an additional language in each of the last three years.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
Schools attract additional funding through the English as an additional language (EAL) factor in the schools national funding formula (NFF), for pupils recorded as having entered state education in England during the last three years, and whose first language is not English.
The below table sets out the proportion of funding provided through the EAL factor in the NFF from 2023/24 financial year to 2025/26 financial year.
Year | Proportion of total funding through NFF |
2025/26 financial year | 1.1% |
2024/25 financial year | 1.1% |
2023/24 financial year | 1.0% |
The NFF is used to allocate funding to local authorities. How much individual schools receive depends on their local authority’s local funding formula.
Asked by: Lewis Cocking (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps he is taking to make it easier for local planning authorities to decline repeat applications for development that has already been refused.
Answered by Matthew Pennycook - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
Under Sections 70A and 70B of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, local planning authorities already have powers to decline to determine applications if they have previously refused permission for two or more substantially similar applications on the same site, or if a substantially similar application has been rejected by the Secretary of State on appeal or following call-in, within the past two years.
Asked by: Lewis Cocking (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether it is his Department's policy that neighbouring local authorities will be consulted before new towns are built.
Answered by Matthew Pennycook - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
I refer the hon. Member to the independent New Towns Taskforce final report as well as the government’s initial response to it. Both can be found on gov.uk here.
Asked by: Lewis Cocking (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 13 October 2025 to Question 77757 on Multiple Myeloma: Diagnosis, when the NHS will fully implement non-specific symptom pathways for the purpose of earlier diagnosis of blood cancers.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We recognise that there is more to be done to ensure that every patient receives fast and early diagnosis, including patients with harder to stage cancers, such as myeloma.
The National Health Service has fully implemented non-specific symptom (NSS) pathways for patients who present with symptoms such as weight loss and fatigue, which do not clearly align to a tumour type. There are currently 115 NSS services operating in England with blood cancers being one of the most common cancer types diagnosed through these pathways.
Diagnosing cancer earlier is a key focus of the forthcoming National Cancer Plan, which will build on the shifts in care set out in the 10-Year Health Plan to diagnose cancers earlier.
Asked by: Lewis Cocking (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate she has made of the cost to the NHS of providing healthcare to (a) asylum seekers and (b) refugees in the last financial year.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department and NHS England do not hold the information requested.
Asked by: Lewis Cocking (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether her Department holds data on (a) taxes paid and (b) the cost of public services used by migrants who have arrived in the UK within the last 10 years.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
HMRC does not hold aggregate data on the taxes paid by migrants who have arrived in the UK within the last 10 years.
HMRC does hold data on the nationality reported by individuals at the point of National Insurance number registration, for adult National Insurance number registrations. This data is used to produce statistics on UK payrolled employments by nationality, region, industry, age and sex.
UK public spending covers a wide range of areas, including public services and infrastructure that are public goods. All groups in society benefit from these areas of public spending. In addition, some public provision is at a family or household level. It is therefore not possible to distinguish spending per person between migrant and non-migrants
Asked by: Lewis Cocking (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what data his Department holds on the number of newly built homes purchased by non-UK nationals in each of the last five years.
Answered by Matthew Pennycook - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
My Department does not hold data on new built homes purchased by non-UK nationals.
Overseas entities who want to buy, sell, or transfer property or land in the UK, must register with Companies House and declare who their registrable beneficial owners or managing officers are.
Data on property ownership by overseas companies in England and Wales is published by HM Land Registry and is publicly available on gov.uk.
Asked by: Lewis Cocking (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many recorded offences involved individuals with pending asylum applications in the last 12 months.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
The requested data on offences involving asylum-seekers is not currently published by the Home Office.
As explained in this note published in April, systems for collecting and compiling data related to foreign national offenders in the immigration system are currently undergoing a redesign. The Home Office is currently working towards a release of this data. At this stage, we are not in a position to detail what this will contain or the exact timing of the release.
Official statistics published by the Home Office are kept under review in line with the code of practice for statistics, taking into account a number of factors including user needs, the resources required to compile the statistics, as well as quality and availability of data. These reviews allow us to balance the production of our regular statistics whilst developing new statistics for future release.