Lord Norton of Louth

The Senior Deputy Speaker has asked me, as Chair of the Services Committee, to respond on his behalf. 828,242 mail items were received on the Parliamentary Estate in 2025. The Administration does not count which House each item goes to but estimates that approximately 25 per cent of these items were destined for the House of Lords. These figures do not include courier items or internal mail. Please note that this figure refers to the whole Parliamentary Estate, not just the Palace of Westminster.

The Senior Deputy Speaker has asked me, as Chair of the Services Committee, to respond on his behalf. 856,751 mail items were received on the Parliamentary Estate in 2024. The Administration does not count which House each item goes to but estimates that approximately 10 to 15 per cent of these items were destined for the House of Lords. These figures do not include courier items or internal mail.

Please note that this figure refers to the whole Parliamentary Estate, not just the Palace of Westminster.

We are grateful for the work of the House of Lords statutory inquiries committee and its report published in September 2024, to which the government responded in February 2025.

As set out in that response the Cabinet Office will publish The Inquiry Practitioners' Handbook in due course. The Government has also launched a publicly accessible tracker reporting progress on inquiry recommendations and amended the Ministerial Code to ensure Cabinet Office policy expertise informs decisions on establishing a public inquiry and agreeing terms of reference.

The Public Office (Accountability) Bill is also progressing in parliament, making non-statutory inquiries much more powerful options.

The creation of the National School for Government and Public Services was announced by Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, Darren Jones on 20 January 2026. The purpose of the school is to support ambitions for a world-class, professional Civil Service. It is scheduled to be launched later this year.

The Government's January 2025 response to the House of Commons Committee on Standards' recommendation regarding the Recall of MPs Act 2015 was based on the operation of the Act and the six recall petitions that have taken place since the Act came into force.

These recall petitions have collectively engaged all three recall conditions, and one did not attain the 10% threshold required to recall the MP in question. Given the variety of circumstances in which the recall process has been engaged, and given the variety of outcomes, the Government believes that the 2015 Act has been tested sufficiently and proven an effective and proportionate tool in the parliamentary standards regime.

The Cabinet Office Guide to Making Legislation is clear that post-legislative scrutiny of legislation can take the form of discussion with the relevant parliamentary committee. The Government remains open to dialogue with Parliament, including the House of Commons Committee on Standards and the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, about the ongoing operation of the Recall Act.

This information is not held centrally. The Cabinet Office has written to departments reminding them of the importance of post-legislative scrutiny.

All bills that have reached Royal Assent are eligible for post-legislative scrutiny three to five years after they are enacted. However, it can be agreed between the Government Department and the relevant Commons Departmental Select Committee that a memorandum is not required.

As stated in the Government's response to the report of the House of Commons Committee on Standards (HC637), the Government believes that the Recall of MPs Act 2015 is broadly operating as intended. Where there are procedural challenges, the standards system has evolved to accommodate these.

The Government recognises that trust in and independence of the levy system are crucial. We have appointed expert public bodies to lead on research, prevention and treatment of gambling related harm. UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) and NHS England, together with appropriate bodies in Scotland and Wales, are responsible for day-to-day levy spending. These bodies have set up their own governance arrangements and conflict of interest policies to ensure these decisions are independent of industry and led by the evidence of what works.

Furthermore, the Gambling Levy Programme Board oversees the statutory levy system to ensure that funding is being spent appropriately and efficiently. The Terms of Reference for the Board can be found on GOV.UK.

​​Delivering the government’s objective to break down the barriers to opportunity for every child relies on a highly skilled workforce in schools, with high quality teaching the in-school factor that makes the biggest difference to a child’s outcomes.

There are now 468,693 full time equivalent teachers in state-funded schools in England but numbers have not kept pace with demand. Of the 3,435 state-funded secondary schools in England, 71.2% employed a teacher with a relevant qualification in citizenship. This figure relates to schools that supplied teacher qualification data. In some cases, teachers with a qualification in another subject may also teach citizenship in the school.

We are focused on the need to boost teacher numbers in priority subjects across the country. This is why the government has set out the ambition to recruit 6,500 new expert teachers across our schools, both mainstream and specialist, and colleges over the course of this Parliament.

Measures will include getting more teachers into shortage subjects, tackling retention issues and supporting areas that face recruitment challenges. The government will continue to work alongside the sector as we develop our delivery plan and seek to re-establish teaching as an attractive profession.

​We have made good early progress towards this key pledge by ensuring teaching is once again an attractive and respected profession, key to which is ensuring teachers receive the pay they deserve. That is why this government has accepted in full the School Teachers’ Review Body’s recommendation of a 5.5% pay award for teachers and leaders in maintained schools for 2024/25.

Alongside teacher pay, we have made £233 million available from 2025/26 recruitment cycle to support teacher trainees with tax-free bursaries of up to £29,000 and scholarships of up to £31,000 in shortage subjects. The department has also expanded its school teacher recruitment campaign, ‘Every Lesson Shapes a Life’, and the further education teacher recruitment campaign ‘Share your Skills’.