Marsha De Cordova

The Government has no plans to introduce an energy social tariff this winter. However, we are committed to ensuring vulnerable households are supported with their energy bills and we are looking at all options on how to support these households.

The Government is continuing to deliver the Warm Home Discount which provides a £150 rebate off energy bills to over 3 million eligible low-income households. We are also working with energy suppliers to ensure they are providing additional support to vulnerable customers.

The Government has also extended the Household Support Fund for an additional 6 months until 31 March 2025 with an extra £500 million in funding, and I encourage any individual who is struggling to pay their bills contacts their local authority to see if they are eligible for this support.

The Government believes that the only way to permanently protect billpayers, including disabled households, is to speed up the transition towards homegrown clean energy and reduce our reliance on volatile international fossil fuel markets.

Whilst we make this transition, the Government is committed to ensuring vulnerable households are supported with their energy bills and we are looking at all options on how to support these households.

In the short-term, we are continuing to deliver the Warm Home Discount which provides a £150 annual rebate on energy bills for eligible low-income households. We are also working with energy suppliers to ensure they are providing additional support to vulnerable customers that are struggling with bills.

The Warm Home Discount Scheme is currently focused to support those on lowest incomes who receive means-tested benefits and are living in a property we have estimated to be relatively high cost to heat. This winter’s scheme has been launched today, 14 October, and we expect it to support over three million households. We are exploring options to improve the design of the scheme beyond the current regulations which expire in 2026.

The Government recognises that consumer energy debt is a large and increasing issue, and it expects energy suppliers to do everything they can to support customers who are struggling with bills, especially vulnerable customers. It is important that anyone who is struggling to pay their energy bills contact their supplier.

In August, I met with suppliers and encouraged them to build on the Voluntary Debt Commitment from last year and go further in supporting vulnerable customers this winter.

The Department continues to monitor the Listed Places of Worship grant scheme through the regular reporting of the grant administrator, EMB. Since 2010, the Government has returned over £350 million to listed churches, synagogues, mosques and temples through the grant scheme continuing their work as centres of worship and community assets, in places all over the country, including areas of low economic activity.

The Government is committed to improving access to sports and physical activity for everyone, including disabled people, older people and women and girls. Sport and physical activity is central to achieving our health and opportunity manifesto missions, with the biggest gains coming from supporting those who are inactive to move more.

The Government provides the majority of support for grassroots sport through Sport England - which annually invests over £250 million in Exchequer and Lottery funding. Sport England’s work focuses on increasing participation in sport and to boost diversity at a grassroots level to give more and better opportunities to all.

Sport England provides long term investment to The Lawn Tennis Association, which receives up to £10.2 million for 5 years from 2022 to invest in community tennis initiatives that will benefit everyone, including disabled people.

Decisions with regards to future departmental budgets will be made as part of the spending review process.

The Government is committed to improving access to sports and physical activity for everyone, including disabled people, older people and women and girls. Sport and physical activity is central to achieving our health and opportunity manifesto missions, with the biggest gains coming from supporting those who are inactive to move more.

The Government provides the majority of support for grassroots sport through Sport England - which annually invests over £250 million in Exchequer and Lottery funding. Sport England’s work focuses on increasing participation in sport and to boost diversity at a grassroots level to give more and better opportunities to all.

Sport England provides long term investment to The Lawn Tennis Association, which receives up to £10.2 million for 5 years from 2022 to invest in community tennis initiatives that will benefit everyone, including disabled people.

Decisions with regards to future departmental budgets will be made as part of the spending review process.

The Government is committed to improving access to sports and physical activity for everyone, including disabled people, older people and women and girls. Sport and physical activity is central to achieving our health and opportunity manifesto missions, with the biggest gains coming from supporting those who are inactive to move more.

The Government provides the majority of support for grassroots sport through Sport England - which annually invests over £250 million in Exchequer and Lottery funding. Sport England’s work focuses on increasing participation in sport and to boost diversity at a grassroots level to give more and better opportunities to all.

Sport England provides long term investment to The Lawn Tennis Association, which receives up to £10.2 million for 5 years from 2022 to invest in community tennis initiatives that will benefit everyone, including disabled people.

Decisions with regards to future departmental budgets will be made as part of the spending review process.

The Government is committed to improving access to sports and physical activity for everyone, including disabled people, older people and women and girls. Sport and physical activity is central to achieving our health and opportunity manifesto missions, with the biggest gains coming from supporting those who are inactive to move more.

The Government provides the majority of support for grassroots sport through Sport England - which annually invests over £250 million in Exchequer and Lottery funding. Sport England’s work focuses on increasing participation in sport and to boost diversity at a grassroots level to give more and better opportunities to all.

Sport England provides long term investment to The Lawn Tennis Association, which receives up to £10.2 million for 5 years from 2022 to invest in community tennis initiatives that will benefit everyone, including disabled people.

Decisions with regards to future departmental budgets will be made as part of the spending review process.

This government is determined to tackle the generational challenge of school absence and to ensure that all children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) receive the right support to succeed in their education and as they move into adult life. Missing school regularly is harmful to a child’s attainment, safety and physical and mental health, which limits their opportunity to succeed. There is evidence that more students are attending school this year compared to last, thanks to the sector’s efforts, although around 1.6 million children remain persistently absent and miss 10% or more of lessons.

The department has a national approach to supporting all schools to tackle absence, including those in the Battersea constituency. Central to this approach are stronger expectations of local authorities and schools, including special schools, as set out in the ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance, which was made statutory on 19 August 2024. The guidance can be found here:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66bf300da44f1c4c23e5bd1b/Working_together_to_improve_school_attendance_-_August_2024.pdf.

The guidance promotes a support first approach and sets out clear expectations on how schools, trusts, local authorities and wider services should work together and with families to address attendance barriers and provide the right support, including where a pupil is not attending due to special educational needs. The department is committed to ensuring special schools cater to children and young people with the most complex needs and will work with the sector as essential and valued partners to deliver our shared mission and restore parents’ trust.

Every state school in England should now be sharing their daily attendance register data with the department, local authorities and trusts. These bodies can access this data through a secure, interactive dashboard which is maintained by the department, allowing them to target attendance interventions more effectively.

The department is strengthening its tools for faster and more effective school improvement by launching the new Regional Improvement for Standards and Excellence (RISE) teams. Supported by over £20 million, these teams will offer both mandatory targeted intervention for schools identified by Ofsted as needing to improve and a universal service, acting as a catalyst for a self-improving system for all schools. The RISE teams are now beginning work with the first 30 schools eligible for the targeted, bespoke service, with additional schools to begin in April.

School attendance is also supported by broader investments, such as funded breakfast clubs, across all primary schools, including special schools, to ensure children start their day ready to learn.

The department is working across government on plans to provide access to specialist mental health professionals in every school, new Young Futures hubs, including access to mental health support workers, and an additional 8,500 new mental health staff to treat children and adults.

Schools can also allocate pupil premium funding, which has now increased to over £2.9 billion for the 2024/25 financial year, which can be used to support eligible pupils to attend school regularly.

The UK fully supported the adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) and has already submitted to the Convention on Biological Diversity National Targets that are fully aligned with the Framework. We will publish the full UK National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) in due course, and we will provide an assessment of our progress in the implementation of the KMGBF, including progress towards the national targets, in our seventh and eighth national reports in February 2026 and June 2029, respectively.

The UK’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) 2030 and 2035 targets – to reduce economy-wide greenhouse gas emissions by at least 68% and 81% respectively on 1990 levels – are a fair and ambitious contribution to global action on climate change, in line with the Paris Agreement temperature goal, and remains in place.

We are absolutely committed to our climate targets. That is why making Britain a clean energy superpower is one of the five missions of this Government - delivering clean power by 2030 and accelerating the transition to net zero across the economy. This will make it easier and affordable for people across the country to move towards sustainable lifestyles.

The UK was the first major economy to halve its emissions, cutting them by around 53% between 1990 and 2023, while growing our economy by 79%.

The UK over-achieved against the first, second and third Carbon Budgets, and we will deliver an updated cross-economy plan in due course, which will outline the policies and proposals needed to deliver carbon budgets 4-6 and the 2030 and 2035 NDCs on a pathway to net zero.

I refer the hon. Member to the answer given on 23 July 2024 to the Rt Hon Member for Islington North, PQ 592.

We are firmly committed to maintaining and improving animal welfare and want to work closely with the farming sector to deliver high standards.

The use of farrowing crates for pigs is an issue we will want to fully consider in due course.

Government remains committed to supporting London and the transport network on which it depends. We recently provided £485m in funding to support Transport for London’s (TfL) capital programme for 2025/26 and will continue to work with TfL to understand its capital funding needs, which will be considered at Phase 2 of the Spending Review. However, transport in London is devolved to the Mayor of London and TfL and it is for the Mayor to assess the merits of capital projects and make decisions on investment.

Ensuring accessibility for all passengers is at the heart of the Government’s passenger-focussed approach. We know that the experience for disabled people when traveling on rail too often falls short of what is expected and what passengers deserve. We are committed to improving the experience for disabled passengers and have committed to publishing an accessibility roadmap to explain the actions we are taking to improve accessibility ahead of GBR.

We are working to define the approach to development of the roadmap, but I confirm we will engage with disabled people and key organisations, in line with our commitment in the House of Lords as part of the debate on the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act, in order to ensure that it addresses the issues and needs of passengers who require assistance.

Southeastern ticket office changes were agreed under the previous Government. The Department is now examining these plans to ensure passengers remain supported.

We recognise the vital role ticket offices play in the journeys of people with disabilities, and ensuring accessibility for all passengers is at the heart of our passenger-focused approach.

We are carefully considering the best approach to the Access for All programme. This Government is committed to improving the accessibility of the railway and recognises the social and economic benefits this brings to communities.

The last time the Department reviewed fraud and error levels in Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) was in 2022/23, which is reported here: Fraud and error in the benefit system: financial year 2022 to 2023 estimates - GOV.UK. Table 11 demonstrates that 10.1% of the caseload was overpaid and 7.0% was underpaid. We did not review ESA in our fraud and error measurement exercise in 2023/24, but have assumed that those same rates will have continued.

The Government is committed to working in partnership with disabled people and the organisations that represent them.

Following on from the publication of the Get Britain Working White Paper, we will establish a disability panel to ensure that disabled people’s views and voices are at the heart of the design and delivery of our employment reforms. We will carry out in-depth consultations to seek input and expertise from a wide range of stakeholders including disabled people, community groups and employers.

This Government is committed to championing the rights of disabled people and to the principle of working with them, so that their views and voices will be at the heart of all that we do.

The Health Transformation Programme (HTP) is modernising health and disability benefit services to improve user experience and increase trust in these services.

HTP service design has been informed by user research conducted with customers, operational staff and health care professionals, including one-to-one sessions with customers at each stage of their claim. The Department has also engaged with a significant number of stakeholder organisations, establishing positive relationships with representative groups by seeking their expertise before beginning to develop and test new processes.

This collaborative approach will help the department to tailor services to customer needs.

The government is committed to reforming or replacing the Work Capability Assessment, alongside putting in place a proper plan to support disabled people into work. We will say more about this in due course.

We will continue to engage with stakeholders to keep the views of disabled people and people with health conditions at the heart of what we do, as we consider our next steps.

Personal Independence Payment (PIP) provides a contribution to the extra costs that may arise from a disability or health condition. There is no objective way of deciding what an adequate level of PIP should be, as everyone has different requirements reflecting their own circumstances and priorities.

PIP is a non-contributory, non-means-tested, additional cost benefit and can be worth over £9,500 a year, tax free. Individuals can choose how to use the benefit, in the light of their individual needs and preferences. The benefit can also be paid in addition to any other financial or practical support someone may be entitled to such as Universal Credit, Employment and Support Allowance, NHS services, free prescriptions, help with travel costs to appointments or the Blue Badge scheme. The benefits have been consistently uprated in line with inflation since they were introduced and were, like other benefits, increased by 6.7% from 8 April 2024.

DWP pays close attention to the evidence base on the extra costs faced by disabled people; including academic research, analysis by Scope, and DWP’s own commissioned research on the Uses of Health and Disability Benefits from 2019. In order to understand more, DWP is now undertaking a new a survey of Personal Independence Payment customers to understand more about their disability related needs. This project has an advisory group of experts including representatives of the disability charity Scope, academic experts, and Disability Rights UK.

Following commencement of the regulations made under the Health and Care Act 2022, new arrangements will come into effect to make information standards mandatory. Existing standards will need to go through a new process to become mandatory, and once a standard becomes mandatory, organisations will be expected to comply. The timing for the Accessible Information Standard will be considered along with those of the other existing standards. These arrangements are expected to happen this year, once the regulations have been approved by Parliament.

The intent of making information standards mandatory is to improve the rigour of standards, and the consistency of their application. The implementation of Section 95 should have a beneficial impact on those using services, by contributing to the effective operation of the health and care sector. The Accessible Information Standard is intended to improve the accessibility of information, while other standards often specify the technical basis for ensuring that data flows through the system in a usable and standardised form, improving the quality of care and patient outcomes. Information standards do not affect people’s rights.

NHS England commissioned the North of England Commissioning Support Unit to review compliance with the Accessible Information Standard, prior to reviewing the standard. Their findings matched the independent reviews undertaken by Sign Health and Healthwatch, that implementation was inconsistent. NHS England has considered how to strengthen compliance with the standard, including the requirement to identify local implementation leads, and the development and testing of a self-assessment framework.

Following commencement of the regulations made under the Health and Care Act 2022, new arrangements will come into effect to make information standards mandatory. Existing standards will need to go through a new process to become mandatory, and once a standard becomes mandatory, organisations will be expected to comply. The timing for the Accessible Information Standard will be considered along with those of the other existing standards. These arrangements are expected to happen this year, once the regulations have been approved by Parliament.

The intent of making information standards mandatory is to improve the rigour of standards, and the consistency of their application. The implementation of Section 95 should have a beneficial impact on those using services, by contributing to the effective operation of the health and care sector. The Accessible Information Standard is intended to improve the accessibility of information, while other standards often specify the technical basis for ensuring that data flows through the system in a usable and standardised form, improving the quality of care and patient outcomes. Information standards do not affect people’s rights.

NHS England commissioned the North of England Commissioning Support Unit to review compliance with the Accessible Information Standard, prior to reviewing the standard. Their findings matched the independent reviews undertaken by Sign Health and Healthwatch, that implementation was inconsistent. NHS England has considered how to strengthen compliance with the standard, including the requirement to identify local implementation leads, and the development and testing of a self-assessment framework.

Patients awaiting outpatient care make up over 85% of the elective waiting list, which includes children. Minimising missed appointments will help us to make sure we maximise the use of clinical time and ensure that all patients can be seen sooner. This is part of delivering on our commitment that 92% of patients, including children awaiting hospital-based eyecare, return to waiting no longer than 18 weeks from Referral to Treatment.

The following table shows the recorded outcomes of outpatient paediatric ophthalmology appointments in 2023/24, for children aged zero to 18 years old:

Source: Hospital Episode Statistics, NHS England.

No estimate has been made of the cost of missed appointments to outpatient paediatric ophthalmology because the Department does not hold information centrally on the extent to which outpatient clinics are overbooked based on the expectation that some appointments will be cancelled or marked as did not attend, and that clinicians may undertake other clinical work during these missed clinic appointments.

Patients awaiting outpatient care make up over 85% of the elective waiting list, which includes children. Minimising missed appointments will help us to make sure we maximise the use of clinical time and ensure that all patients can be seen sooner. This is part of delivering on our commitment that 92% of patients, including children awaiting hospital-based eyecare, return to waiting no longer than 18 weeks from Referral to Treatment.

The following table shows the recorded outcomes of outpatient paediatric ophthalmology appointments in 2023/24, for children aged zero to 18 years old:

Source: Hospital Episode Statistics, NHS England.

No estimate has been made of the cost of missed appointments to outpatient paediatric ophthalmology because the Department does not hold information centrally on the extent to which outpatient clinics are overbooked based on the expectation that some appointments will be cancelled or marked as did not attend, and that clinicians may undertake other clinical work during these missed clinic appointments.

There are no current plans to require NHS England to publish Referral to Treatment waiting times for glaucoma, macular degeneration, and other irreversible sight loss conditions separately from minor and reversible eye condition waiting times.

We remain very concerned at the disproportionate impact of violence on children, including in the West Bank: education is a priority sector. Any destruction of cultural facilities is also highly concerning. We engage regularly with non-governmental organizations and civil society, who are best placed to communicate needs and rebuild their communities. The Foreign Secretary and I have emphasised the importance of stability throughout all the Occupied Territories to our Israeli counterparts. The Foreign Secretary raised Israel's ongoing operation in Jenin and highlighted the risk that this undermines the Palestinian Authority when he spoke to Foreign Minister Sa'ar on 22 January. The Foreign Secretary also noted the need for violent settlers to be held accountable.

We are deeply alarmed by the disproportionate impact of the conflict on children in Gaza. Most students have not had access to education since the 7th of October 2023 and at least 88 per cent of school buildings need full or major reconstruction. Education is a priority sector, and we are engaging with partners to ensure children's needs are integrated into Gaza's recovery. Through UK support, over 14,000 children in Gaza now have access to education materials. The destruction of cultural facilities is also highly concerning. We engage regularly with NGOs and civil society, who are best placed to communicate needs and rebuild their communities.

The Prime Minister has set out a new strategic vision for government spending on defence and security, and Official Development Assistance (ODA). Detailed decisions on how the ODA budget will be used will be worked through as part of the ongoing Spending Review on the basis of various factors including impact assessments.

The Prime Minister has set out a new strategic vision for government spending on defence and security, and Official Development Assistance (ODA). Detailed decisions on how the ODA budget will be used will be worked through as part of the ongoing Spending Review.

The UK has placed empowering women and girls at the centre of our international work. We remain committed to tackling violence against women and girls around the world, and to supporting global efforts to end preventable maternal, child and newborn deaths in line with Sustainable Development Goal targets.

The Prime Minister has set out a new strategic vision for government spending on defence and security, and Official Development Assistance. Detailed decisions on how the ODA budget will be used will be worked through as part of the ongoing Spending Review on the basis of various factors including impact assessments.