Matt Bishop

The government has allocated £87.5 million of dormant assets funding to the Community Wealth Fund and is committed to ensuring it delivers meaningful benefits to communities across England. DCMS and MHCLG are working to shortly publish the government response, this will set out the final design of the Community Wealth Fund, including further information on how beneficiary communities will be selected, and other elements of its delivery.

Reforming children’s social care is critical to giving hundreds of thousands of children and young people the start in life they deserve. In November, through the ‘Keeping children safe, helping families thrive’ policy statement, this government set out its plans for the biggest overhaul to children’s social care in a generation. This includes ensuring that every child is safe inside and outside of their home and have access to the right help at the right time.

This government wants to shift the focus of the children's social care system to early support. We will continue to deliver whole-system reform to help families to overcome challenges, stay together and thrive, where appropriate, and to keep children safe and in stable loving homes, including when they cannot stay with their family. This includes through roll out of the families first for children pathfinder and family networks pilot, which includes multi-agency child protection reforms. The ‘Local Government Finance Settlement’ policy statement also sets out an additional £250 million through the Children’s Social Care Prevention Grant, which will enable investment in prevention activity.

We have also set out our vision to ensure children are kept safe through changes to the existing legislative framework which are set out in the Children’s Wellbeing and School Bill. This includes improving information sharing across and within agencies through the use of a single unique identifier for children, strengthening protecting children from harm through integrated multi-agency child protection teams, placing a new duty on safeguarding partners to ensure education is sufficiently involved in multi-agency safeguarding arrangements, and requiring parents to obtain consent from their local authority if they wish to home educate children where there are child protection concerns.

Since July, this government has had to take some tough decisions to get our public finances back on track, but we are continuing to invest in the early years sector, supporting the delivery of the entitlements and recognising the vital role the sector plays in giving children the best start in life.

The department expects to provide over £8 billion for early years entitlements in the 2025/26 financial year, which is a more than 30% increase compared to 2024/25, as the department continues to rollout the expansion of the entitlements to eligible working parents of children aged from nine months.

On 10 December, the department published details of local authorities’ early years entitlements funding for 2025 to 2026. The funding rates for 2025/26 include funding to reflect the national living wage announced at the Autumn Budget 2024.

HM Treasury are also increasing the Employment Allowance to £10,500 and expanding this to all eligible employers, meaning some smaller providers may pay no National Insurance at all in the 2025/26 financial year. The government has confirmed that public sector employers, including those in the early years sector, will be compensated for the increase in their National Insurance contributions.

On top of over £8 billion through the core funding rates, the department is also providing an additional £75 million in an expansion grant for 2025/26 to support the sector in this pivotal year to grow the places and the workforce needed to deliver the final phase of expanded childcare entitlements from September 2025. This is in addition to the largest ever uplift in the early years pupil premium, increasing rates by over 45% to up to £570 per eligible child per year. This unprecedented increase is an investment in quality early education for those children who need it most, in the areas that need it most to tackle childcare deserts and give children the support they need to be ‘school ready’ at age 5 and go on to achieve and thrive.

The department has regular contact with each local authority in England about their sufficiency of childcare and any issues they are facing. Where local authorities report sufficiency challenges, the department discusses what action the local authority is taking to address those issues and, where needed, supports the local authority with any specific requirements through our childcare sufficiency support contract.

Giving children the best start in life is key to the government’s Opportunity Mission. Good parenting and high quality early education provide the foundation for children to achieve and thrive. This government is determined to ensure that parents have access to high quality, affordable and flexible early education and childcare.

The department is rolling out more government-funded childcare entitlements to help millions of families, working hand in hand with the early years sector to build a system that works for them, parents and, above all, children. This includes delivering 3,000 new and expanded school based nurseries to make high quality childcare accessible and available. As a first step, primary schools can now apply for up to £150,000 of £15 million capital funding, with the first stage of the plan set to support up to 300 new or expanded nurseries across England. High quality, school-based nursery provision is popular with parents, especially families with multiple children. It can help schools upgrade spare space whilst also providing early support to children and families, supporting their transition into primary school. School-based nursery settings have proportionally higher qualified staff and see lower staff turnover, providing more consistency of care for children. Proportionally, school-based nurseries also look after more children with special educational needs and disabilities and offer a higher proportion of places in the most deprived areas.

In 2024/25, early years providers are set to benefit from over £2 billion extra investment compared to last year, to support the rollout of 30 hours of government-funded early education from next September, rising in 2027/28 to over £4.1 billion. As announced in the Autumn Budget 2024, we expect to provide over £8 billion for the early years entitlements in 2025/26, which is around a 30% increase compared to 2024/25, as we continue to deliver the expansion to eligible working parents of children aged from nine months.

The planned September 2025 childcare rollout of 30 funded hours per week will go ahead, but there will be challenges, including providers securing enough staff and places to meet demand, with the capacity needed varying across the country. The department is supporting the sector to attract talented staff and childminders to join the workforce by creating conditions for improved recruitment. We are urging the public to ‘do something BIG’ and start a career working with small children through our national recruitment campaign. Our dedicated website also helps people find out more about gaining qualifications and search for existing job vacancies. In 20 local authorities, we are piloting initiatives to understand whether £1,000 in financial incentives will boost recruitment in early years alongside a childminder start-up grant scheme.

Skills Bootcamps for the early years are available and lead to an accelerated apprenticeship, and we are funding Early Years Initial Teacher Training as a route for new and existing staff to gain Early Years Teacher Status. To support childminders to join and stay in the profession, we have implemented new flexibilities to work with more people and spend more time working from non-domestic premises.

We are working closely with local areas and the early years sector to do everything we can to ensure there are enough places and the sector has the workforce it needs to provide those places and to bridge local gaps ahead of September 2025.

Currently, the Equivalent or Lower Qualification (ELQ) rules prevent those studying for a second higher education course, at a level lower or equivalent to their first qualification, from receiving either tuition fee loans or maintenance loans for that course.

There are some exceptions for students who want to retrain in teaching, architecture, social work, medicine, dentistry, veterinary science and healthcare. Students on these courses may qualify for some support, even if they already have an ELQ. The support received will depend on the course studied and, in some cases, the mode of study.

However, the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) will launch in January 2027, giving new learners access to a loan entitlement equal to four years of full-time tuition funding. This is currently equal to £38,140 based on fee rates for the 2025/26 academic year. Returning learners who have previously received government support will have a reduced entitlement, depending on previous funding received.

Under the LLE, ELQ rules will be removed, thereby enabling more people to retrain and upskill throughout their working lives.

We are supporting businesses to capitalise on strong global demand for UK food and drink products by breaking down barriers to trade and maximising access to export markets. Since Labour took office, the UK now has a network of sixteen agrifood and drink attachés covering all continents who are breaking down these barriers and creating new opportunities for the sector. We have had notable recent market access wins across the farming sector including relisting sites to export pork to China estimated by industry to be worth £80 million and securing for the first time access for UK beetroot exports to the USA.

The Government is committed to developing a trade strategy that will support economic growth and promote the highest standards of food production. We have been clear that we will protect farmers from being undercut by low welfare and low standards in trade deals. Europe remains a priority market, and we are seeking to negotiate a veterinary/Sanitary and Phytosanitary agreement with the EU to boost trade and deliver benefits to businesses and consumers on both sides. The Government is ambitious and wants to move forward at pace, but delivering new agreements will take time.

The Government inherited flood assets in their worst condition on record following years of underinvestment by the previous Government – just 92.1% of the Environment Agency’s 38,000 high consequence assets are currently at required condition.

To ensure we protect the country from the devastating impacts of flooding, we will invest £2.4 billion in 2024/25 and 2025/26 to improve flood resilience, by building, maintaining, and repairing flood defences.

The government wants everyone to have access to public transport and is   committed to improving services so they are more inclusive and enable disabled people to travel safely, confidently and with dignity. On October 1st, the first phase of the Public Service Vehicles (Accessible Information) Regulations 2023 came into force, meaning that newer vehicles providing local services must provide audible and visible information on stops, destinations and diversions. The majority of services will need to comply by October 2026.

The government will also shortly introduce a new Bus Services Bill that will give local leaders the freedom to take decisions to deliver their local transport priorities and ensure networks meet the needs of the communities who rely on them, including disabled people.

It is already a requirement that cycles have white front and red rear lights lit when being ridden at night. Under The Road Vehicles Lighting Regulations 1989 cycles must also be fitted with a red rear reflector and amber pedal reflectors (if manufactured after 1 October 1985). Rule 60 of The Highway Code explains these requirements, the enforcement of which is a matter for the police. The Government has no plans to require cyclists to have lights on their cycles in daylight hours.

All DWP colleagues are trained to support our most vulnerable customers and have access to a wide range of guidance and signposting to support them. Where further specialist help is required, DWP has a national network of Advanced Customer Support Senior Leaders who can provide additional advice and support through the local networks they have built with external partners and organisations. This could include those who can offer digital and other support to access our services.

Through the national DWP Visiting Service the Department provides additional face-to-face support across all service lines to customers who cannot access DWP services in any other way. A visit can be arranged for a customer if they need extra help to claim benefits, for example because they have complex needs, are disabled, are a vulnerable young person making a claim for the first time, have nobody else to support them or cannot claim benefits in any other way. There is also work underway to look at how we can enhance our Visiting service further so that it is even more flexible to support customers differing needs.

In close collaboration with the Advanced Customer Support team, the Digital Group is driving efforts to standardise how the Department captures and records the needs of our most vulnerable customers, introducing consistency in areas such as accessibility markers.

We are also looking at a re-launch of our Strategic Video Service at the end of 2025, to bring more choice for those customers who struggle to access a physical location. In addition, we have developed an external-facing Application Programming Interface (API), which enables Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to obtain real-time confirmation of a customer's entitlement to relevant benefits and allows eligible customers to take up a social tariff for their broadband, supporting low-income families by reducing their costs and enabling them to stay connected.

Chief Constables have operational responsibility for consideration of firearms licensing applications and the allocation of resources to firearms licensing units.

However, we expect police forces to ensure that all applications for firearm certificates, whether new applications or those for renewal, are dealt with as efficiently as possible subject to addressing public safety risks.

My thoughts remain with householders and business owners impacted by flooding after Storm Bert, flooding is a devastating experience for those affected.

Government support in the aftermath of flooding is only provided in exceptional circumstances. On this occasion, the Flood Recovery Framework was not activated following Storm Bert, due to the localised nature of the flooding. Overall, the scale of impacts was similar to that seen in many local areas this autumn and was not sufficiently significant for Government to intervene and for the Framework to be activated.

My thoughts remain with householders and business owners impacted by flooding after Storm Bert, flooding is a devastating experience for those affected.

Government support in the aftermath of flooding is only provided in exceptional circumstances. On this occasion, the Flood Recovery Framework was not activated following Storm Bert, due to the localised nature of the flooding. Overall, the scale of impacts was similar to that seen in many local areas this autumn and was not sufficiently significant for Government to intervene and for the Framework to be activated.

NHS Wales and NHS England have a Statement of Values and Principles that underpins the arrangements for treatment for patients living on the Wales England border. This supports better patient outcomes and avoids fragmentation of care for those people living either side of the border. Further detail on the statement is in the link below.

https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/cross-border-statement-of-values-and-principles.pdf