Max Wilkinson

This Government has set out an unprecedented mission to halve violence against women and girls in a decade and we are determined to deliver on that ambition.

We will keep all legislation under review as we develop our approach to tackle sexual exploitation and violence against women and girls. We currently have no plans to change the law but will consider licensing regulations to make sure that they are protecting the vulnerable and tackling sexual crime, as well as public nuisance.

The Prime Minister announced a single national security strategy will be published ahead of the NATO Summit in June. This will bring together the national security related reviews underway. As part of creating this strategy, the drafters will consult with relevant Departments and Agencies, including intelligence services.

We are working with departments on their future workforce and location plans as part of the upcoming Spending Review.

We are working with departments on their future plans as part of the upcoming Spending Review.

The Cabinet Office operates spend control on behalf of HMT on an annual basis. During this process departments and ALBs submit an overview of any spend (including marketing and advertising) planned for the next financial year.

Historical data on advertising spend is listed by department on the Government efficiency, transparency and accountability page on GOV.uk.

The Cabinet Office operates spend control on behalf of HMT on an annual basis. During this process departments and ALBs submit an overview of any spend (including marketing and advertising) planned for the next financial year.

Historical data on advertising spend is listed by department on the Government efficiency, transparency and accountability page on GOV.uk.

Information provided by employers to HMRC show the number of individuals in receipt of Statutory Shared Parental Pay (ShPP). This data provides a broad indication of SPL take-up but does not include anyone taking unpaid Shared Parental Leave.

Table 1: Individuals in receipt of ShPP by gender, 2019/20 to 2023/24 (the latest year for which full year data is available)

1. Data is collected using HMRC Real Time Information (RTI) and is subject to revision.
2. Figures are rounded to the nearest hundred.
3. Figures are based on the total number of individuals in a given year, irrespective of when the payment first started. Some individuals will be counted across two years.

The Government supports the development of geothermal projects, provided they deliver affordable energy for consumers and are environmentally appropriate. The following schemes are open to applications from deep-geothermal projects: Contracts for Difference (for geothermal power); the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme and Green Heat Network Fund (for geothermal heat).

Recognising that cost is a barrier, the Government commissioned research to understand how we can support the geothermal sector to achieve its potential.

We have various schemes already delivering improvements to home energy efficiency through the Energy Company Obligation, the Great British Insulation Scheme, the Home Upgrade Grant, the Warm Homes: Social Housing Decarbonisation, and the Boiler Upgrade Scheme.

Customers can also use the tool ‘Find Ways to Save Energy in your Home’ (www.gov.uk/improve-energy-efficiency), which provides users with tailored recommendations for home improvements to increase energy efficiency and clean heat.

As the first step towards the Warm Homes Plan, the Government has committed an initial £3.4 billion over the next 3 years towards heat decarbonisation and household energy efficiency.

Domestic solar will play an essential role. Through the Solar Taskforce and the forthcoming Solar Roadmap, we will set out recommendations on how Government and industry can work together to significantly increase rooftop solar capacity.

We agreed with much of the Leaders’ Declaration and continue to work closely with our international partners. The UK worked hard to agree text in the Leaders’ Declaration that reflected our commitment to balance opportunity with security when it comes to AI, but unfortunately we were not able to reach agreement on all parts of the declaration. It is important to note that the UK worked closely with the French team throughout and signed other agreements at the Summit on sustainability, cybersecurity and the impact of AI on the workforce.

We remain a very close partner to France on all aspects of AI, and an active and eager participant in all future AI Summits which were started at Bletchley Park in November 2023.

The UK is also continuing to take an active role in international AI discussions – including working bilaterally and through fora such as the G7, G20, OECD-Global Partnership on AI (GPAI), the United Nations and Council of Europe.

DCMS publishes transparency data on GOV.UK, including details of ministers’ meetings with external organisations. Details of all meetings between 1 July and 30 September 2024 were published on 30 January 2025 and details for the following quarter will be published in due course.

The Government is committed to ensuring that everyone, regardless of background, should have access to and benefit from quality sport and physical activity opportunities.

All future funding of sports facilities will be considered as part of the forthcoming Spending Review.

The Government is committed to ensuring that everyone, regardless of background, should have access to and benefit from quality sport and physical activity opportunities.

Sport England provides long term investment to the Lawn Tennis Association, the National Governing Body for padel tennis in Britain, which receives up to £10.2 million for five years to invest in community tennis and padel initiatives that will benefit everyone.

All future funding of sports facilities will be considered as part of the forthcoming Spending Review.

The Government is committed to ensuring that everyone, regardless of background, should have access to and benefit from quality sport and physical activity opportunities. We recognise that everyone should have access to high quality facilities and opportunities to participate in sport and physical activity.

The previous Government commissioned an independent impact evaluation assessment of the Park Tennis Court Programme in August 2023, with a key focus being the impact of the programme on participation. We expect the full evaluation impact report to be published during April 2026.

The Minister for Creative Industries, Arts and Tourism, Chris Bryant, met the EU Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness, Youth, Culture and Sport, Glenn Micallef, on 26 February.

The Minister communicated the UK’s commitment to seeking a closer, more cooperative relationship with the EU, including by supporting UK creative professionals to tour in Europe. By ensuring artists and crew can move efficiently, we can support economic growth, job creation, and artistic innovation across the continent. The Minister and the Commissioner agreed to meet again to continue these discussions.

The department does not hold information on the number of pupils who have been absent from school due to the lack of provision of special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) services. However, we recognise that rates of absence are generally higher for pupils with SEND and children attending special schools.

We also recognise that barriers to attendance are wide and complex, and this is particularly true for pupils with SEND. Addressing these barriers requires a support-first approach and strong relationships between families, schools, local authorities and other relevant local services.

This is why the department has published the ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance, which became statutory in August 2024. The guidance promotes a support-first approach and provides detail on additional support for pupils with SEND. Where a pupil is not attending due to unmet or additional needs, this guidance sets out clear expectations on how schools, local authorities and wider services work together to access and provide the right support to improve attendance.

The department is working closely with schools and local authorities to ensure that education settings are able to meet the needs of children and young people with SEND, including announcing £1 billion investment in high needs at the Autumn Budget 2024. This funding will help to ensure all children can access the high quality education that should be their right.

As part of the department’s transparency data, a register of decisions to dispose of school playing field land is published on GOV.UK: www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-land-decisions-about-disposals.

Playing field land is defined as land in the open air which is provided for the purposes of physical education or recreation.

85 applications were given consent to dispose of playing field land between 1 January 2019 to 31 December 2023 (12 in 2019, 21 in 2020, 14 in 2021, 20 in 2022 and 18 in 2023). The majority of those were disposals by way of freehold sale, but the figures also include appropriation of playing field land to another local authority use, such as, social housing or highways, or the grant or surrender of a lease of more than 30 years.

18 applications were given consent to dispose of playing field land between 1 January and 31 October 2024. The department anticipates the cases will be added to the published list on GOV.UK by the end of January 2025.

Section 100 of the Children and Families Act 2014 places a duty on maintained schools, academies and pupil referral units to make arrangements for supporting pupils with medical conditions, including allergies.

The statutory guidance ‘Supporting pupils at school with medical conditions’ makes clear to schools what is expected of them in taking reasonable steps to fulfil their legal obligations and meet the individual needs of pupils with medical conditions. Schools should ensure they are aware of any pupils with medical conditions and have policies and processes in place to ensure these can be well managed.

The department included a reminder to schools of these duties in its regular schools’ email bulletin in both March and September 2024. In the same communication, the department also alerted schools to the newly created Schools Allergy Code. The Code was developed by the Allergy Team, the Independent Schools’ Bursars Association and the Benedict Blythe Foundation, who are all trusted voices on the matter of allergies. The department has now also added a link to the Code to its online allergy guidance on GOV.UK.

The department will keep the statutory guidance under review as it takes forward its commitment to delivering an inclusive mainstream system.

Legislation allows taxis and private hire vehicles to operate outside of the area in which they are licensed. Taxis can only ply for hire (pick up passengers at taxi ranks or be hailed in the street) in the area in which they are licensed. Pre-booked work by private hire vehicles and taxis can be undertaken anywhere. This allows the sector to work flexibly to meet the needs of their passengers.

The Government however recognises concerns around out-of-area working and is considering options to strengthen the regulation of the sector.

£123m was committed to design the first phase of Midlands Rail Hub in March 2024, which, subject to future decisions, could be delivered by the early 2030s.

In December, the Chancellor launched the second stage of the Spending Review. This is a zero-based Spending Review, to ensure every line of spending – including the transport infrastructure portfolio – delivers the Plan for Change and provides good value for taxpayers. We expect the Spending Review to conclude by June 2025.

There are no immediate plans to amend the regulations on electrically assisted pedal cycles (EAPCs). The previous administration consulted on potential changes to regulations, including increasing the maximum power of an EAPC from 250 to 500 Watts, but the Government has decided against this.

More broadly, the Government’s White Paper on English Devolution, published in December 2024, included proposals for greater powers for Local Transport Authorities to manage EAPC rental schemes and to tackle the scourge of badly parked cycles and e-cycles.

In addition, the Government will be bringing forward new legislation to enable the police to take vehicles, including EAPCs, off the road more quickly where they are being ridden in an anti-social manner, with officers no longer required to issue a warning before seizing them.

Finally, the Department published updated information for the public in December 2024 on the legal use of EAPCs, which is available on gov.uk. It is for the police to take enforcement action where these rules are not followed.

This Government takes the condition of local roads very seriously and is committed to enabling local highway authorities to maintain and renew the local highway network.

As well as providing highway maintenance capital funding allocations to local highway authorities in England, it also funds the Transport Research Innovation Grant (T-TRIG) programme, run jointly with the Connected Places Catapult, and is funding the £30 million “Live Labs” Decarbonising Roads programme, which enables local authorities to trial innovative low-carbon ways of maintaining their highway networks.

In addition to the funding that the Department provides to local highway authorities, it endorses guidance such as the UK Roads Leadership Group’s Code of Practice on Well Managed Highway Infrastructure. This recommends that local highway authorities take an integrated, risk-based approach to managing their highway infrastructure, and offers advice on all aspects of highway maintenance, including the frequency of inspections recommended for various types of structures. The Department has committed to updating this guidance and has begun scoping changes with the UKRLG.

Old Oak Common is essential to support the Government’s growth mission. We recognise the potential economic impact that disruption could have, and my department continues to work with Network Rail and the Train Operating Companies to align works and minimise disruption to passengers on the Great Western Main Line during the construction of the new station. We are also using standard industry precedents to manage enhancements on the network including compensating industry bodies.

Evidence shows that expert support such as Occupational Health services (including vocational rehabilitation services) can be a critical component in helping individuals remain in and return to work, reducing unnecessary sickness absence, increasing productivity and enabling individuals to live better for longer. This Government set out our plans to tackle economic inactivity driven by ill health and increase participation in the labour market in the Get Britain Working White Paper last year. These included an independent review which is considering how to support and enable employers to recruit and retain more people with a health condition or disability, promote healthy workplaces and support more people to stay in or return to work from periods of sickness absence.

We are working to develop proposals for health and disability reform in the months ahead and will set them out in a Green Paper ahead of the Spring Statement later this year. This will launch a public consultation on the proposals. 

This Government is committed to putting the views and voices of disabled people at the heart of all that we do, so we will consult on these proposals, with disabled people and representative organisations.

Ahead of the formal consultation for the Green Paper, we have already started to explore ways of engaging with disabled people and their representatives, including through stakeholder roundtables and public visits. We look forward to progressing these initiatives over the coming months.

People in receipt of Housing Benefit are always better off in work than someone wholly reliant on benefits. In addition to any financial advantage, there are important non-financial benefits of working. These benefits include learning new skills, improved confidence and independence as well as a positive effect on an individual's mental and physical health.

The Department acknowledges the challenge presented by the interaction between Universal Credit and Housing Benefit for those residing in Supported Housing and Temporary Accommodation and will consider the issue carefully in partnership with stakeholders.

In 2019, the UK’s Chief Medical Officers reviewed the evidence on the relationship between screen time and mental health in children. The commentary found an association between the two but could not establish a causal relationship.

In 2023, The National Institute for Health and Care Research commissioned a longitudinal study exploring the potential causal impact of social media use on young people’s mental health in the United Kingdom. The study found little evidence to suggest that spending more time on social media is associated with more mental health problems in young people.

Our focus is on keeping young people safe, while also benefitting from the latest technology. By the summer, robust new protections for children will be in force through the Online Safety Act to protect them from harmful content and ensure they have an age-appropriate experience online.

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology recently announced a feasibility study on methods and data to understand the impact of smartphones and social media on children; this began on 2 December 2024 and will be completed in May 2025.

The Department recognises that deep geothermal has the potential to be valuable part of the National Health Service’s energy mix. The clean, consistent energy offered by successful geothermal projects could make a significant contribution to the NHS’s 2040 Net Zero target, whilst supporting the NHS’s overall energy security and resilience.

However, there are barriers that must first be addressed, including the United Kingdom sector’s lack of relative maturity, the geological risks posed by deep bore projects, the extensive payback periods, project failure rates, and the high upfront capital demand of such projects. These issues are outside of the competence of the Department of Health and Social Care and would be for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to explore further as the lead energy department.

We are committed to moving towards a Neighbourhood Health Service, with more care delivered in local communities to spot problems earlier, supporting people to stay healthier and maintain their independence for longer

Achieving our vision for a Neighbourhood Health Service will involve health and care services, including social care, wider local government services, and statutory services such as housing and employment, and the voluntary sector. There will be a strong focus on how they collaborate with system partners to prevent people spending unnecessary time in hospitals or care homes. The full vision for the health system will be set out in the 10-Year Health Plan.

Whilst the Department is not responsible for decisions about the principal occupational therapist roles in adult social care or National Health Service trusts, the role of mandating would sit with employers and the regulator of principal occupational therapists, which is the Health and Care Professions Council.

The refreshed Long Term Workforce Plan, which will be published in summer 2025, will deliver the transformed health service we will build over the next decade, and will ensure that the National Health Service has the right people, including qualified occupational therapists, in the right places, with the right skills to deliver the care patients need when they need it.

The Department supports occupational health students in training with the NHS Learning Support Fund (LSF), providing eligible students with a non-repayable grant of £5,000 a year. Further financial support is also available for childcare, dual accommodation costs and travel.