Nadia Whittome

No one should suffer prejudice or discrimination on any grounds, including any perception of their caste.

The judgment of the Employment Appeal Tribunal in Tirkey v. Chandhok shows that someone claiming caste discrimination may rely on existing statutory remedies in the Equality Act 2010 where they can show that their ‘caste’ is related to their ethnic origin, which is itself an aspect of 'race' under the 2010 Act.

The Government is committed to commencing the socio-economic duty in the Equality Act 2010. The duty will require specified public bodies, when making strategic decisions, to consider actively how their decisions might help to reduce the inequalities associated with socio-economic disadvantage.

We know that the duty will only succeed if central Government works in partnership with public sector leaders, communities and other partners up and down the country. We will therefore work closely with relevant organisations to ensure that implementation of the duty is as effective as possible. We will update further on our work to commence the socio-economic duty in due course.

The time limit to bring discrimination cases to a tribunal is being extended from 3 to 6 months through the Employment Rights Bill, which is currently progressing through Parliament. This measure will allow certain claims to be made that currently are either (a) being made but which require, at the tribunal’s discretion, an extension over the 3-month period or (b) not being made as a result of the length of the time limit.

This supports the Government’s commitment to making work pay by strengthening employment rights and providing quicker and more effective resolutions, to the benefit of all parties. The change will align the timelines across different cases, simplifying the process for applicants and employers.

This Government’s position is that conversion practices are abuse. Such practices have no place in society and must be stopped.

Through the development of the Conversion Practices Bill, this Government will deliver on our manifesto commitment to bring forward a full, trans-inclusive ban on conversion practices, implementing key safeguards for LGBT people.

We are committed to listening to all viewpoints as this work progresses, and to engaging with a wide range of stakeholders, organisations and all LGBT communities.

It is crucial that all LGBT+ people are safe and protected from discrimination, including those from ethnic minority and/or faith communities.

Work is underway to deliver the Government’s Manifesto commitments that will enhance legislative protections for LGBT+ individuals. In particular, the Government is committed to delivering a trans-inclusive ban on abusive conversion practices and ensuring that all existing strands of hate crime constitute an aggravated offence.

We are committed to continuing to listen to all viewpoints as this work progresses, and engage with a wide range of stakeholders, organisations and all LGBT+ communities.

The Government renewed its commitment to the 60% office attendance expectation on 24 October, emphasising the importance of collaboration through face-to-face interactions. This decision is supported by a variety of studies highlighting the benefits of hybrid working.

By colocating departments and fostering great workplaces tailored to support local communities, Places for Growth is helping improve office attendance in regional areas. This strategic approach not only enhances collaboration among civil service staff but also strengthens ties within the local community, making the office a more attractive and supportive environment for employees.

The Government has ensured that the potential takeover of Royal Mail has been properly scrutinised and that appropriate guarantees have been put in place to protect the interests of the workforce, customers and the country. These guarantees include the bidder’s agreements with the unions and commitments to the Government to ensure the ongoing provision of services and the protection of the network required to deliver those services. Additionally, the company has an ongoing requirement to fulfil its statutory and regulatory responsibilities, regardless of its ownership.

The Government is invested in protecting and enhancing the rights of vulnerable groups in the workplace.

The Equality Act 2010 requires employers to accommodate the needs of disabled em-ployees through reasonable adjustments. This is likely to include provision for disability-related absence.

In addition, changes proposed by the Employment Rights Bill include making it easier for employees to negotiate a flexible working arrangement which suits their needs. This will benefit, among others, employees with long-term physical or mental health condi-tions and disabilities.

DESNZ does not hold detailed data on the sourcing of biomass.

Drax’s compliance with sustainability criteria is overseen by Ofgem, the independent energy regulator, and the Low Carbon Contracts Company as the counterparty for the Contract for Difference Scheme.

Government works closely with LCCC and Ofgem to ensure that generators only receive subsidies for biomass that meets our sustainability criteria.

Ofgem’s recent investigation related to a breach of annual profiling reporting requirements. Whilst Drax complied with sustainability standards, it had failed to report data accurately. This is a serious matter and Government expects full compliance with all regulatory obligations. Drax’s subsequent £25 million redress payment underscores the robustness of the regulatory system.

Under the End-of-Life Vehicles (Producer Responsibility) Regulations 2005, vehicle manufacturers and importers have a responsibility to establish free collection systems.

The regulations require that by weight, at least 85% of the materials from end-of-life vehicles must be reused or recycled. Additionally, another 10% by weight must be reused, recycled or used for energy recovery, bringing the overall target to 95%.

Vehicle manufacturers must ensure that the vehicles they place on the market are recyclable to those levels.

Currently, there are some city level scrappage schemes operating in the UK, which are administered and publicised by the relevant local authorities.

As a priority, the Government will support Ofgem to review the rules around billing accuracy and supplier billing practices to understand where improvement is needed and whether compliance action is required. Ofgem is also considering new rules to improve and incentivise better billing accuracy and debt support, including default monthly bills for households and reviewing the back billing rules to reduce how far back a supplier can bill a customer where the error was the supplier’s fault.

We believe that when things go wrong, suppliers should successfully resolve issues as quickly as possible. Ofgem will work to review and improve the current complaint handling standards regulations to ensure that suppliers take ownership to manage and resolve complaints effectively and efficiently. It will also ensure there is better automatic customer compensation for failure to deter poor service and drive improvements. Under the guaranteed standards of performance (GSOPs), suppliers are required to make automatic compensation payments to customers if they fail to meet specific customer service standards.

The vast majority of AI systems are regulated at the point of use, and the UK's existing expert regulators are best placed to do this. In response to the AI Action Plan, the government has committed to supporting regulators in evaluating their AI capabilities and understanding how these can be strengthened.

The government is also developing legislative proposals which will allow the UK to safely realise the benefits of the most powerful AI systems. These proposals will be highly targeted, build on the voluntary commitments secured at the Seoul and Bletchley AI Summits, and be future-proofed against this fast-evolving technology.

Digital inclusion is a priority for Government. It means ensuring everyone has the access, skills, support and confidence to engage in our modern digital society, whatever their circumstances. Digital exclusion disproportionately impacts certain demographics, creating new inequalities and exacerbating existing ones. As we develop our approach on tackling this issue we will be working closely with local communities, local authorities, businesses and charities to ensure everything we do is well targeted. We hope to announce more on this in the near future.

The government is focused on implementing the Online Safety Act as quickly as possible working with Ofcom. Ofcom has consulted on its draft Children’s Safety codes of practice which set out the steps companies must take to protect children on their platforms under the Online Safety Act. Ofcom will publish the finalised codes and guidance in Spring 2025 and the government will work to ensure these codes are in effect as soon as possible.

Deepfakes and other forms of manipulated media are captured by the Online Safety Act where they constitute user generated content that is illegal content, or content which is harmful to children. Services that are likely to be accessed by children will need to take steps to protect children from harmful content and behaviour on their services, including AI-generated or enabled content.

We are in the early stages of the new Government and we are considering the full range of policy options to support the arts and creative industries, and help the cultural sectors to thrive.

This government is committed to supporting culture, and making sure the arts and cultural activities will no longer be the preserve of a privileged few. Although individual decisions on financial support for arts bodies are rightly subject to the arm’s-length principle and a matter for Arts Council England, we are keen to ensure that funding for the arts is fairly distributed across the country.

We are working with Arts Council England and others to understand what the challenges and opportunities are for our sectors. As part of the Government’s “Creating Growth” plan, DCMS is undertaking a review documenting current and past funding for the arts, culture, and heritage sectors.

Apprenticeships are a great way for individuals to begin or progress a successful career in the hair and beauty industry. Employers in the sector have developed several apprenticeships, including the level 2 hairdressing professional standard, to help them develop their workforce.

The department continues to promote apprenticeships to young people, adults and employers through the Skills for Life campaign.

Employers can benefit from £1,000 payments when they take on apprentices aged 16 to 18, or apprentices aged 19 to 24 who have an education, health and care (EHC) plan or have been in local authority care. To support smaller employers access apprenticeships, the government pays full training costs for young apprentices aged 16 to 21, and for apprentices aged 22 to 24 who have an EHC plan, or have been in local authority care.

Employers also benefit from not being required to pay anything towards employees’ National Insurance for all apprentices aged up to age 25 where they earn less than £967 a week, or £50,270 a year.

The department does not currently have plans to reclassify absences for religious observance.

The law recognises that absences for a small number of circumstances, including for religious observance, are allowable. Where parents choose not to send their child to school on a day that is exclusively set apart for religious observance by the religious body that they belong to, they will not be taken to have failed to secure their child’s regular attendance, and enforcement action cannot be taken. Schools must record such absences in the attendance register using code R, which is classified for statistical purposes as authorised absence. Other forms of authorised absence include illness or suspension from school.

Sessions recorded as ‘unable to attend because of unavoidable cause’ relate to issues that make attendance genuinely impossible, such as unexpected school closure, widespread travel disruption caused by emergencies, or a pupil being in youth detention. It would not be appropriate to classify absence for religious observance, or other types of authorised absence, under the ‘unavoidable cause’ category.

Data on Sure Start children’s centres is supplied by local authorities via the department’s Get Information about Schools database portal at: https://www.get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/.

Based on information supplied by local authorities in the East Midlands, 41 children’s centres have closed since 2010. Local authorities in the East Midlands have converted a further 44 children’s centres into children’s centre linked sites. ‘Children’s centre linked sites’ are formerly children's centres in their own right, but they no longer meet the statutory definition of a children’s centre. They offer some early childhood services on behalf of another children's centre.

The information on children’s centres closed since 2010 is based on data supplied by the local authorities in the East Midlands as of 8 April 2025. These figures could change again in future, since local authorities may update the database at any time.

The government’s Plan for Change sets out a commitment to give children the best start in life, measured by a record 75% of children starting school ready to learn and measured by the number hitting the early learning goals at the end of reception. Delivering this will require strengthening and joining up family services to improve support through pregnancy and early childhood. This includes continuing to invest in and build up Family Hubs and Start for Life programmes. In the 2025/26 financial year, the government is providing a £126 million boost for Family Hubs and Start for Life services to give every child the best start in life and to deliver on the Plan for Change. More information on this funding can be found here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/families-to-receive-126-million-in-early-years-support.

Five local authorities in the East Midlands currently receive funding for Family Hubs and Start for Life services: Derby, Lincolnshire, Nottingham, North Northamptonshire and Leicester. Leicestershire, the upper-tier authority for the council, separately receives funding for Family Hubs only, as part of the Family Hubs Transformation Fund. On 3 April, participating local authorities received confirmation of their funding allocations for the 2025/26 financial year.

This government is committed to ensuring that teachers, parents, and young people are equipped with the guidance and resources designed to develop critical thinking, logical reasoning, and empathy, to build resilience to, and reject hateful narratives.

The department’s Educate Against Hate website hosts quality-assured resources to help teachers and school leaders teach students about extremism, conflict, spotting misinformation and disinformation, online safety, and our shared fundamental British values.

Following the events of 7 October 2023, a blog containing practical advice for discussing ongoing conflicts was published on the Educate Against Hate website. The blog signposts relevant resources from reputable organisations that can support schools to teach about this sensitive topic in a balanced way, avoiding antisemitic, anti-Muslim and/or other discriminatory narratives.

Educate Against Hate provides a range of resources and guides to support teachers and education practitioners in confidently facilitating conversations around the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict. The resources are wide ranging and address why it is important to discuss this topic, how to navigate the news and social media, and how to support young people who may be directly affected by the conflict. All guidance and teaching resources hosted on Educate Against Hate are drawn from reputable organisations.

There are also practical resources designed to be used in classrooms, that focus on Palestine and Israel and cover the history of the conflict. They challenge students and learners to examine a range of sources such as images, maps and documentation to debate and discuss different perspectives in a polite and respectful way, and in the controlled environment of a classroom, before they reach their own views on the topic.

Littering and fly-tipping are crimes which blight our communities and harm the environment. Defra chairs the National Fly-Tipping Prevention Group which aims to develop and disseminate various practical tools on tackling fly-tipping. These include a guide on how local authorities can raise awareness of the household waste duty of care, which helps to prevent householders from giving their waste to a fly-tipper. The guide provides suggested messaging, including the impact of fly-tipping locally.

Defra is also proud to support and endorse national clean-up initiatives such as the Great British Spring Clean, and we will continue to use our influence to encourage as many people and businesses as possible to participate in these types of events.

At this time, the Government is not planning to implement a new national litter strategy. This Government is committed to reducing waste by transitioning to a circular economy. To support the government in achieving this goal we have convened a Circular Economy Taskforce, comprising experts from across government, industry, academia and civil society, to help us develop a Circular Economy Strategy for England.

As part of this we remain focused on delivering the Collection and Packaging Reforms including the Deposit Return Scheme (DRS). The DRS will go live in October 2027. It will introduce a redeemable deposit on single-use in-scope drinks containers which can be claimed back by customers when the empty container is returned. This will reduce litter, increase recycling rates, create high quality recyclate for producers, and promote a circular economy. We remain committed to supporting local authorities to tackle littering and are currently examining what further steps we can take to aid them.

As part of the Government’s consideration of the Climate and Nature Bill, on 24 January 2025, I committed to strengthen relationships between the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) and the Special representative for Nature. There is already a strong working relationship between JNCC and CCC. We intend to build on this at a more strategic level and work has commenced to integrate the Special Representative for Nature into this engagement.

This Government is absolutely committed to tackling the climate and nature crises and has agreed steps to take forward the spirit and substance of the Climate and Nature Bill with the Bill’s Sponsors. An update on these steps will be set out in a Ministerial Statement by the autumn.

Information about the Carbon footprint for the UK – including UK consumption emission figures from imported goods and services - is published by Defra and is available up to 2021 : Carbon footprint for the UK and England to 2021 - GOV.UK . Figures are due to be updated in the Spring.

National Highways is responsible for litter collection on motorways and some ‘A’ roads whilst the relevant local authorities manage litter collection on the rest of the roads in England.

National Highways is committed to keeping its roads predominantly free from litter, without compromising safety and delivering affordably. National Highways pick litter on a section of the Strategic Road Network (SRN) every day and is consistently working to deliver an improved and more rapid clean up using innovative interventions such as industrial vacuums, as well as undertaking a number of anti-littering interventions to influence behaviours and attitudes of road users towards litter. These include anti-littering messaging through social media, trialling AI enforcement cameras to capture those throwing litter on the SRN, using geofencing to send targeted anti-littering messages to mobile devices around identified litter hotspots, as well as putting up anti-littering posters and signs and installing car and lorry height bins at motorway service areas, to encourage drivers and passengers to dispose of their litter appropriately.

In 2020, the Department undertook a public consultation on options for changing the way pavement parking is managed outside London. The consultation asked specific questions about impacts on people with protected characteristics and we will use the information to undertake an equality analysis of the chosen policy option, in line with the Public Sector Equality Duty. Our plan is to publish a formal response to the consultation, summarising the views received and announcing the Government’s next steps for pavement parking policy.

The formal consultation response will be available to view at: www.gov.uk/government/consultations/managing-pavement-parking.

This Government is committed to accelerating the roll out of charge points for electric vehicles. Guidance for local authorities to develop policies on the safe use of cross-pavement solutions will be published in due course.

The English National Concessionary Travel Scheme (ENCTS) provides free off-peak bus travel to those with eligible disabilities and those of state pension age, currently sixty-six. Local authorities in England have the power to go beyond their statutory obligations under the ENCTS and offer additional discretionary concessions, such as extending the times at which concessionary passes can be used.

No assessment has been made as to the standardisation of training, as the training that an individual receives is dependent upon which licence they are seeking - such as a Private Pilots Licence (PPL) or Commercial Pilots Licence (CPL). The competencies required to be demonstrated may differ depending on the licence type being issued but are standardised within each licence type.

The decision on whether to unilaterally allow UK licenced pilots to operate EU registered aircraft is entirely a decision for the European Union (EU) and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). Article 445(1) in the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement outlines the areas in which both the UK and EU may cooperate in aviation safety. Under these terms, any future mutual recognition of personnel licencing would require an expansion to the TCA.