Asked by: Nigel Huddleston (Conservative - Droitwich and Evesham)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, whether her Department has taken steps to explore hosting the Special Olympics World Summer Games.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Government is committed to delivering international events with pride, building upon the UK’s global reputation for excellence in staging major sporting events.
We are always keen to work alongside our arm’s-length body UK Sport and other stakeholders to grow and develop our strong pipeline of events. We prioritise support for events based on a range of criteria, which includes how far they help create social and economic benefits for the UK and contribute towards the Government's Plan for Change.
The UK has already secured a strong pipeline of events over the coming years, including the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games, 2026 European Athletics Championships in Birmingham, the Grand Départ for the Tour De France and the Tour de France Femmes in 2027 and the UEFA 2028 European Championships. The Department is not currently exploring hosting the Special Olympics World Summer Games.
Asked by: Nigel Huddleston (Conservative - Droitwich and Evesham)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, when her Department was first alerted to the possibility of Maccabi Tel Aviv fans being banned from the fixture against Aston Villa on the 6th November.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
A range of options are considered for each match and DCMS officials were made aware by the SGSA of the options under consideration on 9 October 2025. A decision had not been made at that time, and was not communicated to the Department until 16 October, when Ministers were made aware.
Asked by: Nigel Huddleston (Conservative - Droitwich and Evesham)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when her Department was first alerted to the possibility of Maccabi Tel Aviv fans being banned from the fixture against Aston Villa on 6 November 2025.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
West Midlands Police did not notify the department of it's risk assessment findings. Planning for football matches is considered and decided locally by Safety Advisory Groups which are operationally independent of Government and assess the risks and safety for the public. Home Office Officials were notified on 2 October 2025 by the UK Football Policing Unit of the options under consideration to allow the upcoming UEFA Europa League match between Aston Villa and Maccabi Tel Aviv to proceed safely.
The department was not informed of the final decision until it was in the public domain.
Asked by: Nigel Huddleston (Conservative - Droitwich and Evesham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to the report by the Injury Prevention Consultancy entitled Impact of Injury ’24 report, published in March 2025, what steps his Department has taken to help ensure the safety of performers and crew in their place of work.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and associated regulations provide a framework for securing the health, safety and welfare of those working in the sector. Employers and the self-employed are required to comply with this law. A further duty is placed on them by Regulation 3 of The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, which requires every employer to make a suitable and sufficient risk assessment of the risks to those employees and non-employees in relation to risks arising from conduct of their undertaking and share the significant findings.
To help the industry comply with their duties under health and safety law, Health and Safety Executive (HSE) provides a wide range of guidance on common risks which may be applicable to activities within film, television and theatrical production. HSE also provides a range of guidance specific to film and television industry, describing the various roles and responsibilities of those within the production process (INDG360 - Health and safety in audio-visual production. Your legal duties) and guidance and information sheets for specific production activities and risks, e.g. stunts, use of firearms and filming while using vehicles. All guidance is freely available on the HSE website, a section of which is dedicated to health and safety in the film, theatre and broadcasting industries. Industry specific guidance is also available from a range of industry bodies and stakeholders.
HSE facilitates and chairs the Joint Advisory Committee for Entertainment (JACE). Membership is drawn from industry trade bodies, trades unions, large event facilities and the major national broadcasting organisations. It is a forum to consider problems in the industry, is a route for raising industry concerns with government, enforcing authorities, manufacturers, suppliers etc, and promotes improved health and safety standards within the industry, as encouraged in the report.
Asked by: Nigel Huddleston (Conservative - Droitwich and Evesham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to help tackle illegal waste activities in (a) Worcestershire and (b) England.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Waste reforms will make it harder for organised criminals to exploit the waste system and that is why the Government is committed to introducing tighter controls on waste exemptions, introducing digital waste tracking from October 2026 beginning with waste receiving sites, and introducing new permit requirements for carriers, brokers and dealers. Connecting fragmented systems and digitising record-keeping will ultimately make it harder for rogue operators to compete in the industry and commit waste crime, from fly tipping to illegal waste sites to illegal waste shipments.
In Worcestershire, recent multi-agency work has resulted in the seizure of vehicles suspected of involvement in waste crime, thereby removing them off the road and preventing further illegal activity. Environment Agency investigators continue to gather evidence of suspected offenders with a view to pursuing enforcement action.
Asked by: Nigel Huddleston (Conservative - Droitwich and Evesham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what the Environment Agency’s budget is for tackling illegal waste activity in the financial year 2025-26.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This financial year, the Government committed £12 million to the Environment Agency (EA) to fight waste crime. This is an additional £2 million to the £10 million it received in previous years. The funding will continue to afford resource of approximately 240 full-time equivalent across the EA to target waste crime; it is spent on specialised staff, such as enforcement officers, intelligence officers, financial investigators, and disclosure officers.
The EA also received £3 million for 2025/26 to enforce new duties introduced this year including the new Packaging Extended Producer Responsibility requirements. This helps to fund resources towards operational staff to tackle serious and significant offending.
Asked by: Nigel Huddleston (Conservative - Droitwich and Evesham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many illegal waste sites the Environment Agency has closed in the last three years.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
In the period April 2021-March 2024, the Environment Agency stopped 1691 illegal waste sites.
Asked by: Nigel Huddleston (Conservative - Droitwich and Evesham)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of HMRC’s attempts to tackle landfill tax fraud on unauthorised illegal waste sites; and how much money has been recovered from prosecutions in the last 3 years.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Government applies Landfill Tax to disposals made at sites without an environmental disposal permit (unauthorised waste sites). This aims to deter non-compliance by making the illegal disposal of waste less profitable, and reinforcing the principle of “polluter pays”.
In the last 5 years, HMRC Landfill Tax compliance activities have generated a compliance yield of £1.3 billion.
HMRC have conducted over 250 compliance interventions over the last three years at illegal unauthorised waste sites, generating approximately £4.5 million in compliance yield.
HMRC also works closely with environmental regulators to identify and tackle disposals of unauthorised waste.
Asked by: Nigel Huddleston (Conservative - Droitwich and Evesham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of the performance of the Child Maintenance Service.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The CMS has four official Key Performance Indicators (KPI). These are: Application clearances, change of circumstances clearances, Collect and Pay compliance and assessment accuracy. Each KPI has its own standard measure.
Every quarter, the CMS publishes their data on Application clearances, change of circumstances clearances and Collect and Pay compliance.
This information can be found in the latest CMS statistics with the latest data available to March 2025. CMS statistics for June 2025 are due to be released on Tuesday 30th September 2025 at 09:30am.
Information on the accuracy of CMS assessments, which has a standard level of >99%, is published in the annual CMS Client Funds Account, Child maintenance: client funds accounts - GOV.UK.
Since 2020 CMS has shown a consistent level of 99.4% accuracy increasing for the latest year available (2023/24) to 99.5%.
The CMS continues to monitor and review their KPIs to ensure they are the most appropriate measure to drive performance and improve the customer experience.
Asked by: Nigel Huddleston (Conservative - Droitwich and Evesham)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps her Department is taking to improve Child Maintenance Service response times.
Answered by Andrew Western - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
Through the Service Modernisation and Digital Transformation Programmes, the Child Maintenance Service (CMS) has made significant improvements to our service to improve response times.
The introduction of online services including ‘Child Maintenance Calculator’, ‘Get Help Arranging Child Maintenance’, ‘Apply for Child Maintenance, ‘Respond to Child Maintenance Application’ and ‘My Child Maintenance Case’ has significantly increased functionality and efficiency for our customers who have access to our online services 24/7 to:
Through My Child Maintenance Case’ the customer now has the ability to process simple changes without the need for caseworker intervention, automatically speeding up the time taken to complete a change which has improved customer outcomes. These changes are a fundamental step towards the CMS modernisation goal of evolving our service to be online and quicker.
Although online communication is the preferred option, the CMS fully recognises digital is not suitable for all customers. We have freed up resources to deliver a more responsive service which allows caseworkers more time to better assist customers who need to reach out to us via telephone. We have taken steps to make call routing more efficient, resulting in a higher volume of calls being allocated to case-owning teams, supporting customers to receive a more responsive service.
Furthermore, we have taken timely action to review, evaluate, and enhance tools and training material to support staff. We have improved training for new entrant colleagues and caseworkers and upgraded our Operational Instructions with around 90% transformed into Smart Instructions, making them easier and quicker for caseworkers to understand and use.
Through greater use of SMS text and email and an extensive review of letters, making them easier for customers to understand, we can contact customers quicker.
As a result, the use of online services by customers has significantly increased, with more changes being processed quicker, call volumes have reduced and calls received are routed efficiently to caseworker teams who have access to enhanced Operational Instructions, SMS text and email, improving the CMS response times and delivering a quality service to our customers.
CMS is committed to continuous improvement. In July 2025, the CMS launched Customer Connect for income related changes: this new service enables caseworkers to instigate online conversations with customers to proactively gather information and administer their child maintenance case more efficiently. Customer Connect will be expanded to include other types of changes through a phased process. Customers who cannot digitally self-serve will continue to be contacted by phone or letter.
Additionally, as the demand for the service is increasing CMS continuously review our resources to get the greatest value for money and deliver the best service to our customers. We review our overall resource supply twice yearly and take appropriate steps to ensure that staffing levels meet demands and maintain our expected service levels. We have an ongoing recruitment campaign for 2025; this will ensure CMS is resourced to meet current and future forecasted service demand.
The CMS are committed to modernising and improving our service. We will continue to review, evaluate, and enhance our service to meet demand and deliver an efficient customer service. We regularly gather feedback from customers and stakeholders through the Customer Experience Survey; this insight is used to inform ways to improve our service.
Commencement of any additional activity as part of the Service Modernisation Programme will be informed by the value to our customers and the cost to the Department.