Asked by: Richard Foord (Liberal Democrat - Tiverton and Honiton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking with local authorities to increase levels of social care provision.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Local authorities are tasked with the duty to shape their care market and deliver a range of care and support services to meet the diverse needs of local people. To support with this, the Government has made a total of nearly £2 billion available to local authorities over two years through the Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund (MSIF) and MSIF Workforce Fund. Both are designed to support increased adult social care capacity, and support local authorities to make improvements to adult social care services.
Asked by: Richard Foord (Liberal Democrat - Tiverton and Honiton)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will take steps to help support people to regain access to their Government Gateway accounts who do not have the necessary physical documentation.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
Users may regain access to their Government Gateway account by following a simple online process to recover their Government Gateway user ID and, if necessary, reset their password. Access to the email account used to set up the Government Gateway account is required to complete this process, but no documentation is required.
Asked by: Richard Foord (Liberal Democrat - Tiverton and Honiton)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what assessment she has made of the impact of the withdrawal of the Warm Homes Discount on (a) people in receipt of disability benefits and (b) other vulnerable people.
Answered by Amanda Solloway - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
I refer the hon. Member to the answer my noble Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Efficiency and Green Finance gave on 17 April 2023 to Question HL7050.
In addition, the Government produced impact assessments for the consultation in 2021 on expanding and reforming the Warm Home Discount scheme in England and Wales and for the publication of the Government Response in 2022, which are available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/warm-home-discount-better-targeted-support-from-2022
Asked by: Richard Foord (Liberal Democrat - Tiverton and Honiton)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what the average waiting time was for probate cases to be processed in (a) 2021-22, (b) 2022-23 and (c) in the latest period for which data is available.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The average mean length of time taken for a grant of probate, following receipt of the documents required, is:
a) 7.3 weeks in 2021-22
b) 7.8 weeks in 2022-23
c) 12.5 weeks during July to September 2023
The majority of grants issued (digital, non-stopped) in July to September were completed within 7 weeks on average. HMCTS is focused on reducing the time for all types of applications to bring down the overall average waiting times.
Average waiting times for probate grants are routinely published on gov.uk via Family Court Statistics Quarterly and currently cover the period up to September 2023.
HMCTS are aware of the impact that timeliness has on the financial well-being of recipients and has increased staffing levels, streamlined internal processes and continued to invest in further improving the digital service.
As a result, grant output for recent months has been at record levels, with over 12,000 more grants issued than applications received during the last three months (September to November) using more recent management information published by HMCTS (which does not go through the same level of quality assurance and analysis as the Family Court Statistics Quarterly).
Asked by: Richard Foord (Liberal Democrat - Tiverton and Honiton)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an assessment of the impact of trends in average waiting times for processing probate applications on the financial well-being of recipients.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The average mean length of time taken for a grant of probate, following receipt of the documents required, is:
a) 7.3 weeks in 2021-22
b) 7.8 weeks in 2022-23
c) 12.5 weeks during July to September 2023
The majority of grants issued (digital, non-stopped) in July to September were completed within 7 weeks on average. HMCTS is focused on reducing the time for all types of applications to bring down the overall average waiting times.
Average waiting times for probate grants are routinely published on gov.uk via Family Court Statistics Quarterly and currently cover the period up to September 2023.
HMCTS are aware of the impact that timeliness has on the financial well-being of recipients and has increased staffing levels, streamlined internal processes and continued to invest in further improving the digital service.
As a result, grant output for recent months has been at record levels, with over 12,000 more grants issued than applications received during the last three months (September to November) using more recent management information published by HMCTS (which does not go through the same level of quality assurance and analysis as the Family Court Statistics Quarterly).
Asked by: Richard Foord (Liberal Democrat - Tiverton and Honiton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to help ensure that health and social care staff continue to have access to free covid-19 testing.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
From 1 April 2023, the Government implemented changes to COVID-19 testing. These changes aligned COVID-19 more closely with the management of other respiratory infections. As part of this change, routine symptomatic testing of staff in high-risk settings ended. Staff testing has continued in a limited number of the most high-risk settings to protect particularly vulnerable people. This includes hospice staff with symptoms and some National Health Service staff with symptoms, working on inpatient wards with severely immunosuppressed patients. Information on testing in these settings is available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/covid-19-testing-during-periods-of-low-prevalence
Asked by: Richard Foord (Liberal Democrat - Tiverton and Honiton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has made a recent assessment of the impact of covid-19 infection rates among health and social care staff on the delivery of frontline health and social care services.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Sickness absence rates, including COVID-19 absence, among National Health Service staff are currently collected and published by NHS England. Data is published monthly in their COVID-19 data release and also weekly, for a subset of providers within the Urgent and Emergency Care Situation Reports for 2023/24. The monthly and weekly data sets, respectively, are available at the following links:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/
Similarly for adult social care settings, data on staff absences due to COVID-19 related reasons are collected by the Department and published monthly, and are available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/monthly-statistics-for-adult-social-care-england
However, whilst rates are collected and monitored both centrally and locally, there has been no specific recent assessment of the impact of COVID-19 infection rates among health and social care staff on the delivery of frontline health and social care services.
Asked by: Richard Foord (Liberal Democrat - Tiverton and Honiton)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, whether she is taking steps to provide support for for households who no longer qualify for the Warm Homes Discount due to changing eligibility criteria.
Answered by Amanda Solloway - Government Whip, Lord Commissioner of HM Treasury
Following public consultation in the summer of 2021, the Government expanded and reformed the Warm Home Discount in England and Wales from 2022.
We reformed the scheme to standardise the criteria, provide the majority of rebates automatically, and focus the support on households in fuel poverty. We recognise the cost-of-living challenges families are facing, which is why we are spending £104 billion supporting households with bills.
Asked by: Richard Foord (Liberal Democrat - Tiverton and Honiton)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that the Child Maintenance Service enforces the collection of child maintenance payments from parents who are not living with their children.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Child Maintenance Service (CMS) has a range of enforcement powers at its disposal to ensure parents meet their financial obligations to their children.
These include deductions directly from earnings and bank accounts, using Enforcement Agents (previously known as bailiffs) to take control of goods, forcing the sale of property, removal of driving licence or UK passport or even commitment to prison.
In 2023, The Government supported The Child Support (Enforcement) Act. This will allow the Child Maintenance Service to streamline the enforcement process by removing the requirement to obtain a court issued liability order and instead allow the Secretary of State to issue an administrative liability order. This will replace the court-based system and speed up the enforcement process.
In October 2023, The Government consulted on "Accelerating Enforcement" to inform proposed regulations to support the introduction of administrative liability orders. We will be publishing the Government response shortly.
Asked by: Richard Foord (Liberal Democrat - Tiverton and Honiton)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, whether his Department has had discussions with Donald Trump's presidential campaign team on US support for Ukraine.
Answered by David Rutley - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The UK and the US have been at the forefront of support to Ukraine since the beginning of Putin's illegal invasion. The Foreign Secretary travelled to Washington on 6-7 December where he heard strong support from all sides for future military and non-military aid. We will continue to work with US counterparts to deepen and strengthen our mutual priorities. Continued US support, funding, and leadership through 2024 is critical for Ukraine's prospects against Russia's continued egregious actions. We hope that US Congress will be able to agree a new funding package for Ukraine as part of its wider ongoing budget negotiations.