Rob Roberts

It is a long-established precedent that information about the discussions that have taken place in Cabinet, and its Committees, is not normally shared publicly.

The latest available data centrally, as at 31 March 2021, shows there were 130 Civil Servants earning a full-time equivalent salary in excess of £160,000. Responsibility for employees of local government sits with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.

I refer the hon. Member to the answer given to PQ 115575 answered on 19 November 2020 and PQs 39766 and 41529 answered on 4 May 2020.

The Government has an ambitious strategy to build on the UK’s strengths in semiconductors to grow our sector, increase our resilience and protect our security.

To deliver our strategy we are investing to £200 million over the years 2023-25 and up to £1 billion in the next decade.

At the Spring Budget, the government announced a £500 million per year package of support for R&D intensive businesses through changes to R&D tax credits. In addition, the government also announced 'Full Expensing' - a £27billion business tax cut – which means the UK now has the joint most generous capital allowance regime of any major developed economy.

We understand that the semiconductor industry faces specific challenges, so we have also committed to announcing plans by the autumn to further support the competitiveness of the semiconductor manufacturing sector that is critical to the UK tech ecosystem or the UK’s national security.

The Government is open to considering well-developed tidal range proposals, provided that these proposals demonstrate energy system benefits, plausible environmental mitigation strategies, and clear value for money in the context of other renewables.

The government continues to work closely with Ofgem to improve outcomes for consumers with energy debts. Ofgem collects information from energy companies on average debt levels which can be sourced here: https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/energy-data-and-research/data-portal/all-available-charts?keyword=debt&sort=relevance. Energy companies are required to follow Ofgem regulations to collect debt from customers. These rules include treating customers fairly by proactively contacting those in payment difficulty to establish an appropriate repayment plan based on the customer’s Ability to Pay, and making customers aware of debt advice services.

The UK has demonstrated that clean, green growth is absolutely possible.

Between 1990 and 2018 we grew our economy by 75 per cent, whilst cutting emissions by 43%.

In his Summer Statement, my Rt hon Friend, Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer set out £3 billion pounds to improve the energy efficiency of homes and public buildings which will also support around 140,000 green jobs.

The Government strongly condemns Russia’s recent actions. Russia must not be allowed to exploit major sporting and cultural events on the world stage to seek to legitimise its illegal invasion of Ukraine.

The international sporting community has a pivotal role to play in standing up to the illegitimacy of the Russian Government's actions. Our absolute objective is to ensure that international sporting events do not take place in Russia, and that Russian teams cannot compete internationally. The Government has been vocal on this issue and helped to ensure that sporting bodies, in this country and globally, have taken swift action.

In particular, my Rt Hon Friend, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and I convened a forum of national governing bodies on 28 February to support them in their response to this unprovoked attack, and strongly encourage engagement with their International Federations. The Government is also engaging with international ministerial counterparts this week to help build a collective approach on these issues. This dialogue and has already resulted in numerous sports bodies moving events away from Russia, and being clear that Russian and Belarussian athletes cannot participate internationally.

We applaud and strongly support the sports who have already taken many steps to respond to our calls for what is right.

The OECD’s PISA 2022 results showed that 15-year-old pupils in England performed above the OECD averages for all of reading, mathematics and science. While the pandemic has had an adverse impact on education across the world, and also affected the study, England was ranked 11^th in maths and 13^th in both reading and science – up from 27^th in maths, 25^th in reading and 16^th in science in 2009.

Education is a devolved matter, and the response outlines the information for England only.

The department is committed to continuing our support for school breakfast clubs, announcing up to £24 million to continue our national programme until July 2023. This funding will support up to 2,500 schools in disadvantaged areas, meaning that thousands of children from low-income families will be offered free nutritious breakfasts to better support their attainment, wellbeing, and readiness to learn.

The department understands that good-quality wraparound childcare has a positive impact on children’s outcomes. Research shows that participating in organised sports and joining after school clubs can help to improve children’s academic performance, as well as their social, emotional, and behavioural skills.

All schools are encouraged to make their facilities available for use by the wider community, and many schools already do so. To support with the costs of childcare, for example for the use of wraparound childcare such as afterschool clubs, working families can access support through Tax-Free Childcare, with up to £500 every three months for each child and rising to £1,000 every three months for families of disabled children. Working families may also be able to claim back up to 85% of their childcare costs if they are eligible for Universal Credit. This is worth up to £646 for one child, and £1,108 for 2 or more children a month.

Children who are in receipt of free school meals are eligible for a free place on the holiday activities and food programme. Backed by more than £200 million available, we are providing access to healthy food and enriching activities during the longer school holiday periods for more than 600,000 children across the country.

Education is a devolved matter, and the response outlines the information for England only.

The physical education (PE) national curriculum is designed to ensure that all pupils develop competence to excel in a broad range of physical activities, are physically active for sustained periods of time and lead healthy and active lives. From key stage 1 to 4, pupils are expected to master various fundamental skills relating to physical education.

The PE and sport premium has supported primary schools to deliver high quality PE, sport and physical activity since 2013. We are also developing tailored support to improve the teaching of PE at primary school which, along with a programme to support schools to open up their facilities, will be funded by nearly £30 million a year.

The department funds secondary school initiatives to encourage diverse groups of pupils to take part in and enjoy sport. This includes the Girls Competitive Sport contract, worth up to £980,000 over the next three years, which aims to improve and increase opportunities for girls aged 8 to 16 to access competitive sport and sport leadership opportunities. The Inclusion 2024 grant provides practical support to schools to increase opportunities for disabled young people and those with special educational needs to engage in sport and physical activity.

To support schools to take part in competitive sport, the government has funded the School Games since 2010. The School Games reaches over 95% of schools in England supporting four distinct levels of competition in over 40 sports and activities to cater for different ability levels, intra-school, inter-school, county level and a National Finals. Many schools also take part in their own inter-school competitions and National Governing Bodies of Sport run school sports events.

Education is a devolved matter, and the response outlines the information for England only.

The department is committed to high-quality education for all pupils, and the arts and music are integral to this. With the significant impact of COVID-19 on children’s learning, the department’s priorities have been to focus on education recovery in the recent Spending Review. The government remains committed to the ambitions in the Plan for Cultural Education published in 2013 and will give consideration for a future arts premium in due course.

In recognition of the merit of these subjects and how they contribute to a broad and balanced education in and out of school settings, the department will continue to invest around £115 million per annum in cultural education over the next three years, through music, arts, and heritage programmes.

The above funding is on top of core schools funding. The department has already committed to a real-terms per pupils increase in core schools funding, amounting to a £7 billion increase in the 2024/25 financial year compared with the 2021/22 financial year and nearly £5 billion in education recovery. This should support state-funded schools to provide a broad, ambitious curriculum, which includes cultural education and the arts.

The department has also committed to the publication of a Cultural Education Plan in 2023, working with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and Arts Council England.

Education is a devolved matter, and the response outlines the information for England only.

The department does not collect or hold capacity data for special schools. As special schools sit outside the Admissions Code and mainstream admissions arrangements, there is currently no official methodology for determining a special school’s capacity. Furthermore, if a school is named in a pupil’s education, health and care plan, that school must admit that pupil without regard to the notional capacity of the school.

The statutory duty to provide sufficient school places sits with local authorities. This includes places for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). The government does not currently collect data centrally on available or planned SEND provision, but is continuing to work with local authorities to better understand demand for SEND provision as it considers how it can best support the sector going forwards.

In March 2022, the department announced high needs provision capital allocations amounting to over £1.4 billion of new investment. This funding is to support local authorities to deliver new places for the 2023/24 and 2024/25 academic years and improve existing provision for children and young people with SEND or who require alternative provision. This funding forms part of the £2.6 billion the department is investing between 2022 and 2025 and represents a significant, transformational investment in new high needs provision.

The Agriculture Act will enable us to transform the way we support farmers. Our new policy will be centred around support aimed at incentivising sustainable farming practices. We will support farmers to produce high quality and nutritious food in a more sustainable way, improve transparency in the supply chain and help farmers to reduce their costs and improve their profitability. We will also help those who want to retire or leave the industry to do so with dignity and create new opportunities and support for new entrants coming into the industry.

In our 2019 manifesto we promised to maintain the current annual budget to farmers for the lifetime of this parliament. When we made this commitment in 2019, the total farm support provided to Welsh farmers that year was £337 million. For 2021/22, the UK government have therefore provided new exchequer funding on top of the remaining £95 million of EU funding to ensure that £337 million of support continues to go to Welsh farmers this year.

We are continuing to work closely with the rail industry to develop the Government priorities outlined in the Prime Minister’s Network North announcement, which includes an unprecedented £1 billion investment to fund the electrification of the North Wales Main Line. In February, the Transport Secretary hosted a meeting with local leaders in North Wales to discuss how HS2 savings will be rerouted to improve rail links in Wales.

We are in the early stages of establishing the next steps for the North Wales electrification scheme, including the costs and programme for development and delivery. We will share further information when that work is complete.

We are working closely with the rail industry to develop the Government priorities outlined in the Prime Minister’s Network North announcement, which includes an unprecedented £1 billion investment to fund the electrification of the North Wales Main Line. We are in the early stages of establishing the next steps for the North Wales electrification scheme, including the costs and programme for development and delivery. We will share further information when that work is complete.

We are working closely with the rail industry to develop and deliver on the Government priorities outlined in the Prime Minister’s Network North announcement. We are in the early stages of planning the next steps, including delivery timelines, for the North Wales electrification scheme and will share further information when that work is complete.

For the purposes of this answer we have taken enhancements spending and Rail Network Enhancements Pipeline (RNEP) spending to be the same.

The RNEP came into effect at the start of CP6 and provides a pipeline approach to enhancements investment with projects taking incremental investment decisions, moving away from the control period cycle. This reflected a change in the way both Network Rail and enhancements were funded and governed following the reclassification of Network Rail in 2014. It is therefore challenging to provide a direct comparator across all Control Periods, and data for "Wales Route" is not available in a comparable format in the time available.

Using data taken from Network Rail's Regulatory Accounts the spend on enhancements for England and Wales in CP4 (2009/10 to 2013/14) was £10.9bn (in 2013/14 prices) and in CP5 (2014/15 to 2018/19) was £14.7bn (in cash prices).

The spend to date for CP6 (2019/20 to 2022/23) is £6.16bn, again as per Network Rail's Regulatory Accounts (in cash prices). The England and Wales enhancements budget for the remaining year of CP6 2023/24 is £2.11bn.

In line with the Chancellor's Autumn Statement 2022, we anticipate that our enhancements budget for England and Wales for the first 4 years of CP7 will be set at c.£8.52bn. Budgets beyond this point have not yet been set and will be subject to future Fiscal Events. As per the RNEP, the allocation of this budget to schemes will be subject to investment decisions on a per scheme basis not yet taken.

For the purposes of this answer we have taken enhancements spending and Rail Network Enhancements Pipeline (RNEP) spending to be the same.

The RNEP came into effect at the start of CP6 and provides a pipeline approach to enhancements investment with projects taking incremental investment decisions, moving away from the control period cycle. This reflected a change in the way both Network Rail and enhancements were funded and governed following the reclassification of Network Rail in 2014. It is therefore challenging to provide a direct comparator across all Control Periods, and data for "Wales Route" is not available in a comparable format in the time available.

Using data taken from Network Rail's Regulatory Accounts the spend on enhancements for England and Wales in CP4 (2009/10 to 2013/14) was £10.9bn (in 2013/14 prices) and in CP5 (2014/15 to 2018/19) was £14.7bn (in cash prices).

The spend to date for CP6 (2019/20 to 2022/23) is £6.16bn, again as per Network Rail's Regulatory Accounts (in cash prices). The England and Wales enhancements budget for the remaining year of CP6 2023/24 is £2.11bn.

In line with the Chancellor's Autumn Statement 2022, we anticipate that our enhancements budget for England and Wales for the first 4 years of CP7 will be set at c.£8.52bn. Budgets beyond this point have not yet been set and will be subject to future Fiscal Events. As per the RNEP, the allocation of this budget to schemes will be subject to investment decisions on a per scheme basis not yet taken.

The number of people with outstanding benefit overpayments recoverable by DWP and the total value of those debts as at 16 November 2023 is set out below:

As all overpayments of certain welfare benefits are recoverable in law, irrespective of how they occurred, there is no requirement to categorise departmental error in all cases and we cannot therefore provide this information.

Our latest full estimates on fraud and error can be found at Fraud and error in the benefit system Financial Year Ending (FYE) 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

UK State Pensions are payable worldwide and up-rated overseas where there is a legal requirement to do so. The policy on up-rating UK State Pensions overseas is long-standing and has been supported by successive post-war Governments for over 70 years.

In response to (a): No recent assessment has been made of the annual cost of uprating the UK State Pension to UK pensioners living abroad.

In response to (b): The information requested is not readily available and to provide it would incur disproportionate cost.

In November 2020, the average (mean) amount of State Pension paid to individuals who live outside the UK was £70.61 per week.

Table 1. Average Amount of State Pension paid to individuals who live outside the UK, November 2020

Source: Stat-Xplore - Home (dwp.gov.uk)

Below is a table of the average (mean) amount of State Pension paid to individuals who live outside the UK, broken down by country of residence, in November 2020.

Table 2. Average Amount of State Pension by Country of Residence, November 2020

Source: Stat-Xplore - Home (dwp.gov.uk)

There are around 465,000 individuals who are in receipt of State Pension who reside in a Commonwealth country (excluding the UK) and there are around 688,000 individuals who are in receipt of State Pension who reside in a non-Commonwealth Country.

Table 1. The number of individuals who are in receipt of the UK State Pension and reside outside the UK, grouped by whether they live in a Commonwealth or non-Commonwealth country, November 2020

*Rounded to the nearest 1000

Source: Stat-Xplore - Home (dwp.gov.uk)

The Government has made significant progress in implementing pensions dashboards, working in close collaboration with key delivery partners including the Pensions Dashboards Programme which is part of the Money and Pensions Service, the Pensions Regulator and the Financial Conduct Authority.

Following extensive consultation with industry and other interested parties, the Department laid the draft Pensions Dashboards Regulations 2022, in Parliament on 17 October 2022. This was an important milestone, setting out detailed requirements for occupational pension schemes and for organisations seeking to provide a qualifying pensions dashboard service. The Regulations were subsequently approved in Parliament on 16 November 2022 and are due to come into force this winter. Alongside this, the Financial Conduct Authority intends to publish final rules for personal and stakeholder pensions shortly and The Pensions Regulator is providing support to help schemes meet their connection deadlines, including through guidance and writing to schemes at least 12 months ahead of their deadline.

The Pensions Dashboards Programme is responsible for delivering the digital architecture that will make dashboards work. They published their latest progress report on 26 October 2022 outlining key milestones and next steps, such as finalising a suite of operational and technical standards for dashboards. The Programme intends to consult on design standards this winter. The PDP has consulted on the data, technical, code of connection, and reporting standards relating to dashboards and will publish a response later this year. The overall delivery timetable remains on track with the Programme focused on building and testing the digital architecture to enable the first cohort of schemes to connect from April 2023.

Published data from NHS England shows that there were 99,067 total general and acute (G&A) beds available in October 2023, including 96,781 core beds and 2,285 escalation beds.

Our Delivery Plan for recovering urgent and emergency care services set the ambition to increase the core G&A bed base by 5,000 permanent staffed beds in 2023/24 compared to planned levels for 2022/23. This would increase the number of core beds to 99,500. As of October, the National Health Service has delivered 2,281 additional core beds. NHS England continues to work with local systems and trusts to deliver this ambition this winter.

G&A bed numbers are expected to peak in January 2024 in response to expected demand. A breakdown of these additional beds by constituency is not available centrally.

Our Delivery Plan for recovering urgent and emergency care services set the ambition to increase the core general and acute bed base, above originally planned 2022/23 levels, by 5,000 sustainable, permanent beds in 2023/24. This takes the funded core bed base to over 99,000. NHS England in continuing to work with local systems and trusts to deliver this ambition.