Asked by: Rosie Duffield (Independent - Canterbury)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of extending the Adult Skills Fund to cover learning (a) primarily and (b) solely for leisure purposes.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government has devolved and delegated approximately 60% of the adult skills fund (ASF) to the 9 Mayoral Combined Authorities of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region, North East, South Yorkshire, Tees Valley, West Midlands, West of England, West Yorkshire and the Greater London Authority. The authorities are now responsible for the provision of adult education and allocation of the ASF in their local areas and it is for them to decide how they wish to prioritise funding.
In the remainder of England, the department continues to be responsible for adult skills funding. Within the ASF, the department will not fund provision where the primary or sole intent of the learning is for leisure.
The government has to take difficult decisions on where to prioritise funding. Given the economic and social challenges in the country, it is right that the primary purpose of the ASF is to support learners into employment and to progress to further learning. The ASF also supports wider outcomes including improving health and wellbeing, equipping parents and carers to support their child’s learning and developing stronger and more integrated communities.
Asked by: Rosie Duffield (Independent - Canterbury)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether her Department has issued recent guidance to integrated care boards on their role in assessing the mental and emotional health of young people entering care using a person qualified to assess mental health as part of the initial health assessment.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
The statutory guidance, Promoting the health and wellbeing of looked after children, published in 2015, reflects the requirement that the relevant local authority must make arrangements for the initial health assessment to be carried out by a registered medical professional who is suitably qualified to assess a young person's physical, emotional, and mental health needs.
Asked by: Rosie Duffield (Independent - Canterbury)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of updating the National Planning Policy Framework to enable local planning authorities to use the most recent Office for National Statistics household projections in the standard method of calculating local housing need.
Answered by Lee Rowley
A review of the standard method formula was undertaken in 2020. As part of the consultation, we asked if we should incorporate more recent household projections data into the formula. Following careful consideration of the responses received, to provide stability and certainty for local authorities and other stakeholders we decided to retain the existing formula.
We have kept the standard method under review. Through a consultation on changes to national policy held in 2022/23 we committed to review our approach to assessing housing needs once new household projections data, based on the 2021 Census, is released in 2025.
Asked by: Rosie Duffield (Independent - Canterbury)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of introducing non-repayable maintenance grants for higher education students from the least advantaged backgrounds.
Answered by Luke Hall
The government believes that income contingent student loans are a fair and sensible way of financing higher education (HE). It is only right that those who benefit from the system should make a fair contribution to its costs. The government have continued to increase maximum loans and grants for living and other costs for undergraduate and postgraduate students each year, with a 2.8% increase for the 2023/24 academic year and a further 2.5% increase announced for 2024/25.
In addition, the government have frozen maximum tuition fees for the 2023/24 and 2024/25 academic years. By 2024/25, maximum fees will have been frozen for seven successive years. The department believe that the current fee freeze achieves the best balance between ensuring that the system remains financially sustainable, offering good value for the taxpayer, and reducing debt levels for students in real terms.
The government understands the pressures people have been facing with the cost of living and has taken action to help. The government have already made £276 million of student premium and mental health funding available for the 2023/24 academic year to support successful outcomes for students including disadvantaged students.
The government have also made a further £10 million of support available to help student mental health and hardship funding for the 2023/24 academic year. This funding will complement the help universities are providing through their own bursary, scholarship and hardship support schemes. For the 2024/25 financial year, the government have increased the Student Premium (full-time, part-time, and disabled premium) by £5 million to reflect high demand for hardship support. Further details of this allocation for the academic year 2024/25 will be announced by the Office for Students in the summer.
Overall, support to households to help with the high cost of living is worth £108 billion over 2022/23 to 2024/25, which is an average of £3,800 per UK household. The government believes this will have eased the pressure on family budgets, which will in turn enable many families to provide additional support to their children in HE to help them meet increased living costs.
Asked by: Rosie Duffield (Independent - Canterbury)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps his Department is taking to help improve the safety of (a) horses and (b) horse riders on roads.
Answered by Guy Opperman
The Government takes the safety of horse riders and other vulnerable road users very seriously and is committed to reducing the number of people killed or seriously injured on England’s roads.
Following Parliamentary approval, The Highway Code was updated on 29 January 2022 to include changes to improve safety for cyclists, pedestrians and horse riders.
Asked by: Rosie Duffield (Independent - Canterbury)
Question
To ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, what steps she is taking with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to help reduce maternal mortality.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
At the Spring Budget, the Government announced £35m over the next three years to improve maternity safety across England.
This is in addition to our three-year maternity plan, backed by £186m per year from April. Through this, we have introduced 14 maternal medicine networks to provide specialist advice to pregnant women, and we expect all CSs to have a Maternal Mental Health Service by the end of the month.
Asked by: Rosie Duffield (Independent - Canterbury)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what her planned timetable is for making a decision on redress for people affected by mesh implants following the publication of The Hughes Report on 7 February 2024.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
The Government commissioned the Patient Safety Commissioner (PSC) to produce a report on redress for those affected by sodium valproate and pelvic mesh. We are grateful to the PSC and her team for completing this report, and our sympathies remain with those affected by sodium valproate and pelvic mesh. The Government is now carefully considering the PSC’s recommendations, and will respond substantively in due course.
Asked by: Rosie Duffield (Independent - Canterbury)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many applications his Department has received for certificates of exemption to keep an American Bully XL type dog in (a) Canterbury constituency and (b) England.
Answered by Mark Spencer
Defra received over 61,000 applications for Certificates of Exemption ahead of the deadline from dog owners in England and Wales. These applications are still being processed and may include duplicates, errors or ineligible applications. Defra does not collate this data by constituency.
Asked by: Rosie Duffield (Independent - Canterbury)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many adult social care residential care home places there were in (a) Kent and (b) Canterbury in each year since 2015.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Transport
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) publish the CQC Care Directory annually, which lists the number of care home registrations in the adult social care sector. This includes the number of care home beds, with or without nursing. The following table shows the number of CQC registered care home beds for Kent, on 1 January of each year from 2015 onwards:
Year | Registered Care Home Beds |
2015 | 15,198 |
2016 | 15,131 |
2017 | 14,406 |
2018 | 14,590 |
2019 | 14,431 |
2020 | 14,610 |
2021 | 14,586 |
2022 | 14,598 |
2023 | 14,543 |
2024 | 14,638 |
The following table shows the number of care home beds for Canterbury, on 1 January of each year from 2015 onwards:
Year | Registered Care Home Beds |
2015 | 943 |
2016 | 980 |
2017 | 973 |
2018 | 981 |
2019 | 1,020 |
2020 | 1,025 |
2021 | 1,007 |
2022 | 984 |
2023 | 976 |
2024 | 1,087 |
Note: This data is also from the CQC Care Directory but cross-referenced with postcode data to identify care home beds in Canterbury with or without nursing.
Asked by: Rosie Duffield (Independent - Canterbury)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, whether he has had recent discussions with his international counterparts on the treatment of the Hazara community in Afghanistan.
Answered by Anne-Marie Trevelyan
The UK works closely with the international community, including the G7, G20 and through the UN, to protect the human rights of all of Afghanistan's people and to coordinate a consistent international response. In December, the Minister for South Asia and Human Rights, Lord (Tariq) Ahmad of Wimbledon, raised recent attacks on Hazaras with the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.