Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether she is taking steps to increase the (a) safety and (b) welfare of professional racing horses.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
The British Horseracing Authority (BHA) is British racing's governing and regulatory body and is responsible for the safety of racehorses at British racecourses. The BHA works alongside the RSPCA and World Horse Welfare to make horseracing as safe as possible. Officials from Defra engage with these organisations on such matters.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he is taking steps to increase funding for palliative care services.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for determining the level of National Health Service-funded palliative and end of life care, including hospice care, locally, and they are responsible for ensuring that the services they commission meet the needs of their local population.
While the NHS has always been required to commission appropriate palliative and end of life care services to meet the reasonable needs of the population, as part of the Health and Care Act 2022, the Government added palliative care services to the list of services an ICB must commission, to clarify this responsibility.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
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 (a) manage and (b) reduce waste pollution in rivers.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Plan for Water’s comprehensive approach to transforming our water environment includes detailed policies to manage and reduce waste pollution in waterbodies, including rivers. The Plan tackles widespread sources of pollution, including storm overflows, treated wastewater, agricultural pollution, road run-off, and a ban on plastic-containing wet wipes (subject to consultation).
As part of the Plan for Water, over £2.2 billion of new, accelerated investment will be directed into vital infrastructure to improve water quality, with £1.7bn of this being used to tackle storm overflows. To improve transparency, we have increased the number of storm overflows monitored across the network from 7% in 2010 to 91% now monitored, and we will reach 100% coverage by end of this year.
Beyond this, the Government is ensuring water companies invest significantly in improving wastewater treatment. For example, the nutrient pollution provisions in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill will place a new statutory duty on water and sewerage companies in England to upgrade wastewater treatment works to the highest technically achievable limits in designated areas by 2030. This will drive considerable improvement at wastewater treatment works discharging to areas of the country particularly impacted by nitrogen and phosphorus pollution.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether she plans to introduce legislative proposals to help reduce food waste.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Environment Act 2021 amendments to the Environmental Protection Act 1990 will require all local authorities in England to arrange for the separate collection of food waste for recycling. If citizens can see how much food waste they are producing then they are more likely to take preventive action. Further details will be published in the response to our second consultation on Simpler Recycling in due course.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of increasing funding for (a) screening and (b) treating ovarian cancer.
Answered by Will Quince
There is currently no screening programme for ovarian cancer. The UK National Screening Committee reviewed the evidence for ovarian cancer screening in 2017 and found that screening did not reduce the number of women who died from ovarian cancer, and therefore the Department has no plans to make an assessment on the merits to increase funding for this.
The Department invests in health research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). NIHR has funded six research projects into screening for ovarian cancer since 2018, with a combined total funding value of £3.8 million, including looking at the impact and effectiveness of different kinds of testing and screening and effectiveness of treatment options. The overall goal is to improve diagnosis and treatment to improve patient outcomes.
To improve waiting times for cancer diagnosis and treatment, including for ovarian cancer, the Government has committed to funding of £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25. This is supported by £5.9 billion capital funding for new beds, technology and equipment, from which 123 community diagnostic centres and 94 surgical hubs have already been rolled out to support elective activity, including for cancer.
NHS England also funded a series of community engagement events coordinated by a cluster of gynaecological cancer charities, led by Target Ovarian Cancer. These events were held to raise awareness of the importance of seeking help and encouraged people to see their general practitioner if they had symptoms such as stomach discomfort, bloating or pain, as the earlier the cancer is detected, the easier it is to treat.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
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 offering higher starting salaries to people entering the teaching profession with wider professional experience relevant to the subjects they teach.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions document (STPCD) sets out the four pay ranges for teachers in maintained schools in England. A teacher must be paid a salary within the minimum and maximum of the pay range as set out within the STPCD as the relevant body determines. A link to more information can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-teachers-pay-and-conditions.
In the recent pay award, teachers and leaders in maintained schools received a pay award of 6.5%, the highest pay award for teachers in over thirty years. The Government also delivered its manifesto commitment of a minimum £30,000 starting salary for teachers in all regions of the country, with a pay award of up to 7.1% for new teachers outside London. The Department is committed to ensuring that teaching is a financially competitive career option within the graduate labour market.
The Department wants to ensure there are excellent teachers where they are needed most. The Department has announced a £196 million initial teacher training (ITT) financial incentives package for the 2024/25 ITT recruitment cycle, a £15 million increase on the last cycle. This includes increased bursaries worth up to £28,000 tax free and scholarships worth up to £30,000 tax free, to encourage talented trainees to key subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing. The Department is also providing a Levelling Up Premium worth up to £3,000 tax free for mathematics, physics, chemistry and computing teachers in the first five years of their careers who choose to work in disadvantaged schools. For 2024/25 and 2025/26, the Department will be investing £100 million each year to double the rates of the Levelling Up Premium to up to £6,000 tax free.
The Department continues to consider longer term pay priorities to attract and retain the best graduates whilst also delivering value for money on taxpayers’ investment in schools. The next remit to the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) is due to be published shortly, which will include the strategic areas that the Department will consult the STRB on and look to implement in the next academic year.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what steps his Department have taken to increase solar capacity to 70GW by 2035.
Answered by Graham Stuart
The Government incentivises large-scale solar through the Contracts for Difference scheme. Last month, the Government awarded contracts to 56 solar projects, totalling 1.9 gigawatts of capacity, in the fifth, and first annual, allocation round
Rooftop solar is encouraged through various financial and regulatory measures. These include the Smart Export Guarantee, removal of VAT on domestic panels, tax relief, and business rate exemptions. The Government is reviewing permitted development rights to simplify planning for commercial solar projects.
The Government has established the Solar Taskforce to drive forward actions needed to achieve the Government's ambition of more than quadrupling solar capacity by 2035.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps to increase access to cannabis-based medicinal products on the NHS.
Answered by Will Quince
Licensed cannabis-based medicines are routinely available on the National Health Service. However, clinical guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence demonstrate a clear need for more evidence to support routine prescribing and funding decisions for unlicensed cannabis-based medicines.
Funding of unlicensed products is subject to local NHS decisions on a case-by-case basis. These decisions follow clearly developed procedures that ensure equitable distribution of funding, prioritising those medicines that have proved their safety, quality and clinical and cost effectiveness.
We continue to call on manufacturers to conduct research to prove if their products are safe and effective and we are working with regulatory, research and NHS partners to establish clinical trials to test the safety and efficacy of these products.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will bring forward legislative proposals to introduce mandatory animal welfare labelling on food products.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Stimulating market demand for higher welfare products is a key strand of the Government’s Animal Health and Welfare Pathway.
We therefore ran a call for evidence in 2021 to gather data on the impacts of different types of animal welfare labelling reforms, which received over 1,600 responses. The evidence provided suggested that there is public appetite for improved welfare labelling.
We will continue working with key stakeholders to explore how we can harness the market to improve food information for consumers and raise animal welfare standards. As part of this, we will continue to gather evidence on the impacts of a wide range of market interventions, as well as how they would align with wider labelling proposals such as eco-labelling.
Asked by: Rupa Huq (Labour - Ealing Central and Acton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to reduce the waiting time for (a) autism and (b) ADHD assessments.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
We expect integrated care boards (ICBs) to have due regard to relevant National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines on autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) when commissioning services, including assessment services.
On 5 April 2023, NHS England published a national framework and operational guidance for autism assessment services. This guidance will help the National Health Service improve autism assessment services and improve the experience for people referred to an autism assessment service. Additionally, in 2023/24, £4.2 million is available to improve services for autistic children and young people, including autism assessment services.
NHS England publishes data on how many people are waiting for an autism assessment and for how long, which provides useful information nationally and locally to support local areas to improve their performance and to reduce diagnosis waiting times.
NICE guidelines for ADHD diagnosis and management aim to improve the diagnosis of ADHD and the quality of care and support people receive. They do not recommend a maximum waiting time standard from referral for an assessment of ADHD. Data on the number of people on a waiting list for an assessment for ADHD and waiting for a diagnosis is not held centrally but may be held locally by individual NHS trusts. The Department is looking into options for improving data collection and reporting on waiting times for ADHD assessments and diagnoses, to help improve access to ADHD assessments in a timely way and in line with the NICE guidelines. In addition, we are supporting ICBs to expand mental health services through the NHS Long Term Plan, which commits to increasing investment into mental health services by at least £2.3 billion a year by 2023/24 so that an additional two million people can get the support they need.