Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Gateshead South)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps her Department is taking to help ensure that young people from all regions, including the North East, are represented in consultations on online safety and Al regulation.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
We will ensure that young people from across the country, including the North East are represented in consultations.
We are shortly launching a consultation exploring children’s use of technology to understand how they can be protected and how their wellbeing can be improved during technological change. The consultation will seek views on tackling ‘addictiveness’ of social media, introducing a minimum age of access and additional protections for AI chatbots.
We will ensure children's voices are heard by launching a child-friendly version of the consultation and progressing a national conversation to hear directly from children and young people.
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Gateshead South)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment she has made of the whether social media age restrictions on platforms headquartered overseas would be enforceable.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Online Safety Act has extraterritorial effect, meaning any regulated service with a significant number of UK users is required to meet duties wherever they are based.
Where an organisation breaches its duties, Ofcom can require it to take steps to return to compliance or issue a fine. Ofcom can enforce these penalties via court processes in the UK and other jurisdictions.
Ofcom can also apply for court orders requiring third parties to withdraw services or block access in the UK to non-compliant services. These measures ensure that, where services overseas choose to ignore their duties, they can be sanctioned.
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Gateshead South)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of social media age restrictions on young people accessing illegal platforms.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The government keeps this issue under close consideration . The Online Safety Act places robust duties on in-scope services to prevent children from encountering illegal content and activity.
We are shortly launching a consultation exploring children’s use of technology to understand how they can be better protected and how their wellbeing can be improved. The consultation will seek views across many issues, including a minimum age of access for social media.
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Gateshead South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether regional cost-of-living variations will be factored into proposed maintenance grant calculations.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
This government recognises the impact that cost-of-living pressures are having on students. This is why we are reintroducing means-tested maintenance grants from the 2028/29 academic year, providing students with up to £1,000 extra support each year, regardless of their location. We will also increase maintenance loans by 2.71% in 2026/27, bringing maximum amounts to £14,135 for students living away from home and studying in London, £10,830 for students living away from home and studying outside London and £9,118 for students living at home.
We are developing options to address regional disparities in entering higher education for disadvantaged students through a new Access and Participation Task and Finish Group, chaired by Professor Kathryn Mitchell, Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive of the University of Derby. We are also working with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to encourage universities to collaborate with local authorities on strategic approaches to meeting student housing needs.
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Gateshead South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress his Department has made on developing national guidance for Auditory Verbal therapy for deaf children since March 2025; and whether he plans to establish a timeline for publishing that guidance.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for the provision and commissioning of services to meet the needs of their local populations, including services for non-hearing children. NHS England supports ICBs to make informed decisions about the provision of audiology services so that they can provide consistent, high quality, and integrated care.
Auditory verbal therapy (AVT) is one type of therapy to support children with hearing loss, and it is important that local commissioners have the discretion to decide how best to meet the needs of their local population, informed by the best available evidence and guidance.
Based on consideration of the current evidence on AVT for deaf children, NHS England has no plans to develop such national guidance. In November 2025, NHS England appointed two national specialty advisers for hearing and associated conditions who are considering care pathway improvements for hearing services. The national speciality advisors are committed to meeting with the charity Auditory Verbal UK (AVUK) to discuss AVT, with a meeting scheduled.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s prioritisation board considered childhood hearing loss as a potential guideline topic in August 2024, but concluded that there is limited evidence available in this area and that the 2015 NHS England Action Plan on Hearing Loss and guidance issued in 2019 addresses care for this population, and it is understood that AVUK are in the process of developing the evidence base for the intervention. The NHS England Action Plan on Hearing Loss is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/act-plan-hearing-loss-upd.pdf
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Gateshead South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of reviewing the No Recourse to Public Funds income thresholds to ensure equity of eligibility for all children when expanding access to the free school meals to children from families in receipt of universal credit.
Answered by Olivia Bailey - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Education) (Equalities)
The department has permanently extended free school meal eligibility to children in all households with no recourse to public funds, provided they meet income thresholds set out in public guidance.
This ensures that children can access support regardless of their background or circumstances, including the immigration status of their parents.
The income thresholds for No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) households were designed to account for the differences in household income between NRPF households and those with access to additional state support to ensure parity.
The government has set out plans to extend free school meals to all children from households in receipt of Universal Credit from September 2026. The department continues to keep all aspects of the free school meals system under review.
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Gateshead South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has plans to introduce monitoring arrangements to assess compliance with the updated school food standards once they are in force.
Answered by Olivia Bailey - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Education) (Equalities)
The department aims to revise the School Food Standards and is engaging with stakeholders to ensure they support our work to create the healthiest generation of children in history.
School governors and trustees have a statutory duty to ensure compliance, holding school leaders to account for meeting the School Food Standards. Through our review, we will engage with the sector on a range of matters, including improving compliance.
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Gateshead South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, when he plans to launch the consultation on updating school food standards.
Answered by Olivia Bailey - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Education) (Equalities)
The department aims to revise the school food standards and is engaging with stakeholders to ensure they support our work to create the healthiest generation of children in history. We intend to consult on these revisions and further details on timings will be available in due course.
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Gateshead South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent progress he has made in meeting the 18-week referral-to-treatment standard in Washington and Gateshead South constituency.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Washington and Gateshead South constituency is served by the North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB). Performance against the 18-week Referral to Treatment standard for this ICB has improved from 68.9% to 70.5% since the Government came to office, and the waiting list has dropped by 11,854.
The Elective Reform Plan, which was published in January 2025, sets out the productivity and modernisation efforts needed to reach the 92% standard by March 2029, which improve patient care in the Washington and Gateshead South constituency and across England. We have set a national ambition that by March 2026, 65% of patients will wait no longer than 18 weeks, with every trust expected to deliver a minimum 5% improvement on current performance over that period. We are making progress in several areas including demand management, validation of waiting lists, diagnostics reform, including straight to test pathways, and clinically-led pathway reform in priority specialties.
Asked by: Sharon Hodgson (Labour - Washington and Gateshead South)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many public sector workers have received an above-inflation pay rise in Washington and Gateshead South constituency since 5 July 2024.
Answered by James Murray - Chief Secretary to the Treasury
We value all our public sector workers, and pay awards reflect the important work that our nurses, teachers, doctors, prison officers and soldiers do to keep the country running.
The overwhelming majority of awards announced in 2025/26, including for all of the above workforces, announced are above the OBR’s forecast for CPI inflation over the 2025/26 pay year.
Whilst I cannot confirm the number of public sector workers in the Washington and Gateshead South constituency in receipt of those pay awards, all those workers set out above will benefit from the above inflation pay uplift.