Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many customers claimed a mobility car in Telford constituency in each year for which data is available.

Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

Information is not available centrally to identify which claimants claimed a car through the Motability Scheme.

However, data is available for the number of Personal Independence Payment (PIP) claimants with an active Motability Scheme agreement in Telford constituency in each month and is provided in the attached table for December 2013 to January 2025.

Notes:

- The Motability Scheme enables anyone in receipt of a qualifying mobility allowance to use all or part of their mobility allowance to lease a vehicle. Vehicles include cars, wheelchair accessible vehicles, powered scooters, and powered wheelchairs.

- The Department for Work and Pensions facilitates a direct transfer to Motability of a claimant’s DLA, PIP or AFIP mobility allowance if they elect to join the Scheme.

- The data provided covers Motability Scheme agreements for PIP only. There may be agreements made on Daily Living Allowance, Armed Forces Independence Payment, and War Pensioners’ Mobility Supplement however data on such agreements is not held centrally for analysis.

- Volumes provided are rounded to the nearest 10.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will publish any centrally-owned workforce planning documents for early years provision.

Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

The early years workforce is at the heart of this government’s mission to give every child the best start in life and deliver our Plan for Change. We will continue to drive forward our progress on our 2028 Plan for Change target for a record proportion (75%) of children starting school ready to learn. To achieve this, we will work in partnership with the sector, reforming training and supporting the workforce to drive up standards and offer sustained professional development. We will test new approaches to achieve the common goal of giving every child the best start in life.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has for the future of the NHS England Independent Patient Choice and Procurement Panel; when that panel last made a decision; what the average length of its (a) decision making and (b) appeals process is; what criteria it uses to make decisions; and whether that panel will consider public procurement rules when reviewing cases.

Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Patient Choice and Procurement Panel is set up by NHS England to review complaints related to patient choice and representation in relation to the Provider Selection Regime (PSR) for the foreseeable future. The Panel last published a decision on 28 May 2025. Since its inception on 1 January 2024, the Panel has reviewed and published advice on 11 procurement processes. The Panel aims to publish its advice within six weeks though it can take more time to process complex cases

Providers seeking a review by the panel must ensure that they submit any such requests through the appropriate channels, either for patient choice or for PSR, which are available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/how-commissioning-is-changing/nhs-provider-selection-regime/independent-patient-choice-and-procurement-panel/

The Panel has been set up to give advice under the Health Care Services (Provider Selection Regime) Regulations 2023. The Panel has terms of reference which task it with offering expert advice about whether commissioners have acted consistently with the PSR regulations and published Statutory Guidance.

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many households stopped receiving child benefit following the introduction of (a) the two child benefit cap and (b) means testing in (i) Telford constituency, (ii) the West Midlands and (iii) England.

Answered by James Murray - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)

Child Benefit is a non-means tested benefit payable to families as a contribution towards the cost of raising children. The High Income Child Benefit Charge (HICBC) is a tax charge for families in receipt of Child Benefit payments on higher individual incomes, of £60,000 or more. These families can either get the Child Benefit payments and pay the tax charge or opt out of receiving the payments, and not have to pay the HICBC.

The number of families opting out of Child Benefit payments by Westminster Parliamentary Constituency, region and country can be found in table 12 in the latest annual Child Benefit statistics release: Child Benefit Statistics: annual release, August 2024 - GOV.UK.

The number of those paying the tax charge by region and country can be found in table 17 of the same publication. These figures relate to 2022 to 2023 tax year when the HICBC threshold was £50,000.

The policy to provide support for a maximum of two children in Universal Credit does not apply to Child Benefit.

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many universal credit claimants there were in Telford constituency in each year for which data is available by category.

Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

Official statistics for the number of people on Universal Credit are published regularly on Stat-Xplore, with breakdowns available by conditionality group and by various geographies including Westminster Parliamentary Constituency. The latest statistics on conditionality are available from April 2015 to March 2025.

Users can log in or access Stat-Xplore as a guest and, if needed, can access general guidance on how to extract the information required. For guidance on the Universal Credit datasets on Stat-Xplore, see the Universal Credit Official Statistics Stat-Xplore User Guide.

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many customers were supported by Telford Job Centre in each year for which data is available.

Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

Telford Jobcentre works closely with local employers and providers to support its customers. Our Work Coaches have tailored appointments to work closely with customers to understand their circumstances and needs.

The Jobcentre offers customers a range of provision which includes job fairs, Sector-based Work Academy Programmes and Mentoring Circles to help those customers who are ready for employment. For those customers on the health journey, Telford Jobcentre has a Disability Employment Advisor (DEA) to engage with customers to ensure they are connected with the right partners such as NHS talking therapies. The DEA and Employer Advisors also work closely with employers to promote Disability Confident, Access to Work and Reasonable Adjustment in the workplace.

Official monthly claimant count statistics by Parliamentary Constituency Areas are published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on the NOMIS website.

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of the performance of the train line between Aberystwyth and Birmingham International in the last 12 months; and whether she plans to allocate funding to improve (a) services and (b) rolling stock on that line in the next 12 months.

Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

Services and rolling stock on this line are the responsibility of Transport for Wales. My officials meet regularly with TfW to agree performance improvement actions on this cross-border route.

Building on the recent UK Government funded upgrade of the line’s signalling system to support the intended introduction of new trains, and the investment plans detailed in the recent Spending Review, we will continue to work collaboratively with the Welsh Government to further develop services on routes across Wales and the Borders

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much her Department has spent on programmes aimed at recruiting (a) primary and b) secondary education teachers in each of the last five years, broken down by (i) programme and (ii) region and nation.

Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)

High quality teaching is the in-school factor that has the biggest positive impact on a child or young person’s outcome in schools and colleges. Recruiting and retaining more qualified, expert teachers is critical to the government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity and boost the life chances for every child.

As part of the government’s Plan for Change to deliver 6,500 additional new expert teachers across secondary and special schools and colleges, the department funds initiatives across the teacher training and recruitment pipeline in England, based on available evidence of what works best. In the 2024/25 financial year, the department spent just over £600 million to support school teacher training, recruitment and retention.

We are already seeing positive signs that our investment is starting to deliver: the workforce has grown by 2,346 full-time equivalent teachers between 2023/24 and 2024/25, in secondary and special schools, the schools where they are needed most. This includes 1,435 more secondary school teachers and 911 more special and pupil referral unit teachers compared to last year.

Our future school teacher pipeline is also growing. As of May 2025, there are 11% more trainees who have accepted offers to train as secondary subjects, including in priority subjects such as Physics, where we have seen a 43% increase in acceptances compared to last year.

The table below provides detail of the spending on programmes supporting recruitment and retention of the teacher workforce. All programmes are targeted and focused on school specific need. Data on spending by region is not available.

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to the Spending Review 2025, published on 11 June 2025, what assessment she has made of the (a) adequacy of the funding for the M54 link road to the M6 and (b) potential economic impact on the (i) region and (ii) UK.

Answered by Lilian Greenwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

As the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced on 11 June 2025, this Government will deliver notable improvements to people’s everyday travel by providing £24 billion of capital funding between 2026-27 and 2029-30 to maintain and improve roads across the country. Delivering faster, safer and more reliable journeys and unlocking economic growth across the country. We will provide updates on specific schemes in due course.

Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what plans she has to enable upper-tier councils to increase council tax bills by a set amount rather than a fixed percentage through future reviews of local government funding.

Answered by Jim McMahon - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)

As an important part of local democracy and accountability, it is for individual councils to set their own level of council tax. The Spending Review assumed 5% council tax increases over the period made up of a 3% core referendum principle and a 2% adult social care precept. The final set of referendum principles will be set out each year as part of the local government final settlement in the usual way.

Found: Martin Ian Sollom Dr Marie Tidball Natalie Fleet Calum Miller Luke Murphy Dr Jeevun Sandher Shaun Davies