Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what action is being taken to improve food security in South Shropshire constituency and the West Midlands.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Food security is monitored via the UK Food Security Report, produced every three years (most recently December 2024). This gives an international, national, and household food security assessment. Additionally, we will be publishing an annual food security digest report in the years in between.
The UK has a resilient food supply chain and is equipped to deal with situations with the potential to cause disruption. Food security is built on supply from diverse sources, strong domestic production as well as imports through stable trade routes. Imports supplements domestic production, helping manage seasonality and ensures that any disruption from risks such as adverse weather or disease does not affect the UK's overall security of supply.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what action is being taken to support SEND transport costs in South Shropshire constituency.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
Central government funding for home-to-school travel is provided through the Local Government Finance Settlement which is administered by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. The Settlement for the 2025/26 financial year makes available over £69 billion for local government, a 6.8% cash terms increase in Core Spending Power on 2024/25.
To put local government on the road to financial sustainability, the government recently consulted on funding reforms, including a bespoke relative needs formula for home-to-school transport. The consultation response was published here on 20 November:
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/the-fair-funding-review-20.
Challenges in the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system are creating pressure on home-to-school travel. We have committed to reform the SEND system to enable more children to thrive in local mainstream settings. These reforms will be set out in a Schools White Paper early in the new year.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
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 increase the number of community diagnostic hubs in South Shropshire constituency.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Community diagnostic centres (CDCs) are delivering additional, digitally connected, diagnostic capacity in England, providing patients with a co-ordinated set of tests in the community in as few visits as possible, to enable fast and accurate diagnoses
CDCs help to separate urgent and elective care, providing additional capacity in the community and relieving pressure on hospitals.
As of September 2025, CDCs are now delivering additional tests and checks on 170 sites across the country and have delivered over 9.4 million tests, checks and scans, including large, standard, and hub and spoke models, since July 2024.
The Elective Reform Plan sets out that the Government will deliver additional CDC capacity in 2025/26 by expanding a number of existing CDCs and building up to five new CDCs. The locations of both new and expanded CDC schemes will be confirmed in due course. This is funded as part of the £600 million of capital investment for diagnostics in 2025/26, which my Rt. Hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer set out in the June 2025 statement.
There are no CDCs in the South Shropshire constituency. However, there is a CDC in Telford, the Shropshire CDC. Constituents may also have access to diagnostic services at the Royal Shrewsbury and Robert and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospitals. Diagnostic services are also available in the community hospitals run by the Shrewsbury Community Health NHS Trust in Bridgnorth, Ludlow, and Whitchurch, as well as the health centre in Oswestry.
CDCs, even if not local to a constituent, will add capacity to the wider integrated care system. They, therefore, benefit more than just those patients immediately close to them.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what assessment he has made of trends in the level of the use of Non-Disclosure Agreements during corporate restructuring in safety-critical sectors in the context of the Employment Tribunal correction in Unite v MAEL.
Answered by Kate Dearden - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The Government cannot comment on individual cases. In addition, the Government is unable to assess sector-based trends on the use of non-disclosure agreements as they are private contractual agreements and data on their use is not collected.
Asked by: Stuart Anderson (Conservative - South Shropshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to help improve access to palliative care in rural areas.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We know that there are inequalities in access to palliative care and end of life care in rural areas and the Government is looking at how best to reduce these.
Palliative care services are included in the list of services an integrated care board (ICB) must commission. ICBs are responsible for the commissioning of palliative care and end of life care services, to meet the needs of their local populations. To support ICBs in this duty, NHS England has published statutory guidance and service specifications.
The statutory guidance outlines areas for consideration when commissioning services, which makes reference to improving equity of access and reducing inequity in outcomes and experience.
NHS England has also developed a palliative and end of life care dashboard, which brings together all relevant local data in one place. The dashboard helps commissioners understand the palliative care and end of life care needs of their local population, enabling ICBs to put plans in place to address and track the improvement of health inequalities, and ensure that funding is distributed fairly, based on prevalence.
The Department and NHS England are currently looking at how to improve the access, quality, and sustainability of all-age palliative care and end of life care in line with the 10-Year Health Plan.