Asked by: Tom Rutland (Labour - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of the Food Standard Agency’s official control charges on the viability of small and medium-sized abattoirs.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Information on the 2025/26 charge rates for official controls, inspections, conducted in meat premises is available on the Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) website, at the following link:
https://www.food.gov.uk/business-guidance/charges-for-controls-in-meat-premises
As in previous years, the impact of the charges will be offset by a taxpayer-funded discount, which provides the greatest proportional support to smaller businesses. The impact of the discount on differently sized food businesses in England and Wales for 2025/26 is set out in the Cost Data Slides that the FSA has published.
The FSA is currently conducting an evaluation of the discount and will assess the impact of any changes it might propose in light of this evaluation. No decisions have yet been taken.
Asked by: Tom Rutland (Labour - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that the Building Safety Regulator is reviewing proposals for new schemes in a timely fashion.
Answered by Alex Norris - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
We recognise that there are delays to the Gateways process and that processing times need to improve. MHCLG officials continue to work closely with the BSR to understand their resource requirements, technical capacity and how processes can be improved. This includes ministerial level involvement. We have provided funding to the BSR to recruit an extra 30 frontline staff to bolster its capacity. On 14 May, BSR also launched a campaign to directly recruit Registered Building Inspectors (RBIs), with further recruitment planned in June 2025. We expect the impact of these new recruits on processing times to scale up in the coming months.
BSR continues to carry out extensive stakeholder engagement to support applicants to better understand and meet the new requirements. Since July 2024, BSR has held weekly meetings with the Construction Leadership Council and other industry bodies including the Home Builders Federation to address knowledge gaps and share lessons learned. BSR also issued new guidance in collaboration with the sector in March 2025 based on the findings of research with organisations submitting building control applications.
BSR has taken several further measures including implementing early-stage validation checks to improve efficiency, reduce incomplete submissions, and free up resources for compliant applications.
Whilst BSR and MHCLG are exploring all possible opportunities to strengthen the new Gateway process and guidance to industry, it is important to recognise that a significant volume of applications continue to be invalidated or rejected for not meeting the legislative requirements. These are buildings that, had they been constructed, might have placed residents at risk and/or living in housing that did not meet long-standing requirements.
Asked by: Tom Rutland (Labour - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to help protect chalk streams from untreated sewage.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government is committed to the protection and restoration of our cherished chalk streams.
That is why we are placing water companies under special measures through the Water (Special Measures) Act. The Act will drive meaningful improvements in the performance and culture of the water industry as a first important step in enabling wider, transformative change across the water sector.
The Independent Water Commission, led by Sir Jon Cunliffe, will make recommendations to shape further action to transform how our water system works and clean up our waterways for good. The review's final recommendations will be published and shared with the UK and Welsh Governments this summer.
Sites such as Chalk Streams will be prioritised as part of the record £11 billion of investment to improve nearly 3,000 storm overflows in England and Wales during PR24, with 75% of such High Priority Sites needing to be improved by 2035 and the rest by 2045. By 2050 we expect no storm overflow spill to cause any adverse ecological harm and spill no more than 10 times per year.
Asked by: Tom Rutland (Labour - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he has had recent discussions with the National Farmers’ Union on challenges faced by small and medium-sized abattoirs.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Secretary of State and I often meet with the National Farmers’ Union to discuss a wide range of farming issues which are important to both producers and processors.
Defra officials continue to work closely with small and medium sized abattoir sector stakeholders particularly through the Small Abattoirs Working Group, of which the National Farmers’ Union is a member. This group provides a platform for the industry to raise the key challenges and opportunities that the sector faces directly with the Department.
Asked by: Tom Rutland (Labour - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what legislative plans her Department has for requiring coroners to determine secondary causes of death following suicide.
Answered by Alex Davies-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
The Government has no plans to change the information which coroners are required to determine, with regard to cause of death in cases of suicide.
The information recorded by the coroner in the Record of Inquest is dependent on the circumstances of the individual case and is at the coroner’s discretion as an independent judicial office holder. Any medical conditions mentioned in part 2 of the Record of Inquest must be known or suspected to have contributed to the death, and not simply be other conditions which were present at the time of death.
With regard to the possible motivation for, or contributory factors in, a suicide, it cannot be guaranteed that consistent and comprehensive information on a deceased person’s background will be made available to the coroner in every case. In addition, expecting coroners to routinely assess the motivation for individual suicides would take the coronial role fundamentally beyond its legal parameters, which are to determine who has died, and how, when and where they died.
Asked by: Tom Rutland (Labour - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if she will make an assessment with the Secretary of State for Business and Trade of the potential merits of applying the same level of (a) import duties, (b) VAT on (i) import and (ii) end sales, (c) corporation tax and (d) other taxes to (A) domestic manufacturers and (B) international manufacturers who export goods into UK markets.
Answered by James Murray - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Government is clear that all businesses, whether based in the UK or overseas, should pay their fair share of taxes where they operate in the UK
We will continue to keep the UK’s Most Favoured Nation tariff schedule, known as the UK Global Tariff, under review to reduce unnecessary costs and promote a stable operating environment for businesses.
UK VAT is charged at the same rate regardless of whether goods are produced domestically or imported.
The Government has also taken significant steps to ensure that the amount of Corporation Tax companies pay in the UK on their profits reflects the economic activities they undertake here. For instance, the Corporate Interest Restriction rules prevent multinationals from avoiding tax by using contrived financing arrangements to make excessive interest deductions.
The introduction of a global minimum corporate tax will protect against aggressive tax planning and profit shifting, helping ensure profits made in the UK are taxed in the UK.
Asked by: Tom Rutland (Labour - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that chalk streams are protected in planning policies.
Answered by Matthew Pennycook - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
I refer the hon. Member to the answer given to Question UIN 45390 on 23 April 2025.
Asked by: Tom Rutland (Labour - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, whether his Department is taking steps to audit overseas factories that import into the UK for the same (a) social and (b) ethical compliance standards applied to domestic manufacturers.
Answered by Douglas Alexander - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
The UK supports voluntary due diligence approaches taken by UK businesses to identify and prevent exploitation of workers and prevent environmental harms across their operations and supply chains, in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises.
To promote the OECD Guidelines, the UK also operates an independent UK National Contact Point (NCP). The UK NCP engages bilaterally and multilaterally with the 51 other NCPs around the world, to ensure a consistent application, awareness and understanding of the OECD Guidelines.
Asked by: Tom Rutland (Labour - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, what steps his Department is taking to ensure international companies exporting into the UK are held to the same (a) quality and (b) safety regulations as domestic (i) manufacturers and (ii) sellers.
Answered by Justin Madders - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade)
Product safety regulations set requirements for the safety of consumer products placed on the UK market. Importers must ensure their products comply and distributors must not supply products that they know, or should know, are dangerous.
The Office for Product Safety and Standards and local authority regulators enforce the law. They use data and intelligence to target enforcement activity at dangerous and non-compliant products at the border.
The Government’s Product Regulation and Metrology Bill will provide powers to further strengthen our product safety framework and update it to reflect modern supply chains, including through new, proportionate duties on online marketplaces.
Asked by: Tom Rutland (Labour - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that high quality candidates are (a) recruited to and (b) retained within the civil service.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
We are committed to ensuring we attract, develop and retain talented people from a diverse range of backgrounds to create a modern Civil Service that delivers high quality public services.
Recruiting and retaining talented individuals is vital to support the delivery of the Plan for Change. As my Rt Hon Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster outlined in his Reform speech, there is a clear need to overhaul the recruitment processes to reduce bureaucracy and support external candidates.
Actions to address this include embedding a test-and-learn approach to recruitment, reviewing the current selection processes to ensure they are appropriate and support all candidates and working with departments to utilise secondments to recruit and retain key skills.