Asked by: Wendy Morton (Conservative - Aldridge-Brownhills)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what proportion of the Official Development Assistance budget is allocated to initiatives tackling antimicrobial resistance.
Answered by Stephen Doughty - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The UK is a global leader in tackling antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and supports action though its multilateral, bilateral and research investments. It is not possible to identify the AMR element of all such spending.
Direct AMR spend includes, but is not limited to: i) the UK's Fleming Fund programme which strengthens drug-resistance surveillance systems across low- and middle-income countries in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean (£57.5 million in 2023-24); ii) the UK Global Antimicrobial Innovation Fund (GAMRIF) which supports Research & Development into products and solutions that reduce the threat of AMR in low and middle income countries (£16.4 million in 2023-24); iii) FCDO's funding to product development partnerships in 2024/25 included over £32 million to the Medicines for Malaria Venture, TB Alliance and the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit's DeTACT project to develop new antimalarials and treatments for drug-resistant malaria and tuberculosis and to protect the effectiveness of existing medicines.
Official Development Assistance (ODA) allocations and the impact on programmes are being worked through following the decision to reduce UK ODA from 0.5 per cent of gross national income to 0.3 per cent in 2027. We will set out our spending plans following the completion of the spending review.
Asked by: Wendy Morton (Conservative - Aldridge-Brownhills)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 20 March 2025 to Question 38594 on Neighbourhood Policing: Finance, what estimate she has made of funding available to frontline policing in 2025-26.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Home Office)
The 2025-26 final police funding settlement provides funding of up to £19.6 billion for the policing system in England and Wales. This is an overall increase of up to £1.2 billion when compared to the 2024-25 settlement. Total funding to police forces will be up to £17.6 billion, an increase of up to £1.2 billion compared to the 2024-25 police funding settlement – a significant increase, and more than the increase last year. This equates to a 7.1% cash increase, and 4.6% real terms increase in funding.
Decisions about the allocation of police resources locally are a matter for Chief Constables and directly elected local policing bodies (including Police and Crime Commissioners, Mayors with PCC functions and the London Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime).
Asked by: Wendy Morton (Conservative - Aldridge-Brownhills)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, for what reason it is her policy to place a mandatory gambling levy on society lotteries while not requiring the National Lottery to make a mandatory problem gambling contribution.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
Under the terms of the fourth licence, the National Lottery operator, Allwyn, is required to make a £1.6million annual contribution to socially responsible purposes such as research and treatment.
Society lotteries will be charged the levy at the lowest rate of 0.1%, in recognition of the comparatively low rates of harm associated with participation in society lotteries and the important benefits they bring to good cause fundraising.
Asked by: Wendy Morton (Conservative - Aldridge-Brownhills)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, if he will publish the criteria to determine the prioritisation of Official Development Assistance funding in 2025-26; and what steps is he taking to ensure such spending optimises value for money.
Answered by Stephen Doughty - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
We are committed to modernising our approach to development to help provide the best value for money for UK taxpayers and deliver mutual benefits at home and overseas. We will work with our partners in new ways to maximise our impact.
To enable us to deliver the transition to spending 0.3 per cent of gross national income on Official Development Assistance effectively, in 2025/26 we are prioritising meeting legally binding commitments and delivering work already underway, as well as planned humanitarian spend. This will help deliver the flexibility the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office requires to set a transitional set of final allocations following the Spending Review. We have also established an exemptions process to allow for critical new development work to continue.
Full detail is set out in Baroness Chapman's 27 March letter to the International Development Committee [https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/47275/documents/245059/default/].
Asked by: Wendy Morton (Conservative - Aldridge-Brownhills)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 25 March 2025 to Question 38604 on Sustainable Farming Incentive scheme, what assessment he has made of the potential implications for his policies of farmers whose applications were ready for submission but missed out due to the short notice about the scheme's closure.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This Government inherited an uncapped scheme aimed at mass participation of farm businesses, despite a finite farming budget. In order to ensure we acted in a financially responsible way we took the decision to stop accepting new Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) applications. We needed to ensure fair access to the scheme and avoid creating a sudden increase in the level of demand.
This Government’s commitment to farmers and the vital role they play to feed our nation remains steadfast. Since we launched the SFI in 2022 Defra have worked closely with the farming sector to develop the SFI and we will continue to do so for the reformed the SFI offer, which we expect to publish more information about in summer 2025.
Asked by: Wendy Morton (Conservative - Aldridge-Brownhills)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 24 March to Question 38609 on Local Government Pension Scheme, what her planned timeline is for the announcement of reforms as part of the Chancellor’s Pensions Review.
Answered by Jim McMahon - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The Government consulted on a proposed set of reforms in our “Fit For the Future" Consultation, which closed on 16 January 2025. We are currently analysing responses and will publish a Government response to the consultation in due course.
Asked by: Wendy Morton (Conservative - Aldridge-Brownhills)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, when he last had discussions with his French counterpart on the right to freedom of religion or belief in France.
Answered by Stephen Doughty - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The UK is strongly committed to freedom of religion or belief for all abroad. The UK champions the right to freedom of religion or belief and promoting tolerance and mutual respect through our position at the UN, G7 and other multilateral fora, and in our bilateral work. Ministers and officials engage with their French counterparts on a broad range of issues, for example at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's Conference on Addressing Antisemitism (10-11 February 2025). Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office officials also engage with faith leaders in France.
Asked by: Wendy Morton (Conservative - Aldridge-Brownhills)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to ensure stable long-term funding for international nutrition programmes.
Answered by Stephen Doughty - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Prime Minister has set out a new strategic vision for government spending on defence and security and Official Development Assistance (ODA). Detailed decisions on how the ODA budget will be used will be worked through as part of the ongoing Spending Review based on various factors including impact assessments.
The UK worked in close partnership with France to make the recent Nutrition for Growth (N4G) summit in Paris a success. The Minister for Development was pleased to lead the UK delegation, and alongside the Scaling-Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement and other partners, to launch the Global Compact on Nutrition Integration.
Partners have welcomed the Compact as a new initiative to drive change and a positive signal of the UK's continued leadership on the global stage. Over 80 countries and organisations have already expressed support for the Compact, signalling their commitment to embed nutrition objectives into investments across other sectors, such as economic growth, climate and health, to boost impact and leverage existing financing for nutrition.
Asked by: Wendy Morton (Conservative - Aldridge-Brownhills)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of fully funding apprenticeships for under-22s in SMEs on apprenticeship starts to date.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Since April 2024, the government pays 100% of apprentice training costs, up to the funding band maximum, for non-levy paying employers when they take on apprentices aged 16 to 21, and apprentices aged 22 to 24 who have an education, health and care plan or have been in local authority care.
Apprenticeship statistics, including starts by young people, can be found at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/apprenticeships.
Asked by: Wendy Morton (Conservative - Aldridge-Brownhills)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of changes to Overseas Development Assistance on the Africa Strategy.
Answered by Stephen Doughty - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Official Development Assistance (ODA) allocations and the impact on programmes are being worked through following the decision to reduce UK ODA from 0.5 per cent of GNI to 0.3 per cent in 2027.
We will set out our spending plans following the completion of the spending review.