Yuan Yang

To qualify for home fee status in England, a person must have settled status or ’a recognised connection’ to the UK, and in the case of persons with settled status, be ordinarily resident in the UK for three years.

UK nationals are settled in the UK once they return from abroad, and therefore qualify for home fee status and student finance once they have resided in the UK for three years prior to the start of their course.

The three year lawful residence rule is a long established feature of the student support system. It applies irrespective of nationality or country of origin, and it applies to all the eligibility categories in the Student Support Regulations with the exception of those with a protection based need. It ensures that the support provided by the taxpayer is targeted at those who have a substantial and recent connection with the UK.

Hong Kong British National Overseas status holders qualify for home fee status and student finance once they have acquired settled status in the UK, which is usually after five years of residence. Most persons who acquire settled status in this way will automatically meet the three year ordinary residence requirement for student finance.

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency’s (DVSA) main priority is upholding road safety standards while reducing car practical driving test waiting times.

Measures in place to reduce waiting times for customers, include buying back annual leave from driving examiners (DE), conducting tests outside regular hours, including at weekends and on public holidays and recruiting more DEs.

In its most recent recruitment campaign, DVSA had two successful candidates in Slough and three in Reading, and it has made offers to these prospective DEs. DVSA launched its latest recruitment campaign in September 2024 and is working to recruit three DEs in Farnborough, four in Slough and five into Reading DTC, which serves the areas of Earley and Woodley.

The estimated number of individuals in families benefitting from the uprating of benefits in the financial year 2025/26 in each region of the UK and the UK overall can be found here Benefit uprating: estimated number and type of families and individuals in families benefitting from the uprating of benefits in financial year 2025 to 2026 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

An assessment cannot be made at a constituency level however official statistics for the number of people in receipt of Employment and Support Allowance, Jobseeker’s Allowance, Income Support, Pension Credit, Universal Credit and other benefits uprated at the Budget are published regularly on Stat-Xplore, with breakdowns available by various geographical areas, including Westminster parliamentary constituency.

The latest statistics are available to September 2024 for Universal Credit, and February 2024 for the other benefits listed above. Universal Credit statistics to October 2024 are due to be published on 12 November 2024, and for the other benefits to May 2024 on 28 November 2024. In February 2024 the Accredited Official Statistics for State Pension were suspended due to issues with processing data from the new Get Your State Pension (GYSP) system. The Accredited Official Statistics for State Pension will be reinstated in the release of statistics on 28 November 2024.

Users can log in or access Stat-Xplore as a guest and, if needed, can access guidance on how to extract the information required. There is also a Universal Credit Official Statistics: Stat-Xplore user guide.

No reductions in sickness benefits were announced at the Budget.

The Department does not hold constituency-level information about the specific Work Capability Assessment descriptors met by claimants, so we are unable to estimate impacts for individual constituencies robustly.

The parliamentary constituency of Earley and Woodley is a newly configured constituency that was created after the completion of the 2023 Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies. Therefore, data for the number of estates subject to IHT in this constituency for the tax years 2019/20-2021/22 is not available.

Data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) remains subject to a number of quality concerns following a fall in response rates, which fell from 47.9% in June to August 2013 to 14.6% in June to August 2023.

The ONS is undertaking work to address these quality issues through improvements to its data collection and methodology. The ONS is also continuing to develop the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS) as the long-term solution for collecting labour market data.

While these improvements are underway, LFS estimates are currently designated as ‘official statistics in development’, and the ONS advise caution when interpreting changes in headline LFS rates.