Asked by: Bob Blackman (Conservative - Harrow East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate his Department has made of (a) the level of prevalence of respiratory disease and (b) the number of emergency hospital admissions for respiratory conditions in Harrow East constituency compared to national averages; and what steps he is taking to ensure that respiratory health is prioritised nationally, including through the introduction of a Modern Service Framework for respiratory care.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government will consider long-term conditions for future waves of modern service frameworks (MSFs), including respiratory conditions. The criteria for determining other conditions for future MSFs will be based on where there is potential for rapid and significant improvements in quality of care and productivity. After the initial wave of MSFs is complete, the National Quality Board will determine the conditions to prioritise for new MSFs as part of its work programme. There has not, therefore, been a specific assessment made in relation to winter pressures.
NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care are working with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to explore innovation and policy prioritisation in respiratory health, including the cross‑Government alignment that may be required.
Data is available for emergency Finished Admission Episodes (FAEs) where there was a primary diagnosis of 'respiratory conditions’. The following table shows the number of emergency FAEs where there was a primary diagnosis of respiratory conditions, for activity in English National Health Service hospitals and English NHS commissioned activity in the independent sector, for Mid Harrow and England, for 2024/25 and 2025/26:
Westminster Parliamentary Constituency of Residence | 2024/25 (August 2024 to March 2025) | 2025/26 (April 2025 to November 2025) |
Harrow | 1225 | 795 |
England | 608,449 | 423,588 |
Source: Hospital Episode Statistics, NHS England.
Available data on trends in respiratory conditions can be found on the Department’s Fingertips dataset. Data is not available by parliamentary constituency. Data is available at regional, county, unitary authority, and integrated care board level. Information for the London Borough of Harrow can be found at the following link:
https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/search/respiratory#page/1/gid/1/pat/15/ati/502/are/E09000015/iid/40701/age/163/sex/4/cat/-1/ctp/-1/yrr/1/cid/4/tbm/1
NHS England, working with the Department, the UK Health Security Agency, and other partners, is taking action to reduce the impact of respiratory conditions on the NHS this winter. Further details of the actions being taken to reduce demand on acute services during winter is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/urgent-and-emergency-care-plan-2025-26/
Asked by: Josh Babarinde (Liberal Democrat - Eastbourne)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how many people are currently accessing both mental health and addiction services who are homeless or at risk of homelessness in a) Eastbourne b) East Sussex c) Sussex.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
NHS England publishes data at a national level on accommodation status for people in contact with mental health services. Using accommodation types associated with homelessness, including rough sleeper, squatting, sofa surfing, staying with friends or family as a short‑term guest, bed and breakfast accommodation to prevent or relieve homelessness, sleeping in a night shelter, hostel to prevent or relieve homelessness, and temporary housing to prevent or relieve homelessness, the dataset at the end of November 2025 shows around 21,429 people fall into these groups out of 2,088,415 people in contact with services nationally (approximately 1.03%).
78% of all service users have an ‘unknown’ recorded accommodation status, meaning the true number experiencing homelessness while accessing mental health services may be higher.
Asked by: Josh Babarinde (Liberal Democrat - Eastbourne)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how many people are currently accessing addiction support services who are homeless or at risk of homelessness in a) Eastbourne b) East Sussex c) Sussex.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
NHS England publishes data at a national level on accommodation status for people in contact with mental health services. Using accommodation types associated with homelessness, including rough sleeper, squatting, sofa surfing, staying with friends or family as a short‑term guest, bed and breakfast accommodation to prevent or relieve homelessness, sleeping in a night shelter, hostel to prevent or relieve homelessness, and temporary housing to prevent or relieve homelessness, the dataset at the end of November 2025 shows around 21,429 people fall into these groups out of 2,088,415 people in contact with services nationally (approximately 1.03%).
78% of all service users have an ‘unknown’ recorded accommodation status, meaning the true number experiencing homelessness while accessing mental health services may be higher.
Asked by: Connor Naismith (Labour - Crewe and Nantwich)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of introducing zonal electricity pricing on (a) consumer energy bills in regions with high renewable generation, such as those with significant offshore wind capacity, (b) the cost to the public purse of constraint payments to wind generators and (c) future private-sector investment in energy infrastructure in areas of high demand, including the South East.
Answered by Michael Shanks - Minister of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
In July 2025, we announced that we would not be implementing zonal pricing as part of the Review of Electricity Market Arrangements (REMA) and had decided instead to retain a single Great Britain wide wholesale electricity market. We plan to set out the potential impact of zonal pricing − with respect to areas such as consumers, generators and investment, including South East England – in the REMA Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA), which will be published later this year.
Asked by: Al Pinkerton (Liberal Democrat - Surrey Heath)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate his Department has made of ambulance handover times at accident and emergency departments in Surrey Heath constituency.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Surrey Heath is served by the South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SECAMB). The most recent National Health Service performance figures show that the average handover time in SECAMB is 18 minutes and 37 seconds. This is over two minutes faster than the same period last year.
Our Urgent and Emergency Care Plan for 2025/26 sets out clear actions to deliver improvements this winter and make services better every day, including reducing ambulance handovers to a maximum of 45 minutes, helping get more ambulances back on the road for patients, and reducing category 2 ambulance response times to 30 minutes on average. NHS England continues to monitor average hospital handover times, sharing data with regions to support focussed discussions and identify improvement actions with those trusts not achieving handovers in 45 minutes.
Asked by: Dan Norris (Independent - North East Somerset and Hanham)
Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what assessment has the department made of the potential impact of the government’s Warm Homes Plan on levels of fuel poverty in North East Somerset and Hanham.
Answered by Martin McCluskey - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
DESNZ’s annual sub-regional fuel poverty statistics estimate the rates of fuel poverty in constituencies within England, and will therefore reflect the impacts of the Warm Homes Plan in time.
The Department will publish monitoring statistics and evaluation of policies announced in the Warm Homes Plan. DESNZ currently publishes statistics covering the uptake and impacts of energy efficiency measures here.
Asked by: Shivani Raja (Conservative - Leicester East)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what guidance her department provides on ensuring that sports facilities and stadia in (a) Leicester, (b) the East Midlands and (c) the UK are safe and welcoming environments for women and girls.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Government is committed to supporting every aspect of women’s sport and ensuring all sports facilities and stadia are welcoming and safe for women and girls.
We’ve launched the Women’s Sport Taskforce to tackle challenges and barriers facing women and girls in sport, from grassroots to elite, and are harnessing the power of hosting major sporting events, such as investing £6.7 million into the Impact 25’ programme for the Women’s Rugby World Cup to make facilities more accessible for women.
We are also investing £80.3 million in high-quality grassroots sports facilities through the Multi-Sport Grassroots Facilities (MSGF) Programme in England in 2025/26, and will also invest £68.35 million in 26/27. We will more than double priority access to grassroots football pitches for women and girls over the next four years. MSGF funded facilities should reserve at least 20% of priority use slots for women and girls teams. Our delivery partner in England, the Football Foundation, has recently announced the Lionesses HERe to Play Fund which will help to ensure grassroots sports facilities across England are welcoming, safe and accessible for a new generation of women and girls.
Our Arm’s Length Body, Sport England’s This Girl Can campaign has also worked with ukactive, CIMSPA and Women’s Aid to publish new guidance to help fitness and leisure facilities continue to create safer spaces for women and girls to be active.
In addition, the safety of all those who attend sporting fixtures is a priority for the Government. The Government funds the Sports Grounds Safety Authority (SGSA) whose purpose is to ensure sports grounds are safe for everyone, including women and girls. The SGSA continues to support world class standards of physical supporter safety for all attendees.
Asked by: Lewis Atkinson (Labour - Sunderland Central)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of the (a) retention of DVSA employed driving test examiners and (b) pay of DVSA driving test examiners in comparison to the earnings of private sector driving instructors.
Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
To aid retention and to encourage existing driving examiners (DE) to stay in role, the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) is making an exceptional payment of £5,000 to DEs and eligible roles (divided into two payments) over the next 12 months. By keeping more experienced driving examiners and bringing in new ones, DVSA will lose less testing capacity from the system, making more tests available for learner drivers.
Examiner capacity is rising, with 1,542 FTE examiners now in post (the highest since 2021) as of December 2025.
DEs are civil servants and as such, their salary is determined by the Civil Service Pay Remit Guidance. The guidance sets out the financial parameters Civil Service departments can use to determine pay awards for their staff. DVSA cannot act independently from this guidance. DVSA continues to look at different financial incentives to recruit examiners and, indeed, to offer to existing employees conducting tests.
The attached excel spreadsheet shows the (a) average and (b) highest waiting time for driving test centres (DTC) in the North East of England, from the financial year 2015/16 to the financial year-to-date (YTD). Please note, that DVSA does not hold data for Elswick and South Shields DTCs beyond 2022/23, due to these centres closing.
Asked by: Lewis Atkinson (Labour - Sunderland Central)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the (a) average and (b) longest waiting time was for a driving test in each of the the test centres in the North East region in each of the last ten years.
Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
To aid retention and to encourage existing driving examiners (DE) to stay in role, the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) is making an exceptional payment of £5,000 to DEs and eligible roles (divided into two payments) over the next 12 months. By keeping more experienced driving examiners and bringing in new ones, DVSA will lose less testing capacity from the system, making more tests available for learner drivers.
Examiner capacity is rising, with 1,542 FTE examiners now in post (the highest since 2021) as of December 2025.
DEs are civil servants and as such, their salary is determined by the Civil Service Pay Remit Guidance. The guidance sets out the financial parameters Civil Service departments can use to determine pay awards for their staff. DVSA cannot act independently from this guidance. DVSA continues to look at different financial incentives to recruit examiners and, indeed, to offer to existing employees conducting tests.
The attached excel spreadsheet shows the (a) average and (b) highest waiting time for driving test centres (DTC) in the North East of England, from the financial year 2015/16 to the financial year-to-date (YTD). Please note, that DVSA does not hold data for Elswick and South Shields DTCs beyond 2022/23, due to these centres closing.
Asked by: Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government what measures they plan to take to help young people struggling to find work out of welfare dependency.
Answered by Baroness Sherlock - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Government’s ambition is to transform young people’s prospects, by ensuring every one of them has the chance to earn or learn through a Youth Guarantee.
We have already taken the first steps towards delivering a Youth Guarantee, launching eight Youth Guarantee Trailblazers in England, announcing funding to almost double our Youth Hubs, and launching an Independent Report into Young People and Work, to identify potential areas for reform to better support young people with health conditions and disabilities.
At the Budget we announced the expansion of the Youth Guarantee, backed by an £820 million investment over the next three years, to reach almost 900,000 young people. This includes expansion of Youth Hubs to more than 360 areas across Great Britain and a new Youth Guarantee Gateway, offering a dedicated session and follow-up support to 16-24-year-olds on Universal Credit and looking for work. This investment will also create around 300,000 additional opportunities to gain workplace experience and training. In addition, it will provide guaranteed jobs to around 55,000 young people aged 18-21 through the Jobs Guarantee.
The application window for Phase One of the Jobs Guarantee opened on 29 January 2026. Through the application process, the government will identify delivery organisations to run the Jobs Guarantee scheme in the six Phase One areas of Birmingham & Solihull, East Midlands, Greater Manchester, Hertfordshire & Essex, Central & East Scotland and Southwest & Southeast Wales.
In Phase One of the Jobs Guarantee, the Scheme will provide over 1,000 fully funded six-month paid jobs to eligible 18–21-year-olds, who have been on Universal Credit and looking for work for 18 months. The DWP will fund 100% of eligible employment costs for 25 hours a week at the relevant minimum wage. The DWP will also fund wraparound support to help participants succeed on the scheme and transition into sustained employment.
Phase One will be followed by national roll-out of the Jobs Guarantee across Great Britain later in 2026.