Asked by: Rupert Lowe (Independent - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, for the total spend on (i) LinkedIn membership fees (ii) other subscriptions by his Department in the last financial year.
Answered by Samantha Dixon - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The department does not hold information on LinkedIn membership fees and other subscriptions in the format requested, and this could only be collated at a disproportionate cost.
Asked by: Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-affiliated - Life peer)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask His Majesty's Government how they intend to ensure consumer protection and regulatory compliance in blockchain and AI-enabled tokenised deposit models in the home-buying and mortgage markets.
Answered by Lord Livermore - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Financial Conduct Authority is responsible for the regulation of the mortgage market. All FCA-authorised firms are required to comply with the Consumer Duty, which sets high standards of consumer protections and requires firms to put their customers’ needs first.
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is currently consulting on reforms to the home buying and selling process. The Government has made clear its objectives that reform should support faster, more reliable transactions and reduced fall throughs and risks.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how many and what proportion of civil servants in his Department are (a) on temporary contract and (b) consultants.
Answered by Samantha Dixon - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The Department engages temporary workers and consultants where there is a business requirement that means it will be more beneficial to do so in order to provide the necessary expertise or a short-term resourcing solution where permanent capability is not required.
As of 30 November 2025, (a) 143 civil servants in the Department were employed on temporary contracts - approximately 4% of the Department’s full-time equivalent (FTE) workforce.
Information on the number of off-payroll engagements, including (b) consultants engaged by the Department, is published as part of the Department’s Workforce Management Information, which is available here.
Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough, Oadby and Wigston)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what the total cost was for (a) settlement agreements and (b) special severance payments made to departing staff from his Department in the last year.
Answered by Samantha Dixon - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
Any payments made in each Financial Year relating to settlement agreements, which includes special severance payments associated with settlement agreements where relevant, will be published in the relevant Annual Report and Accounts.
For the last financial year, these are published at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/mhclg-annual-report-and-accounts-2024-to-2025
A further update will be provided as part of the next set of published accounts for 2025-26.
Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough, Oadby and Wigston)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how many disciplinary cases were concluded against civil servants in (a) his Department and (b) his Department's agencies broken down by (i) outcome and (ii) whether the primary allegation related to (A) performance and (B) conduct in the last twelve months.
Answered by Samantha Dixon - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The department is not responsible for collecting or maintaining data on disciplinary action for staff in its executive agencies. We do hold information on concluded disciplinary cases within the core department; however, producing the requested information for both the core department and its executive agencies, and in the format specified, would incur disproportionate time and cost.
Asked by: Joshua Reynolds (Liberal Democrat - Maidenhead)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, whether the Government has set a target date by which no veteran should be sleeping rough in England; and what resources have been allocated to achieve this objective.
Answered by Louise Sandher-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence)
This Government is fully committed to ensuring that all veterans across the UK have access to the support they need on housing. That is why we have committed an additional £12 million to ensure the continuation of the Reducing Veteran Homelessness programme. Op FORTITUDE will also be extended, putting the service that has already supported over 1,000 veterans on a sustainable footing. These programmes will deliver three years of support services across the UK for veterans at risk of or experiencing homelessness.
On 11 December 2025, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government published A National Plan to End Homelessness. The Ministry of Defence contributed to this strategy including committing to ensuring that all councils are aware of service provision in their area to support veterans at risk of homelessness.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps his Department is taking to ensure veterans are not (a) homeless and (b) rough sleeping.
Answered by Louise Sandher-Jones - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence)
This Government is fully committed to ensuring that all veterans across the UK have access to the support they need on housing. That is why we have committed an additional £12 million to ensure the continuation of the Reducing Veteran Homelessness programme. Op FORTITUDE will also be extended, putting the service that has already supported over 1,000 veterans on a sustainable footing. These programmes will deliver three years of support services across the UK for veterans at risk of or experiencing homelessness.
On 11 December 2025, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government published A National Plan to End Homelessness. The Ministry of Defence contributed to this strategy including committing to ensuring that all councils are aware of service provision in their area to support veterans at risk of homelessness.
Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough, Oadby and Wigston)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how many and what proportion of staff in his Department were promoted (a) in-grade and (b) to a higher grade in the last year broken down by (i) performance marking in the previous year and (ii) grade.
Answered by Samantha Dixon - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The information is not held centrally in the format requested and could only be provided at a disproportionate time and cost.
Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough, Oadby and Wigston)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, how many and what proportion of his Department's staff in each grade were rated in the top performance category in the last year.
Answered by Samantha Dixon - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The department operates a rating-less system for Performance & Development and as such the information requested is not available.
Asked by: Chris Coghlan (Liberal Democrat - Dorking and Horley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential implications for the 10-year health plan of the findings of the report by NHS Providers entitled Investing in the NHS: empowering the sector to drive productivity, renewal and growth, published on 15 October 2025 on local authority funding for NHS infrastructure.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department of Health and Social Care continues to work proactively with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and local authorities to reform National Health Service infrastructure in England. The 2025 Autumn Budget confirmed that the Department of Health and Social Care’s capital budgets will rise to £15.2 billion by the end of the Spending Review period of 2029/30, delivering the largest ever health capital budget, as well as medium-term certainty to the sector to enable multi-year planning.
This settlement commits to a major transformation of care delivery, moving from analogue to digital systems, hospital to community-based care, and from treatment to prevention, and also confirmed £300 million additional capital investment in NHS technology which will support NHS productivity improvements. Additionally, this includes the establishment of 250 neighbourhood health centres across England, of which 120 will be operational by 2030. These will be delivered through upgrading and repurposing existing buildings, and building new facilities through a combination of public sector investment and a new model of public-private partnerships. This is being developed by the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority, supported by the Department of Health and Social Care, and will build on lessons learnt from past and current models and harness private sector expertise to deliver the new neighbourhood health centres.
Additionally, in November 2025, NHS England published the Capital guidance 2026/27 to 2029/30, which introduced several national reforms to the capital regime which addresses several of the recommendations in the report. These include: multi-year operational capital envelopes allocated directly to providers for the first time, providing firm funding until 2029/30 and indicative assumptions for a further five years; a new balance between national control and regional autonomy, giving regions a lead role in strategic estates planning and delivery oversight; expanded capital freedoms and flexibilities, including greater delegated authority and the ability for high-performing providers and newly authorised foundation trusts to reinvest surpluses; streamlined approvals and higher delegated limits, enabling faster delivery of capital schemes; and integration with the 10-Year Health Plan shifts, namely hospital to community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention, ensuring that capital investment underpins the long-term transformation of NHS services.