Asked by: Joe Robertson (Conservative - Isle of Wight East)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of RPI-linked duty increases on consumer prices for spirits in pubs versus supermarkets.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
Alcohol duty is paid by producers, and is therefore not typically paid directly by pubs. Further, according to estimates derived from sales data collected on behalf of the Office for National Statistics, only around 15% of spirits are consumed on-trade.
At Autumn Budget 2025 the Chancellor confirmed that alcohol duty will be uprated on 1 February 2026 to main its current real-terms value. The government does not expect this to have any significant impact on competition between the on and off trades.
Asked by: Joe Robertson (Conservative - Isle of Wight East)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of spirits duty on the viability of pub in coastal communities.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
Alcohol duty is paid by producers, and is therefore not typically paid directly by pubs. Further, according to estimates derived from sales data collected on behalf of the Office for National Statistics, only around 15% of spirits are consumed on-trade.
At Autumn Budget 2025 the Chancellor confirmed that alcohol duty will be uprated on 1 February 2026 to main its current real-terms value. The government does not expect this to have any significant impact on competition between the on and off trades.
Asked by: Baroness Maclean of Redditch (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they plan to issue guidance to police forces in England and Wales that rapists and suspected rapists are recorded as male in crime statistics.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Government is considering the implications of the Supreme Court ruling on the definition of sex within the Equality Act. The Government Statistical Service Harmonisation team, based in the Office for National Statistics, are also in the process of reviewing standards and guidance for statistical data on sex and on gender identity. Once this has concluded the Government will review current guidance to agencies that collect crime statistics across the criminal justice system.
Asked by: Caroline Johnson (Conservative - Sleaford and North Hykeham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many (i) medical, (ii) dental and (iii) midwifery students it will fund to start studies in 2026.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
In England, the Office for Students (OfS) sets the maximum fundable limit for medical school and dental school places on an annual basis. OfS will publish its intake target for the 2026/27 academic year in due course.
For the 2025/26 academic year, the OfS has published its intake target at 8,126 for medical school places and 809 for dental school places
Undergraduate training places for midwives are not centrally commissioned by the Government. Instead, they are determined by local employers and education providers who decide the number of learners they admit based on learner demand and provider capacity funding.
For the 2025/26 academic year, the number of acceptances for midwifery was 3,390. This data is from 2025 and was taken 28 days after A-level result day. It is not final data. Further information is available on the UCAS website, at the following link:
The Government is committed to publishing a 10 Year Workforce Plan which will ensure the National Health Service has the right people in the right places, with the right skills to care for patients, when they need it.
Asked by: Mike Wood (Conservative - Kingswinford and South Staffordshire)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, pursuant to the answer of 15 October 2025 to Question 74279 on Prison Officers: Social Class, whether (a) the Social Mobility Commission and (b) Office for National Statistics classifies prison officers as (i) working class or (ii) a different social-economic classification.
Answered by Josh Simons - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.
A response to the Hon gentleman’s Parliamentary Question of the 24th November is attached.
Asked by: Freddie van Mierlo (Liberal Democrat - Henley and Thame)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the fairness of calculating student loan interest at RPI rather than CPI.
Answered by Josh MacAlister - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Interest rates are set in legislation in reference to the Retail Price Index (RPI) from the previous March, not the Consumer Price Index (CPI), and are applied annually on 1 September until 31 August. This ensures that over a period of years, interest rates on student loans have been consistently linked to a widely recognised and adopted measure of inflation.
The Office for National Statistics has undertaken a substantial programme of work over the past two years to enhance how inflation is measured. The Office for Budget Responsibility has confirmed that, from 2030 at the earliest, movements in RPI will be aligned with CPI as viewed here: https://obr.uk/box/the-long-run-difference-between-rpi-and-cpi-inflation/.
A full equality impact assessment of how the student loan reforms may affect graduates, including detail on changes to average lifetime repayments under Plan 5, was produced and published in February 2022 and can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/higher-education-reform-equality-impact-assessment.
Asked by: Freddie van Mierlo (Liberal Democrat - Henley and Thame)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment he has made of trends in the number of graduate (a) unemployment and (b) underemployment rates in the last five years.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department for Education publish yearly statistics on graduates in the labour market. This can be found here: Graduate labour market statistics, Calendar year 2024 - Explore education statistics - GOV.UK. These graduate statistics are for graduates in England.
There are no official published statistics for graduate underemployment rates. However, the ONS does publish underemployment statistics for the UK here: EMP16: Underemployment and overemployment - Office for National Statistics.
Asked by: Jim McMahon (Labour (Co-op) - Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate has been made of the average number of lost work days for (a) public sector employees (b) private sector employees (c) self employed patients waiting for pre-booked NHS operations and procedures.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
No recent estimate has been made on the average number of lost work days for public sector employees, private sector employees, or self-employed patients waiting for pre-booked National Health Service operations and procedures.
We recognise the importance of supporting patients to return to work where they can. That is why the Further Faster 20 (FF20) initiative was announced in September 2024, to deploy expert advice to NHS trusts in areas with the highest levels of economic inactivity to get patients treated faster. This programme is part of the plans to reduce the number of people that are unable to work due to long-term sickness, which is at its highest level since the 1990s. FF20 co-exists alongside other interventions, including reducing demand, which are positively impacting the waiting list, and it is challenging to disentangle the impact of one from the other.
The Government is committed to addressing health-related economic inactivity, which is crucial for enhancing public health, strengthening communities, and boosting the economy. By reducing economic inactivity, we can also alleviate demand on the NHS, thereby improving its performance. Analysis conducted by NHS England and the Office of National Statistics demonstrates there could be multi-billion-pound benefits in achieving the Government’s Plan for Change’s ambition to meet the referral-to-treatment standard for elective procedures.
Asked by: Julian Lewis (Conservative - New Forest East)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to the Answer of 25 November 2025 to Question 92953 on State Retirement Pensions: Women, if he will make an estimate of the number of women born in the 1950s who have died since the publication of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman's findings (HC 638) on 21 March 2024.
Answered by Torsten Bell - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) and National Records Scotland (NRS) publish annual data on deaths by sex and age group on their websites.
Asked by: Carla Denyer (Green Party - Bristol Central)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if she will conduct and publish a comparative assessment of the (a) fiscal returns from the Energy Profits Levy and (b) value of tax reliefs and investment and capital allowances granted to oil and gas producers since 2022.
Answered by Dan Tomlinson - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) forecast at Autumn Budget 2025 estimates that revenues from the Energy Profits Levy (EPL) will be £8.5 billion between 2025-26 and 2030-31. This is in addition to more than £11 billion in tax revenues already raised through the EPL since its introduction in May 2022.
A full breakdown of revenue projections for all North Sea oil and gas taxes is available in the OBR’s Economic and Fiscal Outlook, published at Autumn Budget 2025 (Economic and fiscal outlook – November 2025 - Office for Budget Responsibility). Information on tax receipts already raised by the EPL is published and regularly updated by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) (https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/datasets/appendixdpublicsectorcurrentreceipts).
Estimates of the cost of tax reliefs available to oil and gas companies under the Ring-Fence Corporation Tax (RFCT) and the Supplementary Charge (SC) are published at https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/tax-relief-statistics.
Estimates are not available for every relief due to data collection and estimation challenges but are kept under regular review.