Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what additional support she is making available to support swimming pools and leisure centres in response to increases in energy costs.
Answered by Stuart Andrew - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
We recognise the importance of ensuring public access to swimming pools, as swimming is a great way for people of all ages to stay fit and healthy. The responsibility of providing this access lies at Local Authority level, and the Government continues to encourage Local Authorities to support swimming facilities.
We appreciate the impact rising energy prices are having on organisations of all sizes, including on operators of swimming pools. In September the Government announced the Energy Bill Relief Scheme, under which businesses and other non-domestic energy users (including swimming pools) are being offered support. The Energy Bill Relief Scheme is currently under review to ensure support is targeted to the most vulnerable sectors.
Officials in my department are in regular contact with representatives from the sector to assess the impact of rising energy costs, and how operators and local authorities are responding to them.
Sport England has invested £12,775,274 in swimming and diving projects since April 2019, which includes £9,360,002 to Swim England. This is in addition to the £100 million National Leisure Recovery Fund, which supported the reopening of local authority swimming pools throughout the country after the pandemic.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to mitigate the effects of covid-19 on children's education.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Education is a devolved matter, and the response outlines the information for England only.
The Department is focusing on recovering from the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic through the delivery of a multi-year programme.
The Department has made almost £5 billion available for education recovery in England. This includes up to £1.5 billion for the tutoring of children and young people aged 5 to 19, nearly £2 billion of direct funding to schools so that they can deliver evidence-based interventions based on pupil needs, £400 million to help provide training opportunities for teachers and early year practitioners and over £800 million to cover the cost of additional hours of teaching and learning for students aged 16 to 19.
The Department’s education recovery funding exists in addition to Pupil Premium funding, which is worth over £2.6 billion in the 2022/23 financial year. This additional funding enables schools in England to provide extra support to improve the academic and personal achievements of disadvantaged pupils.
The Autumn Statement has also provided a net increase of £2 billion in 2023/24 and a further £2 billion in 2024-25 in the core schools budget. These figures are over and above totals announced in the 2021 Spending Review. This brings the core schools budget to a total of £58.8 billion in the 2024/25 financial year. This will enable head teachers to continue to invest in the areas that the Department knows positively impacts educational attainment, including high quality teaching and targeted support to the children who need it most.
Alongside this, the Schools White Paper sets out how the Department will deliver recovery, not just through its specific recovery investments, but through a wider programme of reforms.
Asked by: Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to encourage children back into classroom education following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Education is a devolved matter, and the response outlines the information for England only.
Being in school is crucial to pupils’ attainment, wellbeing, and wider life chances. The department is focusing on supporting the recovery of children and young people from the disruption of COVID-19 through an ambitious multi-year programme and has made available almost £5 billion for education recovery. This investment includes up to £1.5 billion for tutoring, nearly £2 billion of direct funding to schools so they can deliver evidence-based interventions based on pupil needs, £400 million on teacher training opportunities, and over £800 million for additional hours in 16-19 education.
In addition, the department has brought together an Attendance Action Alliance of lead professionals from key frontline services that support families. Members from education, health, justice, the third sector, and parent organisations have collectively committed to use their roles and organisations to undertake activities to improve attendance.
The department has also published new ‘Working together to improve school attendance’ guidance, which makes clear the importance of addressing the barriers to attendance through strong multi-agency working at school, multi-academy trust and local authority level. This guidance intends to ensure greater consistency in the attendance support offered to pupils and families, regardless of where they live, and emphasises the importance of providing attendance support in an earlier and more targeted way to respond to pupils’ individual needs.
To support this, the department has established an automated, more timely flow of attendance data from participating schools’ management information systems. Over 75% of state-funded schools have agreed to voluntarily share this data, which allows participating schools, their trust, and their local authority to see daily attendance for their pupils in order to identify those who need support earlier. This data is also being published fortnightly at a local authority, regional and national level to enable comparisons and early identification and response to emerging attendance trends.
Asked by: Lord Mendelsohn (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they will ensure that immunocompromised patients will have to wait no more than nine months from approval to get the prophylactic antibodies Evusheld.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government has decided not to procure Evusheld for prevention through emergency routes at this time. This is based on independent clinical advice by the multi-agency RAPID C-19 and a United Kingdom national expert policy working group, which reflects the epidemiological context and pandemic response and recovery policies. However, we have referred Evusheld to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) for evaluation, which is due in April 2023. Following NICE’s review, if a positive recommendation is made, National Health Service commissioners will be obliged to provide treatments within 90 days of publication.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question
To ask the Member for South West Bedfordshire, representing the Church Commissioners, what steps the Church is taking to plan for long-term maintenance of its churches and cathedrals.
Answered by Andrew Selous - Second Church Estates Commissioner
The Cathedral and Church Buildings team of the National Church Institutions (NCIs) are working closely with the cathedrals and major churches of the Church of England to evaluate the overall maintenance work required. The Church Commissioners are providing £11million in funding for 2023-25 to support a new “Buildings for Mission” programme to provide support, through dioceses, to local parishes with the challenges they face in maintaining their church buildings
The Church is grateful to the Government for its support for cathedrals and major churches during the pandemic when the Culture Recovery Fund made over £60.6m available to 582 parishes and cathedrals. The Church advocates for the continuation of the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme, worth up to £42m a year, until a suitable alternative can be found. The NCIs are working closely with Government, heritage partners and philanthropic funders, and the National Lottery Heritage Fund in response to its recent strategic review.
The Church awaits the response of the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to the recommendations made by the Government’s independent review led by Bernard Taylor into the sustainability of Church buildings, which was published in 2017: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/english-churches-and-cathedrals-sustainability-review
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
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 merits for (a) survivability and (b) preventing future disability of designating strokes as Category 1 for the purpose of ambulance response times.
Answered by Will Quince
No specific assessment has been made. The ambulance response time standards were established based on the findings of the Ambulance Response Programme, which analysed more than 14 million 999 calls.
NHS England is providing targeted support to some hospitals facing the greatest delays in the transfer of patients from ambulances and a Winter Improvement Collaborative programme to identify the causes of handover delays and implement best practice. This will be supported by an additional £3.3 billion in 2023/24 and 2024/25 to improve urgent and emergency care performance. The National Health Service will set out detailed recovery plans in the new year, including plans to improve Category 2 ambulance response times to pre-pandemic levels.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether her Department is taking steps to (a) identify and (b) implement best practice from other countries on improving ambulance response times.
Answered by Will Quince
The ambulance service maintains an overview of international clinical literature and evidence and takes account of developments and improvements as appropriate.
NHS England is providing targeted support to some hospitals facing delays in the transfer of patients from ambulances in addition to a Winter Improvement Collaborative programme to identify the causes of handover delays and implement best practice. This will be supported by an additional £3.3 billion in 2023/24 and 2024/25 to improve urgent and emergency care performance. The National Health Service will set out detailed recovery plans in the new year, including plans to improve Category 2 ambulance response times to pre-pandemic levels.
Asked by: Lord Mendelsohn (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether Evusheld will be available to NHS patients before Christmas.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government has decided not to procure Evusheld for prevention through emergency routes at this time. This decision is based on independent clinical advice by the multi-agency RAPID C-19 and a United Kingdom national expert policy working group, which reflects the epidemiological context and pandemic response and recovery policies. However, we have referred Evusheld to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence for evaluation, which is due in April 2023.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps their Department is taking to reduce the time taken to respond to (a) written parliamentary questions and (b) correspondence from Members of Parliament.
Answered by Will Quince
The Department attaches great importance to the effective and timely handling of written parliamentary questions and correspondence and officials remain committed to providing the highest level of service.
The Department's performance in answering written parliamentary questions on time fell during the COVID-19 pandemic and we continue to receive significantly more written questions than any other Government department. In order to improve performance, we have been delivering against our Written Parliamentary Question Recovery Plan and answered 71% of written parliamentary questions from hon. Members on time between May and July 2022.
The Department aims to reply to all correspondence within 20 working days. From May to September 2022, we answered more than 50% of correspondence within 20 working days. This doubled our previous response rate in 2021 and we are committed to making further improvements.
Asked by: Matt Vickers (Conservative - Stockton South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the Government has made an assessment of the impact of delaying the procurement of covid-19 treatment Evusheld on people who are immunocompromised; and if he will review the decision not to procure Evusheld for use in treatment of vulnerable people during winter 2022-23.
Answered by Will Quince
Based on the evidence and after careful analysis and consideration, the UK Government has decided not to procure Evusheld for prevention through emergency routes at this time. However, the UK Government has referred Evusheld to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) for evaluation, which provides evidence-based, rigorous evaluation of the clinical and cost effectiveness of medicines for use in the NHS. This is a decision based on independent clinical advice by RAPID C-19 (a multi-agency group) and a UK National Expert Policy Working Group and reflecting the epidemiological context and wider policies in our pandemic response and recovery. RAPID C-19 considered that there remained uncertainty that Evusheld would prevent symptomatic COVID-19 caused by current Omicron variants in the vulnerable population who would potentially be eligible. There are no current plans for any further review of the decision. RAPID C-19 will continue to keep Evusheld (and other COVID-19 treatments) under active review.