Asked by: Lee Dillon (Liberal Democrat - Newbury)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking with the South Central Ambulance Service to reduce ambulance wait times for people in Newbury constituency.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government recognises that in recent years ambulance response times have not met the high standards patients should expect.
We are determined to turn things around and have taken serious steps to achieve this. Our Urgent and Emergency Care Plan for 2025/26, backed by almost £450 million of capital investment, commits to reducing ambulance response times for Category 2 incidents to 30 minutes on average this year. The South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SCAS) has a dedicated Category 2 performance team driving improvements through targeted interventions.
We have already seen improvements in ambulance response times in SCAS, which serves Newbury. The latest NHS performance figures for SCAS show that Category 2 incidents were responded to in 31 minutes 54 seconds on average, over six minutes faster the same month last year.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what consideration her Department has given to including milk in government-funded breakfast clubs without reducing funding for existing milk provision schemes.
Answered by Olivia Bailey - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Education) (Equalities)
The department funds schools taking part in the free breakfast clubs programme to buy breakfast foods and drinks, as well as to cover staffing and delivery costs.
Schools are required to provide a breakfast adhering to the school food standards, which could include a glass of lower fat milk. However, it is up to schools to decide what they serve in line with the standards. Where schools provide milk, they can also choose whether to participate in the national school milk subsidy scheme which can be used to reduce the cost of the milk
Additionally, the Nursery Milk Scheme is operated and funded by the Department of Health and Social Care and provides free milk to children under five at participating schools and childcare settings.
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment her Department has made of the number of polygamous marriages recognised for limited purposes under UK immigration or family law in the latest period for which data is available.
Answered by Mike Tapp - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
All marriages conducted within the UK must be monogamous under the Marriage Act 1949 and related legislation.
In some countries, polygamous or polyandrous marriages are permitted under the law of the country in which the marriage took place. Under the UK’s Immigration Rules only one spouse from a polygamous marriage can be granted entry or permission to stay in the UK as a partner. Additional spouses are not eligible for partner routes.
No official data is collected on the number of polygamous marriages among applicants.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many people are on ENT waiting lists in England.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
As of October 2025, there are 613,974 incomplete ear, nose, and throat patient pathways. Patient pathways are not equivalent to the number of people on the waiting list, as patients can be waiting for more than one treatment at the same time.
A dashboard that provides monthly data on patient pathways is also available at the following link:
https://data.england.nhs.uk/dashboard/rtt
Asked by: Rupert Lowe (Independent - Great Yarmouth)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether any NHS regional gender hubs have prescribed puberty blockers to patients under 18 since the publication of the Cass Review.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
From 1 April 2024, NHS England adopted a new clinical commissioning policy that prevents the newly established Children and Young People's Gender Services from initiating prescriptions for gonadotrophin releasing hormone analogues for the purpose of puberty suppression.
Asked by: Laurence Turner (Labour - Birmingham Northfield)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many full-time equivalent days were lost to sickness absence at HMP Hewell in each of the last five years by (a) prison officers and (b) other prison staff.
Answered by Jake Richards - Assistant Whip
The latest published workforce statistics for HM Prison & Probation Service cover the period up to 30 September 2025 and contain figures for the last five years for working days lost, average staff and average working days lost for each public sector prison and for different grades, but not by prison and grade combined. The published figures are for the 12 months to 31 March each year and latest figures are for the 12 months to 30 September 2025. These figures for HMP Hewell, split by band 3-5 prison officers and other prison staff, are given in the table below.
Working days lost to sickness absence, for HMP Hewell, by band 3-5 prison officers and other staff – for 12 months to 31 March 2021 to 2025 and for 12 months to 30 September 2025.
(Full Time Equivalent)
12 months to given date | Band 3-5 prison officers1 | Other prison staff | All staff at HMP Hewell |
31-Mar-21 | 4,344 | 2,189 | 6,532 |
31-Mar-22 | 4,392 | 2,677 | 7,069 |
31-Mar-23 | 3,706 | 2,158 | 5,864 |
31-Mar-24 | 3,801 | 2,266 | 6,067 |
31-Mar-25 | 4,701 | 2,103 | 6,803 |
30-Sep-252 | 5,073 | 2,736 | 7,809 |
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Notes
A comparison between target staffing levels and staff in post can be found in the following link: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/691da96221ef5aaa6543ef83/annex-prison-and-probation-officer-recruitment-Sep-2025_final.ods.
Internal management information has long been used for workforce planning to monitor vacancies and other resource monitoring purposes. However, target staffing and parallel staff in post data has only been produced for the purpose of official statistics for the last few years. As a result, the full historic time series is not available in a consistent format for the grade breakdowns requested.
Turnover rates1 at HMP Hewell for (i) band 3-5 officers2 and (ii) all other prison staff, in the 12 months to 31 March 2021-2025 and in the 12 months to 30 September 2025
12 months to given date | Band 3-5 prison officers (%) | Other prison staff (%) | All staff at HMP Hewell (%) |
31-Mar-21 | 13.6 | 11.9 | 12.9 |
31-Mar-22 | 14.4 | 9.8 | 12.6 |
31-Mar-23 | 15.0 | 11.7 | 14.0 |
31-Mar-24 | 14.2 | 8.0 | 11.6 |
31-Mar-25 | 13.8 | 10.4 | 12.4 |
30-Sep-25 | 14.6 | 8.9 | 12.2 |
Notes:
1. Turnover rates include all reasons for leaving and include both permanent and temporary staff.
2. Band 3-5 officers include: Bands 3-4 / Prison Officer (incl. specialists), Band 4 / Supervising Officer and Band 5 / Custodial Managers
3. As with all HR databases, extracts are taken at a fixed point in time and is dependent on staff completing the details correctly. The database itself is dynamic and where updates to the database are made late, subsequent to the taking of the extract, or are incorrect then these updates will not be reflected in figures produced by the extract. For this reason, HR data are unlikely to be precisely accurate and may not match local data.
Figures relating to the most recent 12 months are provisional, and may be subject to change in the future.
Asked by: Anneliese Midgley (Labour - Knowsley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans his Department has to publish a national strategy for palliative and end of life care.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is developing a Palliative Care and End of Life Care Modern Service Framework (MSF) for England.
The MSF will drive improvements in the services that patients and their families receive at the end of life and will enable integrated care boards to address challenges in access, quality, and sustainability through the delivery of high-quality, personalised care. This will be aligned with the ambitions set out in the recently published 10-Year Health Plan.
Further information about the MSF is set out in the Written Ministerial Statement HCWS1087, which I gave on 24 November 2025.
Asked by: Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answers by the Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office on 4 November (HC85501) and Lord True on 23 April 2021 (HL14191), and with regard to paragraph 1.6(d) of the Ministerial Code, what is the public interest argument for not releasing details to Parliament of public spending on the Downing Street flats.
Answered by Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent - Baroness in Waiting (HM Household) (Whip)
As was the case under successive administrations, an itemised list is not routinely published. Total expenditure from the Prime Minister’s allowance on their official residence is disclosed in the Cabinet Office Annual Report and Accounts.
Asked by: Marie Goldman (Liberal Democrat - Chelmsford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that people born with cleft (a) lips and (b) palates have access to appropriate dental care.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
I refer the Hon. Member to the answer I gave to the Hon. Member for Eastleigh on 21 November 2025 to Question 89684.
Asked by: Sarah Gibson (Liberal Democrat - Chippenham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Ockenden report, what recent assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of the progress in delivering the Immediate and Essential Actions; and if he will publish an update on the implementation status of each action within every NHS trust providing maternity care.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The final report of the Ockenden review contained 96 immediate and essential actions (IEAs), some national and some for local implementation. The IEAs contained in the Ockenden review were brought together, alongside other reports and guidance, into NHS England’s three-year delivery plan for maternity and neonatal services. A review of progress against the national actions in April 2025 demonstrated that work has been completed for many actions, but that there have been some challenges, for example in pre-conception care for women with pre-existing medical conditions.
NHS England wrote to all trusts and systems following publication of the review in April 2022, asking them to deliver the recommendations and report to their public boards. The expectation is that local board oversight of progress with implementation should be ongoing. Following discussion, it was agreed that some of the actions should not be universally implemented, for example newly qualified midwives remaining hospital based for one year post-qualifying.
More widely, Baroness Amos is leading a rapid, national, independent investigation into National Health Service maternity and neonatal services to help us to understand the systemic issues behind why so many women, babies, and families experience unacceptable care. My Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, has agreed with Baroness Amos that the investigation will publish its final report and recommendations in the spring of 2026, bringing together the findings of past reviews into one clear national set of recommendations.
The Government is also setting up a National Maternity and Neonatal Taskforce, chaired by My Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. The taskforce will take forward the recommendations of the investigation to develop a new national action plan to drive improvements across maternity and neonatal care.