Asked by: Hilary Benn (Labour - Leeds Central)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when HM Revenue and Customs plans to reply to the emails from the Rt Hon Member for Leeds Central of 12 April and 9 May about his constituent Mr MW and his pension contributions.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
HMRC aims to provide a full response to the honourable member within the next 10 working days. They will liaise directly with the Department for Work and Pensions and the Customer.
Asked by: Hilary Benn (Labour - Leeds Central)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he plans to take steps to update taxpayers' personal HMRC pages to reflect the decision to extend the deadline to 2025 for voluntary pension contributions in the period between 2006 and 2018.
Answered by Victoria Atkins - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care
Individuals can access their National Insurance record through their Personal Tax Account and the ‘Check your National Insurance record’ and ‘Check your State Pension forecast’ services on the GOV.UK webiste. HMRC has updated all of these products with a statement to explain the deadline for making voluntary National Insurance contributions has been extended to 5 April 2025.
The payment date for years 2006 to 2018 will be updated to 5 April 2025 before the end of July 2023.
Asked by: Hilary Benn (Labour - Leeds Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much her Department spent on education about international development in schools in England in the last financial year.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Autumn Statement 2022 announced additional funding of £2 billion in both 2023/24 and 2024/25, over and above totals announced at the Spending Review 2021. This means funding for mainstream schools and high needs is £3.5 billion higher in 2023/24, compared to 2022/23. That is on top of the £4 billion, year on year increase provided in 2022/23. This is an increase of £7.5 billion, or over 15%, in just two years.
This additional funding will enable headteachers to continue to allocate budgets to areas that positively impact educational attainment, including high quality teaching and targeted support to the children who need it most, as well as help schools to manage higher costs, including higher energy bills.
All schools and academies have the freedom to choose how to spend their core funding according to their own unique circumstances and priorities, providing that all expenditure ultimately benefits their students. The Department does not allocate specific budgets for each subject. It is for schools to decide the allocation of resources at an individual school level.
Geography is part of the statutory National Curriculum for maintained schools at Key Stages 1, 2 and 3. Within geography, the National Curriculum and subject content for GCSE sets out requirements for teaching human geography including economic, global and international development.
Citizenship is also part of the statutory National Curriculum at Key Stages 3 and 4. As part of citizenship, pupils will learn about Parliament, the importance of voting and elections, the role of police, courts and justice, free press, human rights and international law and the governments of other countries, both democratic and non-democratic. They are also taught the actions citizens can take in democratic and electoral processes to influence decisions locally, nationally and beyond.
Asked by: Hilary Benn (Labour - Leeds Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the average waiting time in Leeds is for a specialist appointment following a referral for gender dysphoria.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The mean average wait time for a specialist appointment following a referral for gender dysphoria at the Leeds Gender Identity Clinic is 111.1 weeks, and the median average is 65.6 weeks.
The service operates a standard and priority waiting list, both are included in this data. Priority wait is for those people who have had a diagnosis in an NHS England Gender service and are returning to access further treatment, or those who are transferring from another National Health Service gender clinic.
To increase service capacity, NHS England has established four new pilot gender identity clinics since 2020. A fifth will open in Sussex in September 2023. This model will be rolled out nationally if the initial clinics are positively evaluated.
Asked by: Hilary Benn (Labour - Leeds Central)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much her Department spent on (a) teacher training and (b) educational resources on international development in the 2022-23 financial year.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Government is committed to providing a world class education system for all pupils and has funded significantly in education to achieve that.
The Department does not specifically fund Initial Teacher Training on international development.
Schools receive core funding, to cover all the core running costs of a school. Overall, funding for both mainstream schools and high needs increased by £4 billion in 2022/23 compared to the previous year. Total funding for mainstream schools was £53.8 billion in the 2022/23 financial year.
All schools and academies have the freedom to choose how to spend their core funding according to their own unique circumstances and priorities, providing that all expenditure ultimately benefits their pupils. The Department does not allocate specific budgets for each subject. It is for schools to decide the allocation of resources at an individual school level.
Geography is part of the statutory National Curriculum for maintained schools at Key Stages 1, 2 and 3. Within geography, the National Curriculum and subject content for GCSE does set out requirements for teaching human geography, including economic, global, and international development.
Citizenship is also part of the statutory National Curriculum at Key Stages 3 and 4. As part of Citizenship, pupils will learn about Parliament, the importance of voting and elections, the role of police, courts and justice, free press, human rights and international law and the governments of other countries, both democratic and non-democratic. They are also taught the actions citizens can take in democratic and electoral processes to influence decisions locally, nationally and beyond.
Asked by: Hilary Benn (Labour - Leeds Central)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, when she plans to reply to the email of 21 February 2023 from the right hon. Member for Leeds Central to the Department for Work and Pensions on behalf of a constituent, which was transferred to her Department on 24 February 2023, referenced MC 2023/14593.
Answered by Kevin Hollinrake - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The correspondence in question was transferred to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. Andrew Bowie, the Minister for Nuclear and Networks, responded to the letter on 24th May 2023.
Asked by: Hilary Benn (Labour - Leeds Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what support he is offering to patients on home dialysis who face higher energy bills as the result of their treatment.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Certain specialised services in the National Health Service, including home Haemodialysis, do include the provision of financial support to offset energy costs faced by patients using medical equipment at home. It is for individual commissioned providers to agree the process for the reimbursement of utility costs for Haemodialysis patients at a local level and manage their budgets autonomously.
The Department does not have a policy on energy costs at this time. However, the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England are supporting the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero’s review of energy rebate schemes that are currently available for users of medical equipment at home; as well as supporting the Department of Energy’s policy development work in this area which they plan to publish for low-income vulnerable energy consumers post April 2024.
Asked by: Hilary Benn (Labour - Leeds Central)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what information his Department collects on the remediation of buildings that have non-Aluminium Composite Material cladding safety faults.
Answered by Lee Rowley - Minister of State (Minister for Housing)
Information and data on the remediation progress of high-rise (over 18 metres) residential and publicly-owned buildings for buildings with life safety risks associated with cladding is available here.
The Department has estimated the number of mid-rise residential buildings (11-18 metres in height) requiring remediation, partial remediation or mitigation to alleviate external wall system life-safety fire risk and this information can be found here.
Asked by: Hilary Benn (Labour - Leeds Central)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, with reference to the Written Statement of 10 May 2023 on Regulatory Reform Update, HCWS764, what changes to EU-derived reporting requirements could save businesses £1 billion a year.
Answered by Kevin Hollinrake - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The Government published an impact assessment on reducing the administrative burden of record keeping requirements under the Working Time Regulations which can be found at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/retained-eu-employment-law-reforms
The 10 May announcement is a down payment on the Government’s plans to reduce regulatory burdens for business, helping to unlock economic growth. It will be followed by further announcements setting out our ambitions for reform across the UK economy.
Asked by: Hilary Benn (Labour - Leeds Central)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, if she will make an assessment of the effectiveness of mechanisms to enable companies to remove (a) potentially defamatory reviews and (b) threatening comments from online review sites.
Answered by Kevin Hollinrake - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The government introduced in Parliament the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers (DMCC) Bill on 25 April which includes a delegated power to amend a list of automatically unfair practices set out in the Bill.
Government plans to address fake and misleading reviews by adding these practices to that list of banned practices, following consultation this year. This will give greater clarity to business and consumers and, where fake reviews or misleading reviews are posted, allow enforcers to take effective action quickly.
The threatening communications offence in the Online Safety Bill, will capture communications which convey a serious threat of harm to a likely audience.
This includes communications such as a threat to life, rape, or serious injury; or causing serious financial harm.