Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department for International Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, what recent progress her Department has made on securing UK membership of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Answered by Nigel Huddleston - Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
The UK continues to make good progress on negotiating accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, having demonstrated to members of the partnership that we are a high-standards, fair trading economy. In person market access negotiations were held in Tokyo in July, followed by a subsequent round in Sydney in October.
Negotiations will continue over the coming months; the UK will take the time needed to ensure that accession takes place on terms that are right for British business and interests.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department for International Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, what steps her Department is taking to increase trade opportunities for the UK financial services sector.
Answered by Andrew Bowie - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
The Department for International Trade is committed to increasing trade opportunities for the UK financial services sector. We work closely with the sector through Trade Advisory Group forums, to secure their input to develop our ambitious free trade agreements programme. We identify overseas market access barriers and work to remove them through our overseas Post network. Together with a wide range of industry organisations we promote the UK’s world class financial services sector in key areas such as asset management, insurance, green and sustainable finance as well as supporting fintech and insuretech providers to enter high growth overseas markets.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to increase levels of adult numeracy.
Answered by Robert Halfon
We want everyone to have the opportunity to learn and develop the essential skills they need to succeed at any age.
That is why the department has launched Multiply, the Government’s new programme for improving adult numeracy, funded through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. Up to £559m is available over the Spending Review period for Multiply, boosting funding for maths and enabling delivery of innovative approaches to improving adult numeracy.
Multiply will enable local areas to deliver innovative approaches to improving numeracy amongst adults, helping more people take the next step to higher levels of training or unlock new job opportunities. Multiply will offer a range of flexible courses and interventions that fit around people’s lives and are tailored to specific needs, circumstances, sectors and industries. For example, courses designed to increase confidence with numbers for those needing the first steps towards formal numeracy qualifications or programmes delivered with employers to support people to get a job or progress within work.
Adults who do not already have a GCSE Grade 4/C (or equivalent) or above in maths are already entitled to study fully funded maths GCSE or Functional Skills Qualifications. Multiply does not remove this entitlement, nor does it reduce funding for those qualifications through the Adult Education Budget.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to improve levels of attainment in GCSE (a) English and (b) maths.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Schools White Paper includes a vision for a school system that helps every child to fulfil their potential by ensuring that they have the right support, in the right place, at the right time, founded on achieving world class literacy and numeracy.
This includes increasing the national GCSE average grade in both English language and in mathematics from 4.5 in 2019 to 5 by 2030, backed up by an ambition that, by the end of primary school, 90% of children will achieve the expected standard in reading, writing and mathematics.
The Department has already invested over £5 billion through its multi-year recovery plan. To date, over two million courses have been started since the launch of the National Tutoring Programme in November 2020. To help teachers, the Oak National Academy has been established as a public body, which will provide free, optional, adaptable digital curriculum resources, including in English and mathematics. The Department has established Education Investment Areas, prioritising support to the areas of the country with the most entrenched underperformance.
Alongside this, the Department’s ongoing investment in English and mathematics curriculum hub programmes is supporting children to benefit from high quality teaching in early reading and mathematics respectively, including through phonics and assessment and support programmes.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
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 improve ambulance response times.
Answered by Will Quince
NHS England has allocated an additional £150 million for ambulance service pressures in 2022/23, supporting improvements to response times through additional call handler recruitment, retention and other requirements. The National Health Service is also investing £20 million to upgrade the ambulance fleet in each year to 2024/25, reducing the age profile and emissions of the fleet and increasing productivity.
The NHS will increase bed capacity by the equivalent of at least 7,000 general and acute beds to improve patient flow through hospital and reduce long waiting times in transferring ambulance patients to accident and emergency. NHS England is also providing targeted support to some hospitals facing the greatest delays in the handover of ambulance patients to the care of hospitals, to identify short and longer-term interventions.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent steps he has taken to support postmasters affected by the Horizon scandal.
Answered by Kevin Hollinrake - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The Government is providing substantial funding to help Post Office give postmasters affected by the Horizon scandal the compensation they deserve.
Post Office is negotiating compensation with wrongly convicted postmasters, paying interim compensation of up to £100,000; as of 17 October, £7.6 million has been paid.
The Government is funding additional compensation to those non-convicted postmasters who took Post Office to the High Court. As of 24 October, interim payments of £15.9 million had been made.
The Historical Shortfall Scheme is compensating other non-convicted postmasters. As of 26 October, offers totalling £57 million had been made to 85% of eligible HSS claimants.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent progress his Department has made on providing additional (a) scans, (b) tests and (c) check-ups.
Answered by Will Quince
In February 2022 the National Health Service (NHS) published its Delivery Plan for Tackling the COVID-19 Backlog of Elective Care. The delivery plan commits the NHS to deliver nine million additional treatments and diagnostic procedures over the next three years and around 30 per cent more elective activity than it was doing before the pandemic by 2024-25.
2.06 million key diagnostic tests and scans were conducted in August 2022 compared with pre- pandemic activity of 1.9 million tests for August 2019.
There are currently 89 Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs) currently operational that offer additional diagnostic capacity for patients waiting for clinical tests such as MRIs, ultrasounds and CT scans. CDCs have delivered over two million additional tests and scans as of October 2022. Investment in up to 160 CDCs will deliver 17 million tests by March 2025, having added the capacity for nine million more per year once they are all fully operational.
There were on average 1.35 million general practice appointments per working day in September 2022, excluding Covid-19 vaccination appointments. This is an increase of 3.6% from September 2021.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to collaborate with international partners in response to the global cyber threat posed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Answered by Leo Docherty - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence) (Minister for the Armed Forces)
We have led the way alongside international partners to identify and expose malign Russian activity and to hold them to account in response to this hostile activity. The UK set up the Ukraine Cyber Programme shortly after Putin's invasion in February to protect against increased Russian cyber attacks. We mobilised an initial £6.35 million package to help protect Ukraine's critical national infrastructure and vital public services from cyber attacks. In May, we joined our international partners in calling out Russia's malicious attack on Viastat that impacted citizens across Europe. We will continue to collaborate internationally on cyber security and resilience, including responding to and deterring malicious cyber activities.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
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 improve access to GP services.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
On 22 September 2022, we announced “Our Plan for Patients,” which we estimate will help general practices deliver over a million more appointments this winter, and we set the expectation that patients who need an appointment within two weeks can get one, with urgent cases being seen on the same day.
This plan committed to publishing practice-level appointment data, to help people make an informed choice about which practice is best for them and set out measures to help patients book appointments more easily and benefit from more options when they need care, for example, from a community pharmacy.
We recognise that some patients have struggled to contact their practice by telephone. To help practices manage demand on their phone systems, NHS England has already offered a short-term telephony solution to all GP practices, which can free up existing telephone lines for incoming calls and help practices match capacity to demand. From December, NHS England will accelerate the delivery of a framework to support all practices to secure cloud-based telephony systems.
We will also free also up funding rules to bolster general practice teams with other professionals who can help them, such as GP assistants and advanced practitioners.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what fiscal steps his Department is taking to support small and medium size enterprises.
Answered by James Cartlidge - Minister of State (Ministry of Defence)
Over the past two years, the Government has taken unprecedented action to protect millions of businesses, including the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and Government-guaranteed loans.
We have brought forward a number of measures to support businesses this year, including extending the Recovery Loan Scheme until June 2024; freezing the business rates multiplier for 2022-23; cutting business rates by 50% for eligible retail, hospitality and leisure businesses in 2022-23 up to a cash cap of £110,000 per business; and permanently setting the Annual Investment Allowance at its highest ever level of £1 million from 1 April 2023, instead of reverting to £200,000 as previously planned.
The Government also increased the Employment Allowance from £4,000 to £5,000, which cuts the cost of employment for 495,000 small businesses.
Additionally, the Government is helping all eligible UK businesses, including small and medium sized businesses, with their energy bills through the Energy Bill Relief Scheme.
This builds on existing business support, including the Business Support Helpline which provides businesses with tools, resources and signposting to specialist organisations.