Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Attorney General:
To ask the Attorney General, whether she has written to the Prime Minister on Gaza and war crimes since 1 April 2024.
Answered by Victoria Prentis - Attorney General
I cannot answer your question as to do so would be in breach of the Law Officers’ Convention.
Paragraph 2.13 of the Ministerial Code clearly states that the fact that the Law Officers have advised or have not advised and the content of their advice must not be disclosed outside Government without their authority.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the oral contribution of the Prime Minister of 8 May 2024 in response to a question from the hon. Member for Weston Super Mare, which the 500 dental practices referred to are; and how many of those practices were registering NHS patients on 8 May 2024.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Our Dentistry Recovery Plan, backed by £200 million, will make dental services faster, simpler, and fairer for National Health Service dental patients. It will fund approximately 2.5 million additional appointments, or more than 1.5 million additional courses of dental treatment. A New Patient Premium is supporting dentists to take on new patients and as of 8 April 2024, nearly 500 more practices have said they are open to new patients, compared to the end of January 2024. The Find a Dentist website allows people to see which practices have said they are accepting new patients, with further information available at the following link:
https://www.nhs.uk/service-search/find-a-dentist
No estimates are currently available on the number of new patients seen by dental practices since the New Patient Premium scheme was introduced, but we are committed to evaluating the impacts of the measures included in our plan, and we will publish monthly data on progress once this is available.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of unpaid carers receiving Carer’s Allowance are caring for someone who receives Personal Independence Payment.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The latest readily available statistics from November 2023 show 145,156 unpaid carers were claiming Carer’s Allowance in England and Wales were also receiving Personal Independence Payment. This data is available on Stat X-plore here.
These statistics show 486,123 people in receipt of Carer’s Allowance in England and Wales were caring for someone in receipt of a Personal Independence Payment, which was 54% of the Carer’s Allowance in receipt caseload.
Please note that the data supplied is derived from unpublished management information, which was collected for internal Departmental use only, and have not been quality assured to National Statistics or Official Statistics publication standard. They should therefore be treated with caution.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many unpaid carers receiving Carer’s Allowance are in receipt of Personal Independence Payment.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The latest readily available statistics from November 2023 show 145,156 unpaid carers were claiming Carer’s Allowance in England and Wales were also receiving Personal Independence Payment. This data is available on Stat X-plore here.
These statistics show 486,123 people in receipt of Carer’s Allowance in England and Wales were caring for someone in receipt of a Personal Independence Payment, which was 54% of the Carer’s Allowance in receipt caseload.
Please note that the data supplied is derived from unpublished management information, which was collected for internal Departmental use only, and have not been quality assured to National Statistics or Official Statistics publication standard. They should therefore be treated with caution.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment his Department has made of the impact of his proposed changes to the Personal Independence Payment on unpaid carers and their eligibility to receive Carer’s Allowance.
Answered by Mims Davies - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Modernising Support for Independent Living: The Health and Disability Green Paper looks at different options to reshape the current welfare system so that we can provide better targeted support to those who need it most. We are considering these options through our 12-week consultation which was published on Monday 29 April and will close on Monday 22 July at 11:59pm. Any possible impacts on unpaid carers and their eligibility to receive Carer’s Allowance will be considered as necessary.
There will be no immediate changes to PIP, or to health assessments. All scheduled PIP assessments and payments will proceed as normal, and claimants should continue to engage as usual and provide any necessary information or updates regarding their circumstances.
We encourage everyone to respond to the consultation which can be found here, so that we are able to hear from as many disabled people, people with health conditions, their representatives, and local stakeholders as possible on these important issues.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what criteria his Department uses to determine whether water companies have failed to carry out their (a) statutory functions and (b) licensed activities to such an extent that his Department would apply to the High Court for them to be placed into special administration under the provisions of the Water Industry Act 1991.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Defra Secretary of State and the Water Services Regulation Authority (Ofwat), with consent of the Secretary of State, have the power to request the court to place a company in a special administration regime (SAR) so that its business can either be rescued or transferred as a going concern to new owners. Section 24 (2) of the Water Industry Act 1991 sets out the legal parameters for which a SAR can be applied for.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what funding the (a) National Institute for Health and Care Research and (b) UK Research Institute has provided for Parkinson's research in each of the last five years.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government’s responsibility for delivering Parkinson’s disease research is shared between the Department of Health and Social Care, with research delivered by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), with research delivered via UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Between the financial years 2019/20 and 2023/24, the Department of Health and Social Care, via the NIHR, funded Parkinson’s research projects to a total value of £12.9 million of programme spend.
As well as funding research itself, the NIHR invests significantly in research expertise and capacity, specialist facilities, support services, and collaborations, to support and deliver research in England. Collectively this forms the NIHR’s infrastructure. The NIHR’s infrastructure enables the country’s leading experts to develop and deliver high-quality translational, clinical, and applied research into Parkinson’s disease. For example, in the financial year 2022/23, the NIHR Clinical Research Network supported 114 studies related to Parkinson’s disease. UKRI spent over £66 million on research into Parkinson’s disease between the financial years 2019/20 and 2023/24. The following table shows the breakdown of spend on Parkinson's research for the NIHR and UKRI, each year from 2019/20 to 2023/24:
| NIHR programmes | UKRI | Total |
2019/20 | £2,470,000 | £18,200,000 | £20,680,000 |
2020/21 | £2,180,000 | £11,970,000 | £14,160,000 |
2021/22 | £2,620,000 | £13,010,000 | £15,640,000 |
2022/23 | £2,570,000 | £11,890,000 | £14,470,000 |
2023/24 | £3,030,000 | £11,060,000 | £14,090,000 |
Total | £12,900,000 | £66,150,000 | £79,060,000 |
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Deputy Foreign Secretary, if he will take steps to ensure measurable commitments to improve indoor air quality are included in the forthcoming Pandemic Accord.
Answered by Andrew Mitchell - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Minister for Development)
The UK recognises that improving indoor air quality is an important public health issue. However, as the Pandemic Accord aims to establish a high-level framework for pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, we have instead pursued action on this issue in other multilateral settings. For example, at last year's UN General Assembly, the UK worked with international partners to advocate for action on indoor air quality during the High-Level Meeting on Universal Health Care. The UK supported reference being made to the health impacts of indoor air pollution in the HLM's political declaration, which was subsequently adopted on 5 October 2023.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he is taking steps to increase the transparency of the process for licensing game bird shoots.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra has introduced several improvements to the transparency of processes since 2023 including proactively publishing all regulatory documents relating to GL43 and GL45 on Gov.uk, and by sharing the number of individual licenses approved and rejected in a previous PQ (PQ 202935). Defra has regularly engaged with a broad range of stakeholders to develop an improved risk assessment process, as well as a general licence for Special Protection Areas for birds. Defra has kept stakeholders informed of progress throughout the development of the general licence and individual licensing process.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Deputy Foreign Secretary, with reference to the Independent Commission for Aid Impact’s UK review of UK aid’s international climate finance commitments, published 29 February 2024, what assessment his Department has made of whether the £1.724 billion funding which has been reclassified as international climate finance is (a) dedicated ring-fenced funding and (b) distinguishable from non-climate ODA.
Answered by Andrew Mitchell - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Minister for Development)
The UK is delivering on our commitment to spend £11.6 billion International Climate Finance (ICF) between 2021/22 and 2025/26. Much of our ICF is integrated into programmes that seek to tackle climate change alongside other development objectives such as supporting economic growth and boosting sustainable agriculture. UK ICF programmes are all identifiable through a dedicated tag on the Development Tracker website: [https://devtracker.fcdo.gov.uk/].