Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of the availability for patients to message their GP practice using the NHS app for medical and appointment enquiries over lunchtime periods.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We want patients to be able to contact their general practice (GP) by phone, online, or by walking in, and for people to have an equitable experience across these access routes. This is a key intervention in the Government’s ambition to end the 8:00am scramble. From 1 October 2025, practices will be contractually required to keep their online consultation tool open for the duration of core hours, from 8:00am to 6:30pm, for non-urgent appointment requests, medication queries, and admin requests. This will be subject to the necessary safeguards that are in place to avoid urgent clinical requests being erroneously submitted online. These requirements are set out in ‘You and Your GP’, a new patient charter, which will come into effect from September. Practices must provide a link to ‘You and Your GP’ on their website.
Patients can currently access their practice’s online consultation tool through their practice’s website. For 74% of practices this is also available via the NHS App, and this is due to increase to 95% of practices by March 2026.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of revising the thresholds for determining the interest rate on student loan repayments for people living abroad in the context of local taxation levels.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The repayment of student loans, including the setting of interest rates applied to student loan plan types for borrowers in the UK or overseas, is determined by the Education (Student Loans) (Repayment) Regulations 2009 (as amended).
Overseas repayment thresholds are calculated using World Bank price level index (PLI) (which is used to compare differences between the cost of living in the UK and other countries), not the tax rates of countries of residence. This means that if a borrower is resident in a country calculated as having a lower cost of living than the UK, the repayment threshold applied to their loan will be lower than if they are residing in the UK. The country bandings and thresholds are reviewed annually.
Using a recognised measure of the relative cost of living in different countries ensures that borrowers residing in different countries are assessed in a fair, transparent and consistent way.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, whether he has held discussions with Royal Mail on the adequacy of their response times to hon. Members raising casework matters about local postal services.
Answered by Justin Madders - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade)
Ministers and officials have discussions with Royal Mail on a regular basis in its capacity as the universal service provider. Royal Mail endeavours to respond to all queries about postal services in a timely manner. Specific operational arrangements continue to be an internal matter for Royal Mail as an independent business.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to the contribution by the hon. Member for St Albans on 9 July 2025, Official Report, column 325WH, whether she plans to make alternative funding available to London Colney Parish Council for the completion of their neighbourhood plan.
Answered by Matthew Pennycook - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
Following the Spending Review, my Department announced that it is unable to commission new neighbourhood planning support services for 2025 onwards.
Technical support which has already been awarded will continue to be provided but must be completed before the end of March 2026.
London Colney Parish is not in receipt of such support.
The government remains of the view that neighbourhood plans can play an important role in the planning system. Communities can continue to prepare neighbourhood plans where they consider that doing so is in their best interests.
Parish and Town Councils have access to their own resources which they can choose to use for neighbourhood planning if they wish.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether her Department has had recent discussions with Network Rail on the potential merits of (a) reducing and (b) eliminating the use of glyphosate herbicides on railway property.
Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
Network Rail uses glyphosate to control the growth of vegetation in places where it may cause problems for trains or colleagues working alongside the track. This helps to maintain the safe operation of the railway and avoid key parts of the railway being covered by vegetation. Network Rail has been reducing the amount of chemicals it uses on the network over the last couple of decades. Applications are targeted at the plants to ensure that the volume used is as low as possible. There is not currently a chemical alternative to glyphosate that gives Network Rail the same control of vegetation. Non-chemical approaches are available and used by Network Rail in other locations, but they are not viable for use on the operational railway.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of establishing an independent watchdog to monitor the effectiveness of HMRC Customer Compliance Group.
Answered by James Murray - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
HMRC and its Customer Compliance Group (CCG), is subject to a wide range of independent oversight and actively engages with a range of independent assurance, both internal and external.
Internally, HMRC maintains robust governance structures, including oversight by its Executive Committee and HMRC Board, alongside newly established subcommittees of the Board such as the Closing the Tax Gap Committee chaired by non-executive director Bill Dodwell – with a significant focus on the work of Customer Compliance Group.
Externally, HMRC is held to account by Parliamentary authorities, including the Committee of Public Accounts (PAC), the Treasury Select Committee (TSC), and the National Audit Office (NAO) who regularly undertake both financial and value for money scrutiny of HMRC and its Customer Compliance Group. Recent reports include those into tax evasion in the retail sector, managing compliance work since the pandemic and collecting the right tax from wealthy individuals – all of which primarily focused upon the work of HMRC’s Customer Compliance Group.
HMRC Customer Compliance Group welcomes Parliamentary scrutiny and has accepted 93.5% of recommendations of these bodies in the last 24 months aimed at strengthening the effectiveness of the Department. HMRC is working to implement the recommendations by the deadlines agreed with the respective bodies.
Customers can also ask the independent Adjudicator’s Office to review complaints after they have been investigated, if they are dissatisfied with how they have been handled by the Department.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether HMRC has issued guidance that the (a) Customer Compliance Group and (b) Risk and Intelligence Service (Compliance, Operational Insight and Risking) Group should only investigate cases of alleged tax evasion where the estimated loss to the public purse has been more than £35,000 for five years or more.
Answered by James Murray - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
HMRC Customer Compliance Group’s guidance specifically states that there is no de-minimis limit for suspected fraud referrals and does not contain any instructions that would limit investigation in relation to timespan of the tax at risk.
HMRC’s Risk and Intelligence Service deliver a wide range of cases, including where there is suspected evasion behaviour. CCG use a variety of indicators to identify the highest risk cases to address different compliance risks, but do not use an estimated loss of £35,000 for five years or more as a standard selection criteria.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of bringing forward legislative proposals to grant local authorities stronger powers to reject license applications for slot machines.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Government wants local authorities to feel empowered to make decisions that are in their communities’ best interests. Local authorities have a range of powers to manage gambling in their areas, both under the planning system and as licensing authorities under the Gambling Act 2005.
As set out in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government’s English Devolution White Paper, the Government will look to complement local authorities’ existing powers in relation to gambling outlets to refuse or place conditions on premises licences, in line with measures outlined in the 2023 Gambling White Paper, when parliamentary time allows.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 19 May 2025 to Question 51941 on Paraneoplastic Encephalomyelitis: Diagnosis, how many laboratories in England provide testing for KLHL11 antibodies.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department does not collect data on KLHL11 antibody testing in England.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of providing additional resource to the priority service for processing Indefinite Leave to Remain applications on the BNO route for Hong Kongers.
Answered by Seema Malhotra - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Education) (Equalities)
The Priority Visa Service for BNO (British National Overseas) Indefinite Leave to Remain applications was introduced on 8 September 2023. Straightforward applications are processed within 5 days of biometric enrolment. Sufficient resource is allocated to ensure this target is met.