Asked by: Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent discussions he has had with Highways England on (a) potholes and (b) defects on the southbound carriageway north of junction 7 of the A1 (M); and when this stretch of carriageway will be repaired and resurfaced.
Answered by Guy Opperman
Departmental officials have regular dialogue with National Highways about maintenance on the Strategic Road Network. In the last 3 months, National Highways (NH) has carried out repairs and addressed defects on the A1(M) southbound approach to junction 7.
National Highways has a comprehensive road inspection and maintenance programme to maintain safe roads and to reduce the potential for potholes and other surface defects.
Further work will be done between 12 and 16 February. Subsequently, NH has plans to carry out further permanent road surface patch repairs within a 2km stretch of the A1(M) southbound approach to junction 7.
Asked by: Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if he will make an estimate of the number of households in the East Riding of Yorkshire that are located on estate roads that have not been adopted by their local authority as of 1 January 2024.
Answered by Lee Rowley
The requested information is not held by the department.
Asked by: Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)
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 help increase (a) recruitment and (b) retention of staff in NHS organisations in East Yorkshire constituency.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan sets out the steps the National Health Service and its partners need to take to deliver an NHS workforce that meets the changing needs of the population over the next 15 years. It will put the workforce on a sustainable footing for the long term.
To boost recruitment, the Government is backing the plan with over £2.4 billion over five years to fund additional education and training places. This is on top of increases to education and training investment, reaching £6.1 billion over the next two years.
By significantly expanding domestic education, training and recruitment, we will have more healthcare professionals working in the NHS. This will include more doctors and nurses alongside an expansion in a range of other professions, including more staff working in new roles.
The Long Term Workforce Plan also builds on the People Plan, setting out how to improve culture and leadership to ensure that up to 130,000 more staff are retained within the NHS over the next 15 years. This includes ensuring staff can work flexibly, have access to health and wellbeing support, and work in a team that is well led. These interventions apply across staff groups and geographical regions.
These recruitment and retention initiatives apply across the country, including in the East Yorkshire constituency.
Asked by: Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what progress he has made on field trials of bovine TB vaccination of cattle; and what his planned timescale is for a full roll-out of a vaccine.
Answered by Mark Spencer
Developing a vaccine against TB in cattle is one of the government’s top priorities. Defra aims to have a deployable cattle TB vaccine (‘CattleBCG’) and a new companion DIVA skin test (to detect infected among vaccinated animals) in the next few years. Field trials of the CattleBCG vaccine and the DIVA skin test started in 2021 and are ongoing.
Final deployment will rely on the success of the ongoing field trials, achieving UK Marketing Authorisations from the Veterinary Medicines Directorate (VMD) (for both CattleBCG and the companion DIVA skin test), gaining international recognition through the World Organisation of Animal Health (WOAH) and our trading partners for both products, an IT system to record and trace vaccinated cattle, and acceptance of vaccination from stakeholders across the supply chain. Defra is working closely with industry to co-design policy proposals.
Asked by: Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking to help ensure the protective equipment supplied to fire-fighters is up to date.
Answered by Chris Philp - Shadow Home Secretary
Fire and Rescue Authorities are responsible for the health and safety of their employees.
It is for individual fire and rescue authorities, as employers with responsibility for health and wellbeing, to ensure that firefighters receive the appropriate equipment and training they need to safely respond to the wide range of incidents which they attend, based on their assessment of local risk. Research being commissioned on carcinogens.
Asked by: Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of funding available to education authorities covering largely rural areas.
Answered by Damian Hinds
The schools national funding formula accounts for the challenges faced by small schools in rural areas through the ‘sparsity’ factor. This recognises that some schools are necessarily small because they are remote and do not have the same opportunities to grow or make efficiency savings as other schools, and that such schools often play a significant role in the rural communities they serve.
Given the importance of local schools to rural communities, the government has made changes to the sparsity factor, including reforms which mean that more schools are now eligible for this funding. Following these reforms, the total funding allocated through the sparsity factor has increased from £42 million in the 2021/22 financial year to £98 million in the 2024/25 financial year.
Asked by: Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)
Question to the Department for Business and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, whether she has had recent discussions with local authority trading standards departments on the accuracy of fuel pumps at filling stations; and if she will make an assessment of the adequacy of levels of testing on fuel pumps.
Answered by Kevin Hollinrake
The Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) is a part of the Department for Business and Trade. OPSS engages with trading standards on many issues related to protecting consumers, including the enforcement of weights and measure legislation.
Local Weights and Measures Authorities in Great Britain have a statutory duty to report on the level of local weights and measures enforcement work they undertake which includes liquid fuel measuring instruments such as petrol pumps. The latest Section 70 Weights and Measures report covering data for the year up to 31st March 2023 was published in September.
As stated in the report, 19 inspections of LFMIs resulted in prosecution or caution in 2022-23.
Asked by: Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to support farmers in areas recently affected by flooding.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Shadow Minister (Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government announced a significant package of support, via the Flood Recovery Framework, to areas in England that have experienced exceptional localised flooding as a result of Storm Babet. The Framework provides funding for eligible households and businesses and includes a £2,500 Business Recovery Grant for SMEs which have suffered severe impacts from flooding that cannot be recovered from insurance, and council tax discounts. Farmers in eligible areas may also access grants up to £5,000 per property to install property flood resilience measures where they have internal flooding to homes or business premises.
Wider support includes £25 million of funding to improve flood resilience through a new natural flood management (NFM) programme which closed on 10 November, and catchment sensitive farming advice for farmers on NFM, water and air quality. We will introduce further NFM measures under our environmental land management scheme next year. Also, as set out in the Environment Agency’s latest flood strategy roadmap, flood risk management authorities will be working with farmers and landowners to help them adapt their businesses and practices to be resilient to flooding and coastal change. The National Farmers Union is working with the Environment Agency to establish a rural resilience partnership focused on helping farmers and growers adapt to a changing climate.
Asked by: Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)
Question to the Leader of the House:
To ask the Leader of the House, if she will bring forward proposals to implement the recommendations in the Third Report of the House of Commons Procedure Committee of Session 2009-10 on Accountability to the House of Commons of Secretaries of State in the House of Lords, HC496, which was published on 22 March 2010.
Answered by Penny Mordaunt
The Procedure Committee has announced an inquiry into this issue and it would not be appropriate for me to pre-empt the conclusions of that inquiry.
Asked by: Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to the roadworks on the M62 at the Ouse bridge, what estimate his Department has made of when (a) those roadworks will be completed, (b) the temporary speed limits will be removed and (c) all lanes will be open to traffic; and what steps his Department is taking to expedite the completion of those works.
Answered by Guy Opperman
The initial scope of the project included the replacement of two half joints on the eastbound carriageway however, following further inspections, National Highways determined that it was necessary to replace all eight joints. Whilst this means works will be ongoing longer than anticipated, it will minimise future disruption to road users and mitigate the risk of any future emergency failures that could lead to the full closure of the bridge.
The programme of works on the M62 Ouse bridge is scheduled to complete by the end of August 2024, at which point the temporary speed limits and lane closures will be removed.