Asked by: Jeevun Sandher (Labour - Loughborough)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much of the flood risk and coastal erosion risk management budget has been allocated to nature based solutions in the current financial year.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Many projects in the Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Capital Investment Programme deliver a combination of nature-based solutions (NBS) and hard defences, and we do not explicitly capture the expenditure on NBS separately. Due to this, we are unable to separate spend on NBS into each financial year.
For the years available, the total investment across the Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Capital Investment Programme from April 2021 to March 2024 was £3.5 billion, with approximately £40.6 million spent on NBS. The total forecast investment across the Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Capital Investment Programme for the current financial year, 2025/26, is £1.1 billion, with an estimated £24.8 million allocated for schemes that include NBS.
Asked by: Jeevun Sandher (Labour - Loughborough)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much and what proportion of the Flood Risk and Coastal Erosion Risk Management budget was spent on nature based solutions in the (a) 2022-23, (b) 2023-24 and (c) 2024-25 financial year.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Many projects in the Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Capital Investment Programme deliver a combination of nature-based solutions (NBS) and hard defences, and we do not explicitly capture the expenditure on NBS separately. Due to this, we are unable to separate spend on NBS into each financial year.
For the years available, the total investment across the Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Capital Investment Programme from April 2021 to March 2024 was £3.5 billion, with approximately £40.6 million spent on NBS. The total forecast investment across the Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Capital Investment Programme for the current financial year, 2025/26, is £1.1 billion, with an estimated £24.8 million allocated for schemes that include NBS.
Asked by: Jeevun Sandher (Labour - Loughborough)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when his Department plans to implement the proposed land use framework.
Answered by Mary Creagh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Government ran a consultation on land use in England from January to April this year. The responses to this consultation, and feedback from supporting workshops, are being analysed. These responses and outputs will inform the preparation of the Land Use Framework, which will be published in due course.
Asked by: Jeevun Sandher (Labour - Loughborough)
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 land owners to implement nature based solutions to (a) drainage and (b) flood management.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Farmers and landowners have an increasingly important role to play in reducing the risk of flooding and coastal erosion, through measures such as nature-based solutions (NbS).
To support this the Government is investing in NbS measures, such as natural flood management (NFM), via its Environmental Land Management schemes and floods investment programme.
On 3 June we launched a consultation on reforming our approach to investing in flooding and coastal erosion for communities across the country. The proposals will enable a broader range of resilience interventions and will make it easier to invest in natural flood management schemes that also boost nature, water resources and fight climate change.
Asked by: Jeevun Sandher (Labour - Loughborough)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he plans to bring into force the legislative provisions of schedule 3 of the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 for the adoption of sustainable draining systems in England.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This Government is committed to requiring standardised Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS) in new developments. These should be to designs that cope with changing climatic conditions as well as delivering wider water infrastructure benefits, reduce run off and help to improve water quality, amenity, and biodiversity. It is also important to ensure appropriate adoption and maintenance arrangements are in place.
Asked by: Jeevun Sandher (Labour - Loughborough)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of undertaking a National Mesothelioma Clinical Audit to (a) identify gaps in mesothelioma care, (b) optimise allocation of resources and (c) help tackle regional inequalities in care.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Reducing unwarranted variation in cancer care and treatment is a priority for the Government. In December 2024, my Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care committed to developing a National Cancer Plan.
The National Cancer Plan will have patients at its heart and will cover the entirety of the cancer pathway, from referral and diagnosis to treatment and ongoing care, and will apply to all cancer types, including mesothelioma. It will seek to improve every aspect of cancer care, including experiences and outcomes and addressing inequalities in care. Our goal is to reduce the number of lives lost to cancer over the next 10 years.
In October 2022, the NHS Cancer Programme commissioned the Royal College of Surgeons to deliver six new cancer clinical audits on primary breast cancer, metastatic breast cancer, ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and kidney cancer. These were in addition to four ongoings clinical audits on lung, bowel, prostate and oesophago-gastric cancer. The new audits, commissioned in 2022, released their first annual State of the Nation report in Autumn 2024, which is available at the following link:
https://www.natcan.org.uk/audits/
Asked by: Jeevun Sandher (Labour - Loughborough)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to increase the number of construction apprenticeships.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
This government has an ambitious plan for re-building Britain, delivering 1.5 million homes in England in this Parliament.
Around 5,000 more construction apprenticeship places will be made available per year by the 2027/28 financial year thanks to an £140 million industry investment to get Britain building again.
32 new Homebuilding Skills Hubs will deliver fast-track training in critical areas such as bricklaying, groundwork, and site carpentry, to boost housebuilding and drive forward the government’s growth mission.
Asked by: Jeevun Sandher (Labour - Loughborough)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he plans to expand the Flood Resilience Scheme to households which (a) have been affected outside named storms and (b) are at risk of flooding in the future.
Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
To ensure we protect the country from the devastating impacts of flooding, we will invest £2.4 billion in 2024/25 and 2025/26 to improve flood resilience, by building, maintaining, and repairing flood defences.
Included in this programme, the Environment Agency is working proactively with local authorities to deliver Property Flood Resilience (PFR) projects, where it is cost beneficial to do so, in areas where PFR is the best solution for reducing flood risk. The EA’s PFR programme is focused on reducing risk to those households and businesses at the highest risk.
Separately, we continue to support those who were affected by last year’s Storms Babet and Henk thought the PFR grant scheme, which can provide up to £5000 for eligible households and businesses to install PFR measures.
Asked by: Jeevun Sandher (Labour - Loughborough)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, whether the Flood Recovery Framework will be activated for the flooding in Leicestershire.
Answered by Alex Norris - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
My thoughts remain with householders and business owners impacted by flooding after the recent heavy rainfall, flooding is a devastating experience for all those affected.
Government support in the aftermath of flooding is only provided in exceptional circumstances and at present, overall, the scale of impacts is not sufficiently significant for the Flood Recovery Framework to be activated. However, my officials continue to review impacts data and stand ready to support as appropriate.
Activation of the Framework is not limited to flooding following named storms and, when activated, provides a range of support to business and households in eligible areas.
Asked by: Jeevun Sandher (Labour - Loughborough)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to improve maternity services in Leicestershire.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Following Care Quality Commission inspections in January 2024, the trust has strong improvement plans in place for maternity services at the Leicester Royal Infirmary and Leicester General Hospital (LGH). Many actions from both the 2023 and 2024 inspections are already complete or well underway, with key achievements including a targeted improvement programme for Induction of Labour, and implementing a new Telephone Triage system to reduce delays and improve experience.
In September and November, the University Hospitals of Leicester (UHL) respectively opened a new maternity theatre and a new day assessment unit at the LGH, meaning that planned and emergency caesareans can take place in separate areas, further improving access to non-urgent appointments. The UHL have also welcomed 40 midwives, with 28 more due to start before the end of 2024. The trust has also recruited three new consultant obstetricians, alongside nine speciality doctors. The UHL have over 230 student midwives in training, and the trust is also seeing a higher proportion of permanent employees, with the turnover rate reducing to just over 7%, as of April 2024, versus 10% the previous year.