Jerome Mayhew

Public procurement is a key lever for enabling delivery of the Government’s missions by using procurement policy to drive economic growth, raise employment standards in business, and achieve additional social value through the life of a contract. The Government’s ‘Plan to Make Work Pay’ sets out an ambitious programme to value organisations that create local jobs, skills and wealth and treat their workers well and equally. Ministers are considering how to take these plans forward.

The Advanced Propulsion Centre UK collaborates with Government, automotive industry, and academia to produce quarterly forecasts. The latest insights show, based on nameplate capacity, European cell production is projected to surpass demand in 2027.

While EU trade remains vital to the sector, it is critical for UK economic resilience and competitiveness that we build domestic battery production capacity and diverse supply chains.

This Government is supporting our domestic battery ecosystem through Industrial Strategy commitments, where we announced the UK's largest single commitment to battery R&D in the Battery Innovation Programme, and significant capital support through DRIVE35 funding.

The Competition and Markets Authority (“CMA”) is not able to provide an estimated annual cost for the Sustainability Taskforce for 2025/26 before its accounts for the financial year are finalised. Its Annual Report and Accounts for 2025/26 will be laid before Parliament in the normal way.

The CMA does not allocate specific multi-year funding to individual workstreams such as the Sustainability Taskforce, which remain subject to wider prioritisation decisions. Budgets for 2026/27 and 2027/28 have not yet been formally delegated by HM Treasury or approved through the Main Estimate process. Estimated costs for these future years are therefore not available.

For financial year 2024-25 the annual cost of the Competition and Markets Authority’s Sustainability Taskforce was £342,983.19. This includes £342,306.01 in staff costs and £677.18 in other programme expenditure covering travel and subsistence.

Of the additional funding set out in the Autumn Budget 2024 for financial years 2024/25 and 2025/26, over £150m will be used to administer the various compensation schemes. Over £100m has been set aside to continue to fund DBT and Post Office’s participation in the public inquiry.

The Budget also set out that around £1.8 billion has been set aside for redress costs for the victims of the Horizon IT Scandal from 2024-25.

As part of the Spending Review 2021 Government provided Post Office with a total of £185m of funding to support investment activities, which included the ongoing maintenance and replacement of the Horizon IT system. In 2023 Government provided a further £103m to support with the costs of Horizon maintenance and replacement. Post Office is currently assessing the future costs of replacing the Horizon IT system. Further funding is to be allocated subject to the Spending Review process.

Neither the UK Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) nor its EU equivalent applies to maritime emissions, and this instrument does not introduce any CBAM obligations for maritime operators.

The Common Understanding, published in May 2025 sets out the parameters for a linking agreement between the UK and EU emissions trading schemes, including that the link should apply in respect of domestic and international maritime.

Linking will facilitate an exemption from the EU CBAM, removing a major barrier to trade and lowering costs for UK businesses.

The department publishes statistics on the cost of domestic electricity and gas.

Annual domestic energy bills - GOV.UK

This includes tables (2.2.4 for electricity and 2.3.4 for gas) outlining the average unit price in £/kWh and average fixed cost (standing charge) in £/year for the United Kingdom and by region.

This also includes tables (2.2.3 for electricity and 2.3.3 for gas) outlining the average unit cost in p/kWh inclusive of fixed costs for the United Kingdom and by region.

These are calculated using data supplied directly to the department by a sample of domestic energy suppliers.

The Emissions Trading Scheme is a cap-and-trade system with a declining cap that ensures emissions from the traded sector, including the domestic maritime sector, fall in line with the United Kingdom’s statutory net zero commitments.

The scheme limits total emissions and enables reductions to occur where they are most cost effective, without prescribing specific technologies in any sector.

For maritime operators, the scheme provides a clear price signal that supports investment in cleaner vessels, operational efficiency and emerging low carbon fuels.

The Government will continue to work with industry to support the development of infrastructure and technologies needed to facilitate decarbonisation.

In an unstable world, the only way to guarantee energy security and protect billpayers is to reduce our exposure to volatile international markets. Great British Energy is driving the deployment of the clean, homegrown energy. It will ensure UK taxpayers, billpayers, and communities reap the benefits of this.

Great British Nuclear was established in 2023 as an expert nuclear delivery. It is currently running a small modular reactor technology selection process. This is a live procurement and is ongoing; the window for submitting tenders has now closed and Great British Nuclear is now evaluating bids, with further updates to follow in due course.

The Department for Transport provides all capital funding and a small amount of resource funding.

Defra is working on a review of the Government Buying Standards which set out how Government procurement can take account of environmental and social impacts whilst ensuring value for money. This review considers the lifecycle impacts of fleet vehicles, including measures to reduce waste and raw material consumption associated with vehicles parts such as tyres.

As part of this work, Defra has made no specific assessment of data from continental Europe and the United States on the potential benefits of mandating retread tyres in public procurement fleet contracts.

We are making progress towards the statutory target to reach 16.5% tree and woodland cover in England by 2050. The Government has pledged up to £400 million for tree planting and peatland restoration over the current and next financial year. As part of that we will create new woodland including national forests to bring communities and woodlands closer together and to create new green jobs. The Government has launched a Tree Planting Taskforce to support our plans to plant millions more trees.

This is a devolved matter, and the information provided therefore relates to England only.

The Government is introducing legislation to enact the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 for plants and food and feed before the end of March.

The European Commission has published a proposal that is similar in aim to the Precision Breeding Act. The department is monitoring progress on the EU’s regulatory proposal closely and engaging with the European Commission when appropriate.

Officials have met with EU counterparts several times to discuss England’s approach to precision breeding and the EU’s proposal on new genomic techniques, including through the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Committee and through the UK-EU Joint Consultative Working Group Agri-food structured group.

This is a devolved matter, and the information provided therefore relates to England only.

The Government is introducing legislation to enact the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 for plants and food and feed before the end of March.

The European Commission has published a proposal that is similar in aim to the Precision Breeding Act. The department is monitoring progress on the EU’s regulatory proposal closely and engaging with the European Commission when appropriate.

Officials have met with EU counterparts several times to discuss England’s approach to precision breeding and the EU’s proposal on new genomic techniques, including through the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Committee and through the UK-EU Joint Consultative Working Group Agri-food structured group.

The Department has no current plans to undertake assessment of the effectiveness of the analysis conducted by Thatcham Research.

Where assessment and research are necessary to support policy development and decisions the Government draws on a broad range of evidence. This includes using existing independent evidence, where it is sourced from robust and reliable research, alongside commissioning specific Government-funded studies when necessary to fill evidence gaps or complement and corroborate existing findings.

The expansion of the UK ETS to domestic maritime is designed to cut emissions and accelerate investment in cleaner vessels and technologies.

The Impact Assessment that accompanies the UK ETS Authority’s final response to the “UK Emissions Trading Scheme Scope Expansion: maritime sector” consultation, presents analysis on the overall cost of the UK ETS to shipping operators. The cost to each individual operator will depend on their level of emissions, whether they choose to invest in measures to reduce these emissions, and the carbon price trajectory over time. Costs for individual operators, including Isle of Wight services, will reflect their emissions profile, how quickly they adopt fuel saving or low carbon measures, and the trajectory of the carbon price over time.

The total funding provided to local authorities in each financial year since 2023/24 can be found online at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/highways-maintenance-funding-allocations.

The Asphalt Industry Alliance estimated in its 2026 Survey that the average cost of repairing a pothole is £78.45. The funding increase for local highways maintenance that the Government has confirmed – doubling annual funding by 2029-30 compared to 2024-25 levels – will enable local highway authorities to repair millions of additional potholes in each year of this Parliament. At the same time, the Department is also expecting local highway authorities to adopt best practice in highways maintenance, which includes a greater focus on preventative maintenance so that fewer potholes form in the first place and a greater focus on permanent pothole repairs to reduce the need for repeated and more costly temporary repairs.

All motorway service areas in England now offer open-access rapid or ultra-rapid charge points and 75% (January 2026, industry data) have at least six or more ultra-rapid open-access charge points.

The Government continues to work closely with distribution network operators, motorway service area operators, charge point operators and other industry stakeholders to address barriers to rollout.

In November 2025, the Government opened applications for a £10 million innovation fund for cutting-edge technologies to support rollout of chargers along the Strategic Road Network (England’s motorways and major A-roads).

Three workshops were held on the floating bus stop guidance, facilitated by Transport for All (TfA). The participants included organisations representing disabled people and TfA members with lived experience of disability. The department also circulated the draft guidance for comment to a range of groups from 26 November to 2 December 2025. A list of those involved is included in the guidance at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/floating-bus-stops-provision-and-design

A range of comments and representations were received from seven organisations representing the needs of disabled people. For example these included the need for consistent design approaches; the need to prioritise accessibility; the role of behaviour change and enforcement alongside design; concerns about shared-use bus boarders; and many comments on detailed design points.

This information was used to inform the final version of the guidance which was cleared through my office in the usual way.