Paulette Hamilton

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.

A response to the Hon lady Parliamentary Question of 30th March is attached.

While the Government is unable to comment on the working practices of individual companies, we are clear that everyone deserves to be treated fairly at work and rewarded for their contribution to the economy.

The Supreme Court’s judgment on Uber was clear that those who qualify as workers under existing employment law are entitled to core employment rights. Anyone who needs help determining their employment rights may wish to seek advice from the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas), who deal with questions from employers, individuals, and others about a wide range of employment relations matters.

The Working Time Regulations provide specific protections to night workers. Before someone starts working at night, they must be offered a free health assessment to see if they are fit to work nights before they become a night worker and on a regular basis after that. A record of this must be kept by the employer. Employers must also make sure that night time workers do not work more than an average of 8 hours in a 24-hour period. Employers can make collective or workforce agreements to change or exclude this limit.

The Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games will deliver a fantastic legacy for the people and communities of Birmingham.

A range of programmes are helping to boost jobs and skills; encourage more people to try sport; and engage young people in the Commonwealth through a National Learning Programme.

We have invested £21m in a Business and Tourism Programme to encourage investment and visitors to Birmingham and the West Midlands, which will help to grow the regional economy.

The significant core public investment in the Games of £778 million is creating a positive economic and social impact. It is creating new jobs, attracting visitors to the region and improving infrastructure that will benefit the local communities long after the curtain closes on the Games - like the Alexander Stadium in Perry Barr.

This public investment has also helped to unlock over £85 million additional funding from a range of public and third sector bodies including a £35m investment from Sport England to deliver a physical activity legacy and the £12m that has been invested in exciting arts and culture programmes across Birmingham, including £2m funding from Birmingham City Council for the Creative City Grants Programme.

Recent data shows that there are now over 468,000 full time equivalent (FTE) teachers in state funded schools in England, which is an increase of 27,000 (6%) since 2010. This makes it the highest number of FTE teachers on record since the School Workforce Census began in 2010.

The Department’s reforms are aimed at increasing teacher recruitment and ensuring teachers across England stay and succeed in the profession.

The Department recently announced that the School Teachers’ Review Body’s recommendations for the 2023/24 pay award for teachers and head teachers have been accepted in full. This means that teachers and head teachers in maintained schools will receive a pay award of 6.5%. This is the highest pay award for teachers in over thirty years. The award also delivers the manifesto commitment of a minimum £30,000 starting salary for school teachers in all regions in England.

The Department announced a financial incentives package worth up to £181 million for those starting Initial Teacher Training (ITT) in the 2023/24 academic year. The Department is providing bursaries worth up to £27,000 and scholarships worth up to £29,000 to encourage trainees to apply to train in key secondary subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry, and computing.

The Department is also providing a Levelling Up Premium worth up to £3,000 annually for mathematics, physics, chemistry, and computing teachers in the first five years of their careers who work in disadvantaged schools nationally, including within Education Investment Areas (EIAs). The eligibility criteria and list of eligible schools is available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/levelling-up-premium-payments-for-teachers.

The Department has created an entitlement to at least three years of structured training, support and professional development for all new teachers, underpinned by the Initial Teacher Training (ITT), Core Content Framework (CCF) and the Early Career Framework (ECF). Together, these ensure that new teachers will benefit from at least three years of evidence-based training, across ITT and into their induction. The Department is currently reviewing the evidence base of the frameworks to ensure they are informed by the latest developments to provide the best up to date support for teachers at the start of their careers. Further information on the CCF can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/initial-teacher-training-itt-core-content-framework and more information on the ECF is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/early-career-framework.

To support teacher retention, the Department has worked with the education sector and published a range of resources to help address staff workload and wellbeing and to support schools to introduce flexible working practices. This includes the workload reduction toolkit and the education staff wellbeing charter. More than 2,800 schools have signed up to the charter so far. The education staff wellbeing charter is available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/education-staff-wellbeing-charter. The workload reduction toolkit is available at: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/school-workload-reduction-toolkit.

The Department recently announced that it will also convene a workload reduction taskforce to explore how we can go further to support trusts and head teachers to minimise workload.

The Department does not collect data on how many schools use screening or how many weapons are collected as a result of screening.

The Department updated its guidance, ‘Searching, screening and confiscation’, in July 2022.

Headteachers are encouraged to consult with local police who may be able to advise on whether installation of screening devices is appropriate. Any weapons that are found as a result of screening or a search must be passed to the police.

Schools are advised that any search for a prohibited item by a member of staff or police officers should be recorded in the school’s safeguarding reporting system. This allows the designated safeguarding lead to identify possible risks and initiate a safeguarding response if required.

The department is aware schools are facing cost pressures, especially around energy costs. Cost pressures should be seen in the wider context of funding for schools. This government continues to deliver year on year increases to the core schools budget with a £7 billion cash increase in funding by the 2024/25 financial year, compared with the 2021/22 financial year, taking total funding to £56.8 billion by 2024/25. As a result, we can announce that high needs funding for children and young people with complex needs, including funding for the special schools in which many of them are educated, is increasing in the 2022/23 financial year by £1 billion, to a total of £9.1 billion.

Special schools, including Wilson Stuart School, should discuss with the local authorities placing pupils in their schools, how much high needs funding is passed on to them for helping with energy and other cost increases. Birmingham will attract a high needs funding increase of 15.6% per head of their population aged 2 to 18 this year, compared to the previous financial year’s allocation, bringing their total high needs funding allocation in the 2022/23 financial year to £243.5 million.

In addition, all schools can access the department’s schools resource management (SRM) offer. This includes a range of practical tools and information to help schools unlock efficiencies, for example, by saving money on regular purchases and avoiding paying ‘over the odds’ for services like energy, insurance, or recruitment advertising, which they can then reinvest in line with their own priorities.

The SRM offer includes the Get Help Buying for Schools service, which provides specialist support, advice, and guidance for schools around their procurement activity. The service signposts schools to ‘department-recommended’ frameworks for schools and trusts to recommended deals for energy costs and services relating to energy, which can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/buying-for-schools/energy.

The Government has funded Birmingham City Council’s Highways Maintenance contract at £50.3 million a year for 13 years and will continue to do so, maintaining the current level of funding to the council at £50 million a year for the remainder of the current spending review period until 2023/24.

After this time, West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) will become eligible for an additional share of the £8.3 billion as the £151 million for WMCA did not previously include an allocation for Birmingham City Council’s roads. This is part of the £2.2 billion wider funding for East Midlands and West Midlands.

This is in addition to the £1bn of CRSTS funding to WMCA up to 2026/27, and CRSTS 2 indicative funding of over £2.6billion over 5 years from 2027/28 to 2031/32.

The Government has funded Birmingham City Council’s Highways Maintenance contract at £50.3 million a year for 13 years and will continue to do so, maintaining the current level of funding to the council at £50 million a year for the remainder of the current spending review period until 2023/24.

After this time, West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) will become eligible for an additional share of the £8.3 billion as the £151 million for WMCA did not previously include an allocation for Birmingham City Council’s roads. This is part of the £2.2 billion wider funding for East Midlands and West Midlands.

This is in addition to the £1bn of CRSTS funding to WMCA up to 2026/27, and CRSTS 2 indicative funding of over £2.6billion over 5 years from 2027/28 to 2031/32.

The length of time taken to deal with an application for a driving licence where a medical condition must be investigated depends on the condition(s) involved and whether further information or clinical tests are required from medical professionals. The receipt of information from NHS professionals has been impacted by pressures on the NHS. Delays in this area were also exacerbated by six months of industrial action by the Public and Commercial Services union, which was targeted at the areas that would have the most impact on the motoring public.

To reduce waiting times for customers, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) has recruited more staff and opened new customer service centres in Swansea and Birmingham which are focused on medical applications. DVLA staff also continue to work overtime at evenings and weekends. These measures are having a positive impact and the DVLA expects to return to pre-pandemic levels for medical applications in September.

It is important to note that most applicants will be able to continue driving while their application is being processed, providing they meet specific criteria. More information can be found online here.

In May this year, the Department published the report, ‘Fraud and error in the benefit system,’ available on gov.uk [here]. The detailed information requested is not available.

We are not aware of an impact of staffing on the National Cancer Patient Experience Survey programme, or on the collection of data on people with pancreatic cancer.

The Department is working closely with NHS England to make sure we have the right workforce with the right skills, across the country. In 2023, the National Health Service published the first ever Long Term Workforce Plan, backed by over £2.4 billion of Government funding, to deliver the biggest training expansion in NHS history. Regarding cancer specifically, the number of staff in the cancer workforce has increased by 50% since 2010.

The 2022 National Cancer Patient Experience survey showed respondents’ average rating of care was 8.8 out of 10, with zero being very poor and 10 very good. 75.5% of respondents said they definitely received the right amount of support for their overall health and wellbeing from hospital staff.

The Government has set out a vision for the Future of UK Clinical Research Delivery, which aims to create a patient-centred, pro-innovation, and digitally enabled clinical research environment. Key to achieving this vision is increasing participation in research to ensure that the research we support is inclusive and representative of the populations we serve.

The Department-funded National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) funds research and research infrastructure which supports patients and the public to participate in high-quality research. For example, in financial year 2022/23, the NIHR Clinical Research Network supported 41 pancreatic cancer studies and recruited 1,004 participants to these studies.

In addition, the NIHR provides an online service called Be Part of Research which promotes participation in health and social care research by allowing users to search for relevant studies and register their interest. This makes it easier for people to find and take part in health and care research that is relevant to them.

When designing research studies, researchers consider inclusion and exclusion criteria carefully to ensure they are not unnecessarily excluding specific groups who would benefit from the outcome of their study. However, we are aware that inclusion and exclusion criteria can disproportionally exclude individuals from specific groups, for example older adults or pregnant women.

The Health Research Authority (HRA) is developing guidance to improve practices in this area. We are not aware that people with pancreatic cancer are routinely being excluded from studies, however, we know that sometimes people are automatically excluded from taking part, and this can be for good reasons. The guidance produced by the HRA will help researchers to consider if these people and any other groups of people may be unnecessarily excluded, and consider putting measures in place to address this.

On 24 January 2023, the Government announced plans to publish the Major Conditions Strategy, which will focus on tackling the six major conditions groups: cancers, mental ill-health, cardiovascular disease including stroke and diabetes, dementia, chronic respiratory diseases, and musculoskeletal disorders, that account for around 60% of ill-health and early death in England. Addressing cancer together with other major conditions will allow the Department and NHS England to focus on similarities in approach, ensuring care is better centred around the patient.

Following the call for evidence for a 10-year cancer plan in 2022, the Department received over 5,000 submissions. These findings are being fed into the development of the Major Conditions Strategy.

Reducing cancer treatment waiting times is a priority for the Government. The Department is working jointly with NHS England on implementing the delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlogs in elective care. The Government plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to help drive up and protect elective activity, including cancer diagnosis and treatment activity.

In the 2023/24 Operational Planning Guidance, NHS England announced it is providing over £390 million in cancer service development funding to cancer alliances to support delivery of the strategy and the operational priorities for cancer which includes increasing and prioritising diagnostic and treatment capacity for cancer.

Additionally, the Government published the Major conditions strategy case for change and our strategic framework on 14 August 2023 which sets out our approach to making the choices over the next five years that will deliver the most value in facing the health challenges of today and of the decades ahead, including for cancer.

Latest figures from NHS Digital for cancers diagnosed between January and December 2021 show that 25% of pancreatic cancers were diagnosed at Stage 1 and 2.

NHS England is developing new dedicated urgent diagnostic pathways for these patients so that every cancer patient with concerning, but non-specific symptoms, gets the right tests at the right time in as few visits as possible. There are now 113 of these pathways live, which are seeing more than 5,500 patients per month.

NHS England is also providing a route into pancreatic cancer surveillance for those at high-risk due to family history or at-risk genetic mutations and have formed an expert group to consider a pathway for Hepato-Pancreato-Biliary cancers, including pancreatic cancer.

NHS England is funding a new audit into pancreatic cancer to increase the consistency of access to treatments and to stimulate improvements in cancer treatment and outcomes for patients. The Royal College of Surgeons began work on this audit in October 2022 and the first report is expected in October 2024. In addition to this, the Getting it Right First-Time team in NHS England is undertaking a deep dive into pancreatic cancer, which will highlight actions National Health Service providers need to take to improve services, as well as gathering examples of good practice to share.

This Government is giving policing the resources it needs to police local communities and fight crime. At the end of March 2023, we successfully delivered our commitment to recruit 20,000 additional officers in England and Wales, which means we now have the highest number of officers on record.

Decisions about how these officers are deployed are for Chief Constables, who are accountable to locally elected Police and Crime Commissioners and mayors with these functions.

The nationality and country of residence of Windrush Compensation Scheme claimants is published as part of the regular transparency data release which can be found here: Windrush Compensation Scheme data: October 2022 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

The Windrush Compensation Scheme does not record data in a way which allows us to report on the location of claimants in the UK.

Since April 2021, people have been advised to allow up to ten weeks when applying for their British passport as more than 5 million people delayed applying due to the pandemic.

Across the first 6 months of 2022 HMPO processed 97.7% of UK standard applications within 10 weeks.

The outcome of the second round of the Levelling Up Fund has been announced.

I am pleased to say that there will be another round of the Fund, and we will provide more details on this shortly.

The Government is bringing forward a series of actions in this direction as set out in the White Paper 'Fairer Private Rented Sector', published in June. This includes proposals to introduce a national framework for setting fines, based on clear culpability and harm considerations, which will ensure a more consistent approach to fine setting across the country. We are keen to bolster national oversight of local councils' enforcement, and our intention is to look at the ways councils can share their successes and challenges from their licensing schemes. We are currently conducting user research with landlords, tenants, agents and local authorities to explore the potential merits of a Privately Rented Property Portal.

The Government is bringing forward a series of actions in this direction as set out in the White Paper 'Fairer Private Rented Sector', published in June. This includes proposals to introduce a national framework for setting fines, based on clear culpability and harm considerations, which will ensure a more consistent approach to fine setting across the country. We are keen to bolster national oversight of local councils' enforcement, and our intention is to look at the ways councils can share their successes and challenges from their licensing schemes. We are currently conducting user research with landlords, tenants, agents and local authorities to explore the potential merits of a Privately Rented Property Portal.

The Government is bringing forward a series of actions in this direction as set out in the White Paper 'Fairer Private Rented Sector', published in June. This includes proposals to introduce a national framework for setting fines, based on clear culpability and harm considerations, which will ensure a more consistent approach to fine setting across the country. We are keen to bolster national oversight of local councils' enforcement, and our intention is to look at the ways councils can share their successes and challenges from their licensing schemes. We are currently conducting user research with landlords, tenants, agents and local authorities to explore the potential merits of a Privately Rented Property Portal.

The Government is making available an additional £3.7 billion to councils in England in 2022/23, with the most relatively deprived areas having access to 14% more per dwelling in core spending power.

How inflation interacts with local government's finances is not straightforward and we are working with the sector to understand any impacts.