Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will take steps to make the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund a permanent initiative.

Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

An announcement on funding for the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund will be made shortly. All future decisions will be considered as part of the next spending review.

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that common land can enter (a) Sustainable Farming Incentive and (b) Countryside Stewardship schemes.

Answered by Daniel Zeichner - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

We fully recognise the importance of the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) and Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier (CSHT) for common land – and we strongly want the schemes to be available to commons as we move forward.

We will be reforming the SFI offer to direct funding towards SFI actions which are most appropriate for the least productive land and have the strongest case for enduring public investment.

We expect to publish more information about the reformed SFI offer in summer 2025. Our intention is that it will be possible to apply for SFI on common land when the reformed SFI offer reopens.

We have published preview guidance for CSHT setting out what funding will be available for farmers and land managers. This includes guidance on entering common land into a CSHT agreement. We will open the rolling application window for CSHT in summer 2025, and we have started inviting farmers and land managers to begin the pre-application process.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department taking to ensure that maternity hospitals are adequately staffed to ensure high quality care for pregnant women in Devon.

Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Government is committed to tackling the retention and recruitment challenges that face the National Health Service. Bringing in the staff we need will take time, but this is an absolute priority for the Government.

NHS England is leading a range of initiatives to boost retention of existing staff and ensure that the NHS remains an attractive career choice for new recruits. This includes building a compassionate and inclusive culture, supporting staff wellbeing, and promoting flexible working opportunities.

Targeted retention work for midwives is being undertaken by NHS England, led by the Chief Nursing Officer. This work contains a range of measures, including creation of a midwifery and nursing retention self-assessment tool, mentoring schemes, strengthened advice and support on pensions, and embedding flexible retirement options. NHS England has also invested in unit-based retention leads which, alongside investment in workforce capacity, has seen a reduction in vacancy, leaver, and turnover rates.

Decisions around local recruitment remain the responsibility of individual NHS trusts, who are responsible for ensuring they have the right number of staff in place, with the right skill mix, to deliver safe and effective care.

Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of increasing the level of financial penalty for employers who do not pay their ex-employee promptly after losing a tribunal.

Answered by Justin Madders - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade)

The Government is committed to considering further improvements to the way that people can enforce their employment rights, including the role that Acas, Employment Tribunals and the Fair Work Agency play in ensuring workers’ have access to an effective justice system.

The Civil Justice Council (CJC) is currently considering how to improve enforcement methods and recently held a call for evidence on court users’ experiences of enforcement.The government will consider any recommendations that the CJC makes.

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether she has considered changes to the benefits system to reflect increases in costs for (a) building and contents insurance, (b) home maintenance, (c) boiler servicing and (d) other homeowner-related costs, in the context of those costs not usually applying to renters.

Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)

The Department has not recently considered changes to the benefit system to reflect increases in costs for (a) building and contents insurance, (b) home maintenance, (c) boiler servicing and (d) other homeowner-related costs.

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much funding South West Water was required to contribute to infrastructure to meet (a) environmental and (b) water quality standards between 2013 and 2025.

Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

Since 2015 Ofwat has set total expenditure allowances which allow for companies to meet their obligations under the environment and water quality programmes. Based on data provided by Ofwat, the figures for South West Water are set out below.

Between 2015 and 2024 the environment programme allowance for South West Water was £249.2 million and the water quality allowance was £153.2 million.

Due to figures being unable to be split between two price control periods, figures for 2013-15 cannot be provided.

UK parliamentarians sanctioned by the Russian Federation

Introduction of the Hillsborough Law and the 36th anniversary

Palantir Technologies, Peter Thiel and the NHS (No. 2)

75th anniversary of the European Convention on Human Rights

Small and medium-sized enterprises in defence procurement

Israeli Defence Force attacks on humanitarian workers

International Day of the Midwife

Protecting children from data exploitation

Abduction of Ukrainian children

Humanitarian response to the Myanmar earthquake

Ensuring stability for Ukrainian refugees in the UK

Found: Another option proposed by some MPs, such as Richard Foord (Lib Dem), is to reverse the 2021 Defence