Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many births recorded in the Maternity Services Dataset have been associated with the SNOMED CT codes i) 125678001, ii) 699110007, iii) 1269487002, iv) 1269486006 and v) 842009 in each year since the introduction of that coding within that dataset.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Validated data for the codes requested is not available. Guidance published in September 2024 set out how consanguinity and related information should be recorded however this guidance is not mandatory. Recording of these codes has been undertaken by a small number of NHS trusts to date.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the answer of 13 March 2026 to Question 118274 on M1: Repairs and Maintenance, whether the roadworks on the M1 northbound between junctions 12 and 13 have been completed.
Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
Repairs to the central reservation drainage on the M1 (Northbound) between junctions 12 and 13 have been completed. All traffic management was removed on 30 March 2026.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 26 March 2026 to Question 122287 on Motor Vehicles: Hire Services, how many category M1 and N1 vehicles are exempt from the Government Fleet Commitment by default; and if she will provide a breakdown of that number by vehicle type.
Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
Data for the Greening Government Commitments framework for 2021-25, including the Government Fleet Commitment (GFC), was collected by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and published on GOV.UK, available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/greening-government-commitments-april-2021-to-march-2024-report.
Reporting for the GFC was required for in-scope vehicles only. Neither DEFRA nor the Department for Transport holds further data on vehicles that are exempted by default across Government fleets.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 23 March 2026 to Question 121903 on Driving Tests: Vacancies, whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of holding centrally a snapshot of the total number of driving examiner vacancies by calendar month.
Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
Monthly driving examiner vacancy figures have limited value because numbers change frequently due to demand, training, turnover and capacity. The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency manages its workforce flexibly, matching examiner numbers to demand and using a test centre level view to support recruitment and deployment.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 23 March 2026 to Question 121577 on Roads: Carbon Emissions, how much is the total additional cost to the public purse of the one-year extension to the Live Labs 2 programme; and if she will set out how that cost is being funded.
Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Department for Transport will provide up to £300,000 to support a one-year extension to the Live Labs 2 innovation programme. This will help councils access and adopt more innovative approaches to highways maintenance, including uptake of longer-lasting, low-carbon materials for repairing roads more quickly, more efficiently and less often.
This will be funded from departmental budgets agreed at the Spending Review.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the monthly average waiting time was for a car practical driving test at each driving test centre and zone for a) March and b) April 2026.
Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The attached spreadsheet (WPQ-00066787) shows the average waiting time for car practical driving tests at each driving test centre, and zone, for March 2026. This data is based on the national average waiting time metric of when a minimum of 10% of test slots are available.
Data for April 2026 will be available in May 2026.
The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency also records national median waiting time data (the time between the first test booking and test taken) for practical car driving tests. In March 2026 this was 9 weeks. This data, broken down by test centre and zone, is currently not available for March and April 2026.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 19 March 2026 to Question 121208 on A14: Trees, whether the work to remove redundant biodegradable and plastic tree guards along the A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon scheme has commenced; and what the expected completion date is.
Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
National Highways has commenced work to remove redundant biodegradable and plastic tree guards along the A14 Cambridge to Huntingdon scheme. To date, around 36,000 redundant tree guards have been removed, and the work is expected to be completed by May 2026.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 26 March 2026 to Question 121006, when the planned review of the funding formula for highways maintenance will commence.
Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
Any review would be conducted to align with the end of the period for which highways maintenance block allocations have already been made.
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what estimate her Department has made of the proportion of new car registrations that will be zero emission vehicles in 2027 under (a) central, (b) low and (c) high uptake scenarios.
Answered by Keir Mather - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Department regularly updates its projections of zero emission vehicle (ZEV) uptake. The latest published projections were included in the Cost Benefit Analysis accompanying the Vehicle Emissions Trading Schemes (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2025, which outlined three scenarios for ZEV uptake following the updates to the legislation, which include projections covering the period 2025 to 2030. It included three scenarios: central, low, and high. The Cost Benefit Analysis has been published at the following link: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2025/1101/pdfs/uksiod_20251101_en_001.pdf
Asked by: Richard Holden (Conservative - Basildon and Billericay)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment she has made of the future role of the Railway Benefit Fund under Great British Railways.
Answered by Keir Mather - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Railway Benefit Fund (RBF), which is the working name of the ‘Railway Benevolent Institution’, is an independent non-membership charity, supported by charitable fundraising and donations, and regulated by the Charity Commission for England and Wales. We recognise the value of the RBF and the important work that it does. The future role of the RBF, whether now or when Great British Railways (GBR) is established, is a matter for the charity. However, we do not anticipate the establishment of GBR to have any adverse effect on the RBF.