Asked by: Lewis Atkinson (Labour - Sunderland Central)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of the (a) retention of DVSA employed driving test examiners and (b) pay of DVSA driving test examiners in comparison to the earnings of private sector driving instructors.
Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
To aid retention and to encourage existing driving examiners (DE) to stay in role, the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) is making an exceptional payment of £5,000 to DEs and eligible roles (divided into two payments) over the next 12 months. By keeping more experienced driving examiners and bringing in new ones, DVSA will lose less testing capacity from the system, making more tests available for learner drivers.
Examiner capacity is rising, with 1,542 FTE examiners now in post (the highest since 2021) as of December 2025.
DEs are civil servants and as such, their salary is determined by the Civil Service Pay Remit Guidance. The guidance sets out the financial parameters Civil Service departments can use to determine pay awards for their staff. DVSA cannot act independently from this guidance. DVSA continues to look at different financial incentives to recruit examiners and, indeed, to offer to existing employees conducting tests.
The attached excel spreadsheet shows the (a) average and (b) highest waiting time for driving test centres (DTC) in the North East of England, from the financial year 2015/16 to the financial year-to-date (YTD). Please note, that DVSA does not hold data for Elswick and South Shields DTCs beyond 2022/23, due to these centres closing.
Asked by: Lewis Atkinson (Labour - Sunderland Central)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the (a) average and (b) longest waiting time was for a driving test in each of the the test centres in the North East region in each of the last ten years.
Answered by Simon Lightwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
To aid retention and to encourage existing driving examiners (DE) to stay in role, the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) is making an exceptional payment of £5,000 to DEs and eligible roles (divided into two payments) over the next 12 months. By keeping more experienced driving examiners and bringing in new ones, DVSA will lose less testing capacity from the system, making more tests available for learner drivers.
Examiner capacity is rising, with 1,542 FTE examiners now in post (the highest since 2021) as of December 2025.
DEs are civil servants and as such, their salary is determined by the Civil Service Pay Remit Guidance. The guidance sets out the financial parameters Civil Service departments can use to determine pay awards for their staff. DVSA cannot act independently from this guidance. DVSA continues to look at different financial incentives to recruit examiners and, indeed, to offer to existing employees conducting tests.
The attached excel spreadsheet shows the (a) average and (b) highest waiting time for driving test centres (DTC) in the North East of England, from the financial year 2015/16 to the financial year-to-date (YTD). Please note, that DVSA does not hold data for Elswick and South Shields DTCs beyond 2022/23, due to these centres closing.
Asked by: Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government what measures they plan to take to help young people struggling to find work out of welfare dependency.
Answered by Baroness Sherlock - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Government’s ambition is to transform young people’s prospects, by ensuring every one of them has the chance to earn or learn through a Youth Guarantee.
We have already taken the first steps towards delivering a Youth Guarantee, launching eight Youth Guarantee Trailblazers in England, announcing funding to almost double our Youth Hubs, and launching an Independent Report into Young People and Work, to identify potential areas for reform to better support young people with health conditions and disabilities.
At the Budget we announced the expansion of the Youth Guarantee, backed by an £820 million investment over the next three years, to reach almost 900,000 young people. This includes expansion of Youth Hubs to more than 360 areas across Great Britain and a new Youth Guarantee Gateway, offering a dedicated session and follow-up support to 16-24-year-olds on Universal Credit and looking for work. This investment will also create around 300,000 additional opportunities to gain workplace experience and training. In addition, it will provide guaranteed jobs to around 55,000 young people aged 18-21 through the Jobs Guarantee.
The application window for Phase One of the Jobs Guarantee opened on 29 January 2026. Through the application process, the government will identify delivery organisations to run the Jobs Guarantee scheme in the six Phase One areas of Birmingham & Solihull, East Midlands, Greater Manchester, Hertfordshire & Essex, Central & East Scotland and Southwest & Southeast Wales.
In Phase One of the Jobs Guarantee, the Scheme will provide over 1,000 fully funded six-month paid jobs to eligible 18–21-year-olds, who have been on Universal Credit and looking for work for 18 months. The DWP will fund 100% of eligible employment costs for 25 hours a week at the relevant minimum wage. The DWP will also fund wraparound support to help participants succeed on the scheme and transition into sustained employment.
Phase One will be followed by national roll-out of the Jobs Guarantee across Great Britain later in 2026.
Asked by: James McMurdock (Independent - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent discussions he has had with the NHS in South Basildon and East Thurrock constituency on patient safety for people experiencing long waits in Accident and Emergency.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government recognises that urgent and emergency care performance has fallen short in recent years. We are committed to restoring accident and emergency waiting times to the National Health Service constitutional standard.
Our Urgent and Emergency Care Plan for 2025/26 sets out clear actions to deliver improvements and make services better. The plan commits to reducing the number of patients waiting over 12 hours for admission or discharge to less than 10% of the time. This is supported by almost £450 million of capital investment for Same Day Emergency Care, Mental Health Crisis Assessment Centres, and new ambulances, avoiding unnecessary admissions to hospital and supporting the faster diagnosis, treatment, and discharge for patients.
The NHS Medium-Term Planning Framework sets out a further trajectory to improve urgent and emergency care performance year-on-year toward the constitutional standard, reducing long waits and improving patient experience. The plan focuses on practical steps such as expanding urgent treatment centres, improving patient flow, and reducing 12-hour waits, to make emergency departments safer and more efficient.
NHS England provides regional oversight to support local delivery of services and improvement. The Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust’s One Team Improvement Plan has a focus on improving urgent and emergency care outcomes. The programme group looking at quality and patient safety has been focusing on reviewing processes and the fundamentals of care in wards and in the trust’s emergency departments. The trust has also introduced additional consultant cover during the weekends to increase the number of people discharged at the weekend. This helps to keep the emergency department safe as it allows for the movement of people who need to be admitted into the right beds.
Asked by: Shivani Raja (Conservative - Leicester East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment the Department has made of the potential impact of reducing NHS-funded activity delivered by independent sector providers on local waiting times in (a) Leicester, (b) The East Midlands and (c) England.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Reducing waiting lists is a key part of the Government’s Health Mission, and we are committed to putting patients first by ensuring that they are seen on time and that they have the best possible experience of care. Since the Government came into office, the waiting list for routine appointments, operations, and procedures in England has now been cut by 312,369. This is despite 30.1 million referrals onto the waiting list.
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the current average waiting times are for patients to begin radiotherapy treatment following referral, broken down by region and cancer type.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The published data on cancer waiting times in England does not include average waiting times for patients to begin treatment, and the Department does not publish radiotherapy data broken down by tumour type, as we present tumour type and treatment modality breakdowns separately.
However, the Department does publish the 31-day standard performance data for radiotherapy. Whilst the publication does not directly present this data at a regional level, the published commissioner-level data can be aggregated using publicly available mapping tables.
The following table shows 31-day standard performance data for radiotherapy at the regional and national levels, for the latest month of data available at the time of production, November 2025:
Region name | Total activity | Within standard activity | Breaches | Performance |
East of England | 1,266 | 1,027 | 239 | 81.1% |
London | 1,204 | 1,129 | 75 | 93.8% |
Midlands | 2,121 | 1,918 | 203 | 90.4% |
North East and Yorkshire | 1,867 | 1,562 | 305 | 83.7% |
North West | 1,486 | 1,460 | 26 | 98.3% |
South East | 1,801 | 1,577 | 224 | 87.6% |
South West | 1,318 | 1,235 | 83 | 93.7% |
Unknown or national commissioning hub | 109 | 109 | - | 100.0% |
National | 11,172 | 10,017 | 1,155 | 89.7% |
Asked by: Juliet Campbell (Labour - Broxtowe)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps her Department is taking to utilise AI to improve the productivity of the (a) public-sector, (b) NHS, (c) Civil Service and (d) Local Government in (i) Broxtowe constituency, (ii) the East Midlands and (iii) England.
Answered by Ian Murray - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what plans he has to establish a development corporation in support of construction related to the Forest City 1 plan to build a city of a million people between Newmarket and Haverhill.
Answered by Matthew Pennycook - Minister of State (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The government has no current plans to establish a development corporation in support of construction related to the Forest City 1 proposal.
Asked by: James McMurdock (Independent - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to his Department’s press release entitled Expansion of support scheme to help thousands of people back into work, published on 20 January 2026, what estimate his Department has made of the number of people with health conditions in the South Basildon and East Thurrock constituency who will be helped back into work as a result of the WorkWell programme.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
WorkWell will be rolled out across all of England backed by up to £259 million over the next three years.
WorkWell gives funding to local Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) to lead, design and deliver integrated work and health support that meets the needs of working age disabled people and those with health conditions in their communities.
Management information from the pilot can be found at: WorkWell Pilot Management Information from 1 October 2024 to 30 November 2025 - GOV.UK
An independent consortium of evaluators will carry out a national evaluation to measure the effectiveness of the WorkWell pilot, using surveys, interviews and econometric measures of success. The final evaluation report is estimated to be available in Autumn 2028.
Asked by: James McMurdock (Independent - South Basildon and East Thurrock)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, pursuant to his Department’s press release entitled Expansion of support scheme to help thousands of people back into work, published on 20 January 2026, what proportion of the £259 million funding to support people with health conditions back into work will be allocated to the South Basildon and East Thurrock constituency.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
WorkWell will be rolled out across all of England backed by up to £259 million over the next three years.
WorkWell gives funding to local Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) to lead, design and deliver integrated work and health support that meets the needs of working age disabled people and those with health conditions in their communities.
Management information from the pilot can be found at: WorkWell Pilot Management Information from 1 October 2024 to 30 November 2025 - GOV.UK
An independent consortium of evaluators will carry out a national evaluation to measure the effectiveness of the WorkWell pilot, using surveys, interviews and econometric measures of success. The final evaluation report is estimated to be available in Autumn 2028.