Written questions by Uppal.

Whether he plans to introduce guidance for public health research funders to ensure a geographical distribution of funding.

Awaiting answer.

What assessment he has made of the adequacy of regional allocation of health research funding; and what steps he is taking to address differences in funding per head.

Awaiting answer.

Whether her Department identifies educational attainment outcomes for Sikhs as a distinct group.

The department does not identify educational attainment outcomes for Sikhs as a distinct group in its measurements of outcomes across key stages. This is because the department does not collect data and report on religion as a pupil characteristic in the ...

What evidence her Department uses to assess socioeconomic inequalities impacting Sikhs where Sikh-specific ethnicity data is unavailable.

The Treasury carefully considers the impact of its decisions on those sharing protected characteristics, including religion, in line with both its legal obligations and its commitment to fairness. The department uses the best available evidence to assess ...

What assessment she has made of the adequacy of the visibility of Sikhs across Government data collection systems.

This Government recognises the valuable contribution that Sikh communities make to this country and is committed to bringing down barriers to opportunity for all.The Government Statistical Service (GSS) ethnicity harmonised standard helps to make statisti...

Whether his Department identifies employment, earnings and occupational outcomes for Sikhs as a distinct group.

The Department has not identified employment, earnings or occupational outcomes for Sikhs as a distinct group. A range of information on Universal Credit claimants, including claimant characteristics, is published as part of the Department’s official stat...

How many Government departments have made representations on the absence of Sikh ethnicity data in policy development and service delivery.

This Government recognises the valuable contribution that Sikh communities make to this country and is committed to bringing down barriers to opportunity for all.The Government Statistical Service (GSS) ethnicity harmonised standard helps to make statisti...

What steps her Department is taking to increase access to enrichment activities in Huddersfield.

The department is committed to ensuring all young people across England can access a wide range of enrichment opportunities at school and college, as part of our mission to break down barriers to opportunity.In the ‘Every Child Achieving and Thriving’ Whi...

What assessment (a) his Department and (b) UKHSA has made of the potential risks of exposure to high ambient temperatures during pregnancy including (i) stillbirth, (ii) preterm birth and (iii) maternal health complications.

The Department and the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) recognise that there are risks to pregnant women caused by exposure to extreme high temperatures, which are set out in the Adverse weather and health plan equity review and impact assessment 2024. This includes an assessment on stillbirth, pre-term birth, and maternal health complications.The UKHSA provides a weather-health alerting system for England, which alerts the public, including specific vulnerable groups such as pregnant women, and public sector organisations to prepare for impacts of adverse weather, including high temperatures. Risks to health are communicated via heat-health alerts.

If he will instruct NHS England to notify each children’s hospice of the amount of NHS funding they will receive over the next three years.

Children and young people’s hospices and integrated care boards will be informed of their children and young people’s hospice grant allocations for 2026/27 imminently. Communication regarding future allocations, for 2027/28 and 2028/29, will be sent once the 2026/27 process is complete.

With reference to the Motor Insurance Taskforce’s final report, published on 10 December 2025, what steps she is taking to assess and help tackle barriers facing low‑income and financially excluded consumers in the motor insurance market; and whether she plans to introduce targeted interventions for those groups.

The taskforce considered proposals related to subsidising motor insurance for households on low incomes but the consequences of direct market intervention are often hard to predict and could result in increased costs for others. The government has no plans to take these proposals forward at this time.Instead, the taskforce has focused on driving down the cost of claims – rooting out inefficiencies, increasing safety, and reducing opportunities for fraud and theft – to stabilise and ultimately reduce the premiums that all motorists pay, including those on lower incomes.

What assessment she has made of the likelihood of the £100m contingency from within the £1.5bn allocated for compensating Equitable Life policyholders being needed to make payments to eligible With-Profits Annuitants.

The Equitable Life Payment Scheme has been fully wound down and closed since 2016. The only remaining part of the Payment Scheme in operation is the annual payments made to eligible With-Profit-Annuitants and the Scheme is on track to distribute the remainder of the £1.5 billion as planned.

Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps she is taking with international partners to help tackle increases in settler violence in the West Bank.

Illegal settlement building in the West Bank continues at an unacceptable pace, and settler violence has reached record levels this Autumn.We regularly discuss these issues with our international partners, we have imposed sanctions on violent settlers and outposts alike, and we continue to urge the Israeli government both to stop settlement expansion and crack down on the shameful acts of violence being committed by settlers against innocent Palestinian communities.

Media and Sport, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of the reduction in local authority spending on youth services since 2010 on those services; and will she consider embedding minimum sufficiency benchmarks within the forthcoming National Youth Strategy.

This Government fully recognises the importance of youth services to help young people live safe and healthy lives, and we are committed to giving all young people the chance to reach their full potential. This is why we are launching a new National Youth Strategy, to set out a new long-term vision for young people and an action plan for delivering this.The Local Youth Transformation Pilot is a new programme to support local authorities to meet their statutory duty, through investing £8 million over 2025/26 to support 12 ‘Pathfinder’ local authorities to start to rebuild a high-quality offer for young people and transition back to local youth services leadership. The pilot will test ways to rebuild local authority capability to ensure a local youth offer which addresses the needs of young people and supports government priorities.

What steps his Department is taking to ensure that end of life care is included in community-based models under the 10-Year Health Plan.

The Palliative Care and End of Life Care Modern Service Framework will put in place clear mechanisms to enable change and support the shift of care from hospital to community, as set out in our 10 Year Health Plan.

Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of UK humanitarian aid at reaching (a) remote and (b) isolated communities in Jamaica following Hurricane Melissa.

We remain steadfast in our commitment to support regional efforts to recover from the devastation caused by Hurricane Melissa, and we continue to engage with Caribbean Missions in the UK on our response. For details on the UK's response, I refer the Hon. Member to my statement to the House on 4 November 2025, Official Report, vol. 774, cols. 33WS-35WS.

Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether she plans to work with (a) local organisations and (b) diaspora communities in the UK to support long-term recovery projects for areas most affected by Hurricane Melissa.

We remain steadfast in our commitment to support regional efforts to recover from the devastation caused by Hurricane Melissa, and we continue to engage with Caribbean Missions in the UK on our response. For details on the UK's response, I refer the Hon. Member to my statement to the House on 4 November 2025, Official Report, vol. 774, cols. 33WS-35WS.

Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she is taking to help tackle fly-tipping in Huddersfield constituency.

Local councils are usually best placed to tackle fly-tipping in their areas, and they have a range of enforcement powers to help them do so. These include fixed penalty notices of up to £1000, seizing and crushing of vehicles and prosecution action. We encourage councils to make good use of their enforcement powers and are taking steps to develop statutory fly-tipping enforcement guidance to support councils to consistently, appropriately and effectively exercise these existing powers. We have also announced a review of council powers to seize and crush vehicles of fly-tippers, to identify how we could help them make better use of this tool. In our manifesto we committed to forcing fly-tippers to clean up the mess that they have created. We will provide further details on this commitment in due course. In the meantime, Defra continue to chair the National Fly-Tipping Prevention Group through which we work with a wide range of stakeholders, such as local authorities and the National Farmers Union, to share good practice on preventing fly-tipping, including on private land. Various practical tools are available from their webpage which is available at: https://nftpg.com/.

What steps she is taking with her Cabinet colleagues to promote equality as part of the Government mission entitled Break Down Barriers to Opportunity.

All children and young people should have every opportunity to succeed, no matter where they are from. However, we know educational inequalities exists across the country. This is not acceptable in Huddersfield or nationally.The department is tackling inequalities in the system head-on through our Plan for Change. In September, we rolled out 30 hours of funded childcare for working parents, saving eligible parents using their full entitlement an average of £75,000 a year.We are also rolling out free breakfast clubs in every state-funded primary school, expanding free school meals to all children on Universal Credit, and have delivered the largest ever uplift to early years pupil premium.We are recruiting an additional 6,500 expert teachers in our schools and colleges and are making good progress, with over 2,000 more teachers in our secondary and special schools.The department will spend close to £1.5 billion over the next three years on improving family services and early years education to begin the hard work needed.We will fund Best Start Family Hubs in every local authority to ensure that children and families who need support the most, especially those from low-income backgrounds or with additional vulnerabilities, can access it. These hubs will be open to all families but will be located in disadvantaged communities where support is most needed, ensuring services are both inclusive and targeted.

What steps his Department is taking to ensure that the social security system provides (a) supportive and (b) compassionate services for people experiencing (i) poverty and (ii) hardship.

This Government believes that the best way of helping people experiencing poverty and hardship is through a system that supports them into good work wherever possible. Through the proposals in our Get Britain Working White Paper we will deliver the biggest reforms to employment support in a generation. This will include reforming Jobcentre Plus and creating a new Jobs and Careers Service across Great Britain that will enable everyone to access good, meaningful work, and support them to progress in work including through an enhanced focus on skills and careers. Our new service will provide personalised support and move away from the one size fits all approach that Jobcentre Plus has today. We will also remove the stigma of going to a Jobcentre, ensuring it is somewhere that people go to receive support, rather than to feel penalised for receiving benefits. At Autumn Budget, we secured £55m to support the first steps to build, test, and trial the new service for 2025/26. Universal Credit supports people on a low income in or out of work and is claimed by more than 7.5 million people, and we are committed to reviewing it to make sure it is doing the job we want it to, to make work pay and tackle poverty. We are fulfilling this commitment trough specific work on many of Universal Credit's core elements, and the extensive work taking place through the child poverty taskforce, our health and disability reforms and our employment reforms We have already shown our ambition with the changes made to the Fair Repayment Rate, giving 1.2m households an average of £420 per year. In addition, around 4 million households will benefit from the increase in the Universal Credit Standard Allowance from April 2026, the biggest permanent boost to out-of-work support since 1980, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. This increase is estimated to be worth £725 annually by 2029/30 in cash terms - £250 annually above inflation for a single household aged 25 or over. To further support struggling households, we are providing £742 million to extend the Household Support Fund (HSF) in England until 31 March 2026, enabling local authorities to continue to provide vulnerable households with immediate crisis support towards the cost of essentials, such as energy, water and food. Starting from 1 April 2026, we have announced a further £842 million a year (£1 billion including Barnett consequential) to reform crisis support with the new Crisis and Resilience Fund, supporting our wider mission to reduce child poverty by reducing dependence on food parcels, preventing homelessness and making sure people can access urgent support when they need it.