Every parliamentary written question tabled by Lee Pitcher this session, with the full answer and department. Back to the MP page.
Showing 21–38 of 38 · this parliament
Communities and Local Government, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of increasing the rate of office-to-residential asset conversions to accelerate the delivery of social housing.
Under nationally set permitted development rights a wide range of commercial buildings such as offices and shops are able to change use to residential without the need for a planning application. The government continues to keep permitted development rights under review.
What steps his Department is taking to ensure equitable access England to (a) diagnosis, (b) treatment and (c) specialist rehabilitation services for patients with Functional Neurological Disorder.
The majority of services for people with neurological conditions, including functional neurological disorder (FND), are commissioned locally. Integrated care board (ICB) commissioners are best placed to configure services for their populations and are supported by clinical guidance.More widely, NHS England’s Neuroscience Transformation Programme is supporting ICBs to deliver the right service, at the right time for all neurology patients, which includes providing care closer to home.NHS England’s Getting It Right First Time Programme for Neurology and RightCare Toolkits, including the Progressive Neurological Conditions Toolkit, the Headache and Migraine Toolkit, and the Epilepsy Toolkit, aim to improve care for patients with neurological conditions by reducing variation.On 15 October 2025, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence published new guidance, titled Rehabilitation for chronic neurological disorders including acquired brain injury. The guideline covers rehabilitation in all settings for children, young people, and adults with a chronic neurological disorder, neurological impairment, or disabling neurological symptoms resulting from acquired brain injury, spinal cord injury, peripheral nerve disorder, progressive neurological disease, or FND. Further information is available at the following link:https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/indevelopment/gid-ng10181
Whether she has made an assessment of the potential implications for her policies of the report by CenTax entitled A fair solution to inheritance tax on farms and small businesses, published on 15 August 2025.
The Government believes its reforms to agricultural property relief and business property relief from 6 April 2026 get the balance right between supporting farms and businesses, and fixing the public finances. The reforms reduce the inheritance tax advantages available to owners of agricultural and business assets, but still mean those assets will be taxed at a much lower effective rate than most other assets. Despite a tough fiscal context, the Government will maintain very significant levels of relief from inheritance tax beyond what is available to others and compared to the position before 1992. Where inheritance tax is due, those liable for a charge can pay any liability on the relevant assets over 10 annual instalments, interest-free. The report by the independent Centre for the Analysis of Taxation (CenTax) supports the Government’s analysis of these reforms, including the number of estates affected in 2026-27, and concludes that half of these estates will see an increase in their effective inheritance tax rate of less than 5 percentage points, and almost 90 per cent of these estates could pay their entire inheritance tax bill out of non-farm assets. In CenTax’s opinion, the Government’s proposed reforms improve on the current position and are expected largely to meet the Government’s objectives. CenTax did suggest the Government could consider amending the policy to introduce a “minimum share rule” or an upper limit on relief. However, as the report acknowledges, there are challenges with those approaches too and they are not a “silver bullet”, in CenTax’s own words. The Government will invest more than £2.7 billion a year in sustainable farming and nature recovery from 2026-27 until 2028-29. This includes the largest financial investment into nature-friendly farming ever.
With reference to her Department's press release entitled Transport Secretary acts to make thousands of extra driving tests available each month, published on 23 April 2025, how many driving test places have been available to book in each the last six months for which data is available.
The table below shows the number of car practical driving tests provided for the months April 2025 to September 2025.AprilMayJuneJulyAugustSeptemberTotal155,582161,039172,327185,901158,511183,762
Innovation and Technology, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that (a) remote and (b) other hard-to-reach properties are provided access to reliable fibre broadband.
Project Gigabit is the Government’s programme to deliver gigabit-capable broadband to UK premises that are not included in suppliers' commercial plans. Our goal is for nationwide gigabit coverage by 2032, ensuring at least 99% of UK premises can access a gigabit-capable connection.More than £2.4 billion of Project Gigabit contracts have already been signed to connect over one million more premises with gigabit-capable broadband. These premises fall predominantly in rural areas.However, our expectation is that some remote premises will remain too expensive to build a gigabit connection to. We continue to consider what can be done to further enable alternatives to fibre connections.
Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that cladding remediation works on high-risk buildings are not subject to avoidable delays in the building control approval process by the Building Safety Regulator.
The Building Safety Regulator (BSR) has established a dedicated external remediation team who assess all building control approval applications for cladding remediation. The team is already delivering engagement events to improve developers’ understanding of the requirements, and therefore increase the quality of applications and approval rates.The BSR is also in the process of establishing a remediation enforcement unit, to oversee escalations from government/partner regulators where remediation is not progressing quickly enough. The unit will have access to additional, dedicated resources for building control work to deal with the increasing demand, and to help increase the pace of remediation works.We recognise that delays in assessing Gateway approval applications are unacceptable, which is why we announced reforms on 30 June including carving out the BSR from the Health and Safety Executive and establishing the Regulator as a standalone body with a clear focus on building safety.The BSR is already making operational and policy changes to speed up decision making, particularly on building control approval, including through the introduction of an Innovation Unit. Early signs are positive with all applications in the Innovation Unit so far on track to exceed or meet the 12-week SLA as they progress through the application process.In addition to this, BSR has initiated a new approach of batching applications so they can be processed by multidisciplinary teams formed by Registered Building Control Approvers with oversight from BSR.The BSR is continually improving the suite of guidance that supports those with duties in understanding what the law requires of them and how they can comply. New guidance with the Construction Leadership Council (CLC) has been published to help applicants better understand what’s needed for a successful submission.
What steps her Department is taking to encourage the use of digital asset management systems by local retailers to support crime prevention.
the Retail Crime Forum to ensure we understand the needs of retailers and to promote collaboration between the retail sector, security providers and law enforcement. This is an opportunity to share best practice and awareness of different initiatives to tackle the range of drivers of shop theft, including technology.
What steps her Department is taking to regulate the use of privately owned e-scooters involved in anti-social behaviour.
Tackling anti-social behaviour is a top priority for this Government and a key part of our Safer Streets Mission. Our Crime and Policing Bill will give the police greater powers to clamp down on all vehicles, including e-scooters, involved in anti-social behaviour, with officers no longer required to issue a warning before seizing these vehicles.On 28 May, the Government launched a six-week consultation on proposals to allow the police to more quickly dispose of seized vehicles such as e-scooters which have been used anti-socially. The consultation closed on 8 July and the Government response will be published in due course. Combined, these proposals will help tackle the scourge of vehicles ridden anti-socially by sending a clear message to would be offenders and local communities that this behaviour will not be tolerated.There are various offences relating to e-scooter use that the police can enforce with a Fixed Penalty Notice (FPN). Riding an e-scooter on the pavement can result in a FPN of £50.The Government has made no decisions on micromobility regulation, however, resolving the longstanding problems and missed opportunities of micromobility, including e-scooters, is a priority for the Government.
Communities and Local Government, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of a national Housing First rollout.
The Rough Sleeping Prevention and Recovery Grant (RSPARG) is providing a total of £185.6 million to local authorities across England in 2025/26. The RSPARG gives local authorities the flexibility to determine the most suitable rough sleeping services required to meet local need, including support to housing first projects.The Government has published evaluations of the Housing First pilots on GOV.UK (linked here), which local authorities can use to inform their approach.
Communities and Local Government, what steps her Department is taking to help people sleeping rough access long-term and stable accommodation.
Homelessness levels are far too high. This can have a devastating impact on those affected. We are determined to address this and deliver long term solutions.The Government is looking at these issues carefully and is developing a new cross government strategy. We are committed to moving away from a system focussed on crisis response, taking a holistic approach to preventing homelessness in the first place and driving better value for money interventions.The Rough Sleeping Prevention and Recovery Grant (RSPARG) is providing a total of £185.6 million to local authorities across England in 2025/26. The RSPARG gives local authorities the flexibility to determine the most suitable rough sleeping services, this includes accommodation required to meet local need.
Communities and Local Government, what estimate her Department has made of the number of children living in temporary accommodation in Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme constituency.
The government publishes statistics on homelessness including the number of children in temporary accommodation each quarter through gov.uk. You can find the data gov.uk here.
When she plans to announce the remaining local authorities selected for the pilot inquiries into group-based child sexual exploitation.
The Government is committed to getting to the truth of both historical and current group-based child sexual exploitation or grooming gangs offending, to ensure that perpetrators are punished and to deliver justice and accountability for victims and survivors. That is why the Home Secretary commissioned Baroness Louise Casey to undertake a national audit into the nature, scale and characteristics of this type of offending.The Home Secretary wrote to the Home Affairs Committee on 28 May 2025 to explain that Baroness Casey has requested a short extension to complete her audit, as she continues to speak directly to victims, fully assess the scale of the issue and submit meaningful recommendations to further tackle this vile crime.We expect to receive Baroness Casey's report in the coming weeks, and the Home Secretary has already committed to publishing it at that point. It is important that the government has all the information available so we can set out a comprehensive response to this horrific crime, taking into account Baroness Casey's findings, including next steps on local inquiries.
Whether her Department has made an assessment of the potential impact of the use of drones to record footage over police cordons at emergency scenes on privacy; and whether she plans to introduce additional (a) legal protections and (b) enforcement powers to prevent drone use impacting the (i) privacy and (ii) dignity of people involved in such incidents.
The use and deployment of drones by policing is an operational matter made independently by police forces, who are best placed to assess their own operational needs while ensuring they have the tools necessary to protect the public.However, in the use and deployment of drones, police forces must have due regard to Data Protection legislation and the Air Navigation Order (ANO) 2016, which specifies the requirements and conduct drone operators must abide by to use drones in a manner which is both safe and does not unduly endanger or negatively impact members of the public.To support development of a national drone capability for policing which is effective and safe, in FY24/25, the Home Office allocated over £4m to national police-led programmes of work to drive standardisation and improve coordination in police drone operations to support public safety outcomes.Furthermore, to support development of these programmes and improve the safe and legal use of drones by policing, police forces work closely with the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). Drone activities conducted by members of the public is a matter for the CAA, who are responsible for regulating the activities of civilian drone operators.
Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to promote water reuse.
The Government recognises that recycled water e.g. from rainwater or domestic greywater showers play a key role in helping non-household users and businesses meet the statutory water demand reduction target of 20% by March 2038. We encourage water companies and developers to move from potable water to recycled sources where possible.To enable reuse in households, we are working to support the water sector to supply treated, non-potable water, including rainwater, for certain water demands such as toilet flushing. To support this, Ofwat consulted on environmental incentives for developers which considered where recycled water could be integrated into buildings and developments, and acknowledged the importance of recycled water to reducing pressure on the water system
How many units of service family accommodation are located in Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme constituency.
There are no Service Family Accommodation properties in Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme constituency.
If he will take steps to extend eligibility for NHS lung screening programmes to include people with a history of occupational exposure to (a) asbestos, (b) coal dust and (c) other hazardous substances.
The NHS Lung Cancer Screening Programme is offered to people between the ages of 55 and 74 years old who are current smokers or have previously been smokers. This is in line with the recommendation made by the UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC) in 2022.The UK NSC recognised that there are other causes of lung cancer such as air pollution and occupational exposure to inhaled carcinogens but as 72% of lung cancer is largely attributable to age and smoking status, the benefits of screening would have the most impact in this cohort of people.When appraising the viability of a targeted screening the UK NSC takes into consideration the feasibility of identifying the cohort of people eligible for targeted screening. This would be necessary if the NHS Lung Cancer Screening Programme were to be extended to these groups.The UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC), welcomes any new published peer reviewed evidence which suggests the case for a new or modified screening programme via its annual call, of which details are available at the following link:https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-nsc-annual-call-submitting-a-screening-proposal/uk-nsc-annual-call-how-to-submit-a-proposal
What steps his Department is taking to help increase the supply of Creon; and what support his Department is providing to patients who are not able to use alternative medicines.
The Department continues to engage with suppliers of Creon and other pancreatic enzyme replacement therapies (PERT) to boost production to mitigate the supply issue. The supplier of Creon expects to receive increased quantities for 2025. Suppliers of alternative PERT and specialist importers of unlicensed medicines continue to supply increased volumes to assist in covering the gap in the market. The Department has issued management advice to healthcare professionals which directs clinicians to unlicensed imports when licensed stock is unavailable, and which includes actions for integrated care boards to ensure local mitigation plans are implemented. The Department, in collaboration with NHS England, has created a webpage to include the latest update on PERT availability and easily accessible prescribing advice for clinicians.
What steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help tackle (a) grooming gangs and (b) child sexual exploitation.
On 6 and 16 January, the Home Secretary announced to Parliament a raft of measures to go further in tackling child sexual abuse and exploitation, including 'grooming gangs' offending.The Home Secretary has written to the National Police Chiefs' Council requesting officers look again at these unsolved and closed grooming gangs cases, backed by £2.5m in funding for stronger investigations The remit of the Independent Child Sexual Abuse Review Panel has also been extended so that it covers not just historic cases before 2013 but all cases since to ensure victims of abuse have the right to an independent reviewThis includes appointing Baroness Louise Casey to oversee an audit to improve our understanding of the scale, nature and drivers of group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse at a national and local level, and to make recommendations on what additional action is needed to improve our response.We will provide stronger support for local areas which are interested in undertaking work to better understand and tackle local grooming gang issues and improve their own local responses going forward.We will also be working across Government to set out a clear timeline for taking forward the 20 recommendations from the final report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse by Easter.