Written questions by Bishop.

What steps she is taking to ensure that early education and care providers are adequately supported to provide places for 70,000 more children by autumn 2025.

Giving children the best start in life is key to the government’s Opportunity Mission. Good parenting and high quality early education provide the foundation for children to achieve and thrive. This government is determined to ensure that parents have access to high quality, affordable and flexible early education and childcare.The department is rolling out more government-funded childcare entitlements to help millions of families, working hand in hand with the early years sector to build a system that works for them, parents and, above all, children. This includes delivering 3,000 new and expanded school based nurseries to make high quality childcare accessible and available. As a first step, primary schools can now apply for up to £150,000 of £15 million capital funding, with the first stage of the plan set to support up to 300 new or expanded nurseries across England. High quality, school-based nursery provision is popular with parents, especially families with multiple children. It can help schools upgrade spare space whilst also providing early support to children and families, supporting their transition into primary school. School-based nursery settings have proportionally higher qualified staff and see lower staff turnover, providing more consistency of care for children. Proportionally, school-based nurseries also look after more children with special educational needs and disabilities and offer a higher proportion of places in the most deprived areas.In 2024/25, early years providers are set to benefit from over £2 billion extra investment compared to last year, to support the rollout of 30 hours of government-funded early education from next September, rising in 2027/28 to over £4.1 billion. As announced in the Autumn Budget 2024, we expect to provide over £8 billion for the early years entitlements in 2025/26, which is around a 30% increase compared to 2024/25, as we continue to deliver the expansion to eligible working parents of children aged from nine months.The planned September 2025 childcare rollout of 30 funded hours per week will go ahead, but there will be challenges, including providers securing enough staff and places to meet demand, with the capacity needed varying across the country. The department is supporting the sector to attract talented staff and childminders to join the workforce by creating conditions for improved recruitment. We are urging the public to ‘do something BIG’ and start a career working with small children through our national recruitment campaign. Our dedicated website also helps people find out more about gaining qualifications and search for existing job vacancies. In 20 local authorities, we are piloting initiatives to understand whether £1,000 in financial incentives will boost recruitment in early years alongside a childminder start-up grant scheme.Skills Bootcamps for the early years are available and lead to an accelerated apprenticeship, and we are funding Early Years Initial Teacher Training as a route for new and existing staff to gain Early Years Teacher Status. To support childminders to join and stay in the profession, we have implemented new flexibilities to work with more people and spend more time working from non-domestic premises.We are working closely with local areas and the early years sector to do everything we can to ensure there are enough places and the sector has the workforce it needs to provide those places and to bridge local gaps ahead of September 2025.

Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to collaborate with local authorities to ensure that infrastructure is swiftly repaired after the recent floods.

The Government inherited flood assets in their worst condition on record following years of underinvestment by the previous Government – just 92.1% of the Environment Agency’s 38,000 high consequence assets are currently at required condition. To ensure we protect the country from the devastating impacts of flooding, we will invest £2.4 billion in 2024/25 and 2025/26 to improve flood resilience, by building, maintaining, and repairing flood defences.

Food and Rural Affairs, whether he is taking steps to support small businesses with flood damage (a) prevention and (b) mitigation.

Protecting communities and small businesses around the country from flooding is one of the Secretary of State’s five core priorities. That is why we have committed £2.4 billion to invest over the next two years to bolster the nation’s resilience, which is vital if we are to protect homes and business across the country. As part of this investment, we are prioritising repairing and restoring critical assets to get our defences back on track and our new Flood Resilience Taskforce will play a key role in coordinating national and local flood preparation ahead of the winter flood season.

Whether they are taking steps to financially support individuals who have already completed a university degree to retrain in another area at university.

Currently, the Equivalent or Lower Qualification (ELQ) rules prevent those studying for a second higher education course, at a level lower or equivalent to their first qualification, from receiving either tuition fee loans or maintenance loans for that course.There are some exceptions for students who want to retrain in teaching, architecture, social work, medicine, dentistry, veterinary science and healthcare. Students on these courses may qualify for some support, even if they already have an ELQ. The support received will depend on the course studied and, in some cases, the mode of study.However, the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) will launch in January 2027, giving new learners access to a loan entitlement equal to four years of full-time tuition funding. This is currently equal to £38,140 based on fee rates for the 2025/26 academic year. Returning learners who have previously received government support will have a reduced entitlement, depending on previous funding received.Under the LLE, ELQ rules will be removed, thereby enabling more people to retrain and upskill throughout their working lives.

What assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of the suspension of firearm certificate grants by Gloucestershire Constabulary.

Chief Constables have operational responsibility for consideration of firearms licensing applications and the allocation of resources to firearms licensing units.However, we expect police forces to ensure that all applications for firearm certificates, whether new applications or those for renewal, are dealt with as efficiently as possible subject to addressing public safety risks.