The Government has not assessed this review, however, its findings are consistent with the existing scientific literature and conclusions of the Sixth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This stated that the Arctic will likely be practically ice-free at least once before 2050 with more frequent occurrences under higher warming scenarios. The IPCC concluded that it is virtually certain the Arctic will continue to warm at least two times faster than the rest of the globe. Arctic sea ice retreat has and will lead to a range of impacts, including loss in biodiversity and coastal erosion.

On 12 December Minister Stuart returned to the UK to attend Parliament in his role as an MP. There continued to be full UK representation at the summit throughout, with my noble Friend Lord Benyon representing the UK at Ministerial level alongside UK officials.

Minister Stuart continued to be the lead UK Minister for negotiations and remained in constant contact with the UK Lead Climate Negotiator and my noble Friend Lord Benyon, with any final decisions agreed with him. Minister Stuart returned on 13 December for the final day of negotiations and attended the closing plenary.

Ministers across Government regularly meet with Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry to discuss a range of climate change, energy and environment-related issues, including policy related to COP28.

The Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative for Climate Change finished in the role on 31 March 2023.

There are no plans to appoint a climate envoy. The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero leads on international climate change for the UK. The Minister of State for Energy Security and Net Zero represented the UK at the COP28 negotiations as Ministerial Head of Delegation.

The UK is driving global climate ambition through its leadership in the UNFCCC process, multilateral forums such as the G7 and G20, and through international climate finance commitments and diplomatic networks. The Government is committed to spending £11.6 billion on international climate finance and is delivering on that pledge.

COP28 will involve the first ever Global Stocktake of progress against the Paris Agreement. It must galvanise a step change in action and ambition from all involved.

We will publish our full response to the recent CCC Progress Report this coming Autumn, as per statutory requirements.

The UK is driving global climate ambition through its leadership in multilateral forums, including the UN COP process, G7 and G20 forums, as well as through its International Climate Finance commitments and diplomatic networks. The UK supports and contributes to the WMO’s Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) which assesses the status of global climate observations and participates in the Intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (GEO) to improve the availability, access, and use of Earth observations.

The UK stands ready to formalise our association to Horizon Europe at the earliest opportunity. The Government continues to do everything it can to complete this process swiftly, but disappointingly there have been persistent delays from the EU.

In order to provide reassurance to the sector, the UK Government has guaranteed funding for the first and second waves of eligible successful applicants to Horizon Europe who expect to sign agreements by December 2022 and who have been unable to sign grant agreements with the EU. If the UK is unable to associate to Horizon Europe, we will be ready to introduce a comprehensive alternative programme of international science, research and innovation collaborations.

I refer my noble Friend to the reply given by my hon. Friend the Minister for Science, Research and Innovation to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central on 27 April 2022 to Question 156445.

Royal Mail is aware of the theft of post boxes in parts of East Anglia and is working closely with law enforcement agencies and deploying preventative measures to deter theft.

The Government is not involved in the replacement of post boxes which is an operational matter for Royal Mail.

The UK is always seeking to discuss issues with our international partners where appropriate opportunities arise. This is no exception and there is a strong international community involved in monitoring and discussing the risk around the Thwaites Glacier.

In 2018, the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, a five-year £20million Antarctic research programme and the largest joint project undertaken by the two nations in Antarctica for more than 70 years. This project is aimed at collecting instrument data throughout the glacier and the adjacent ocean, and modelling ice flow and the future of the ice sheet. The collaboration involves around 100 scientists from world-leading research institutes in both the US and UK alongside researchers from South Korea, Germany, Sweden, New Zealand and Finland, who will contribute to the various projects.

The changes that may occur in the vicinity of the grounding line of the Thwaites Glacier in the next decade will not, of themselves, result in a significant change in global sea level. While some computer models predict that such changes may lead to a wider loss of ice to the ocean, these are processes occurring on century timescales. For this reason, the NERC and BAS priority at present is to continue to monitor the Thwaites Glacier with satellite and ground observations, as they are presently undertaking in collaboration with the US.

The Government actively monitors the UK labour market. The latest ONS statistics suggest that, between March and May 2021, there were 758,000 vacancies in the economy, only 27,000 below the pre-pandemic level.

We are actively supporting the hospitality sector on its road to recovery. We are offering generous incentives to employers to recruit staff, with hundreds of young people starting work every day through the Kickstart Scheme. We are providing employers with a hiring incentive for each new apprentice they hire and have increased the payment to £3,000 for each newly hired apprentice of any age, helping more people to kick start or upskill their career across a broad range of industries. We are also investing £126 million in additional support to help create 40,000 more traineeships in England, funding high-quality work placements and training for 16-24-year olds in 2021-22.

The digital transformation is driving rises in the number of tech and digital jobs advertised, providing an opportunity to get people into good quality work. According to Adzuna estimates, there were 132,000 tech job vacancies in the UK in May, making up 12% of all open vacancies. There are nearly three million jobs in the digital tech economy, more than either Construction (1.9m) or Financial Services (1.2m) and the sector accounts for 9% of the UK’s workforce.

The 10 Tech Priorities, launched by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in March, includes ‘’building a tech savvy nation’’. Our apprenticeships and digital bootcamps will help set people up for highly skilled, highly paid roles of the future.

Encouraging many more skilled people to enter digital roles is vital if the UK is to have the digital skills it requires. In order to coordinate industry support for the teaching of computing in English schools, DCMS created the Digital Skills Partnership Schools group. In order to raise the awareness of interesting digital roles and routes into them, the Digital Skills Partnership Schools Group is working with industry to test how best to do this. The pilot, funded by DCMS, is being run by the South West Local Digital Skills Partnership.

Association to Horizon Europe will bring huge benefits to the UK. The Government has announced an additional £250 million in 2021/22 for Horizon Europe. An additional £400 million, earmarked at Spending Review for 2021/22 to help support government priorities, will help to pay for association to Horizon.

Government investment in R&D will reach £14.9billion in 2021/22, its highest level in four decades. UK scientists will now have access to more public funding than ever before.

Our commitment to research and development has been clearly demonstrated through the Spending Review announcement to increase investment in R&D across government to £14.6bn in 2021/22. This increase in investment will help deliver our ambition to increase total UK R&D investment to 2.4% of GDP by 2027.

The increased investment will put research and development at the heart of economic and social recovery from the impacts of COVID-19, enabling us to build back better for a greener, healthier and more resilient UK.

As the custodian of the R&D system, BEIS was allocated £11.1 billion for R&D in 2021/22. Funding for each individual programme is subject to our Departmental allocations process, which is under way. We will provide an update in due course.

Throughout this crisis, the Government has sought to protect people’s jobs and livelihoods whilst supporting businesses and public services across the UK. The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) is specifically designed to protect jobs, and it has been used by 1.3m employers to support 11.2m jobs. Since July, more than half of the jobs that have been furloughed were held by women, and we have ensured that women will not lose Statutory Maternity Pay if their roles have been furloughed.

We recognise that unfortunately it has not been possible to protect every business and every job and our thoughts are with those who have been impacted by this virus. While the pandemic has had a significant impact across the whole labour market, certain groups have been more affected than others. For example, the latest official statistics show that individuals from ethnic minority backgrounds are more likely to be out of work. Existing Covid-19 support measures and the measures announced at Budget 2021 seek to address this.

The new Restart Grants will provide up to £6k for non-essential retail businesses and up to £18k for hospitality, accommodation, leisure, personal care and gyms, for example. The hospitality and personal care sectors have a higher proportion of employees that are young, female, BAME and without qualifications when compared to other industries. By contributing to business survival, these grants will therefore benefit these groups as a result.

Moreover, VAT reductions and extending business rates relief for businesses in the hospitality sector will continue to protect both the UK economy and the livelihoods of people across the country, in particular BAME employees and women.

Government officials hold regular discussions with climate scientists and negotiators from arctic nations and others, including through the Cryosphere High Urgency group run by the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative.

The British Government is fully committed to involving all the UK Overseas Territories in our planning as we leave the EU, and ensuring that their interests are properly taken into account.

UK Ministers and leaders of the Overseas Territories discuss EU Exit in the UK Overseas Territories Joint Ministerial Council on EU Exit Negotiations, which will meet for the fourth time on 14 June this year.

The British Government has also considered and responded to the evidence presented by Overseas Territories' representatives to the European Union Select Committee on the impact of EU Exit in July of last year.

The Department for Transport through the UK Roads Liaison Group promotes the Well Managed Highway Infrastructure Code of Practice. This Code provides best practice and guidance for highway authorities to manage and maintain the local highways for which they are responsible, including providing advice on a range of issues, such as managing road verges to help protect endangered species of flora.

One scheme has been cancelled following the public consultation. The A27 Chichester Bypass scheme in West Sussex was dependent on local support and financial contribution of the authorities and there was no clear consensus on the best way forward.

Three schemes in construction have delays to their "open to traffic" dates. The A1 Leeming to Barton scheme in North Yorkshire has been delayed following extensive archaeological finds. The A21 Tonbridge to Pembury scheme in Kent has been delayed due to the need for remedial action to deal with unforeseen large volumes of hazardous waste. The A30 Temple to Carblake scheme is being delivered by Cornwall County Council and has been delayed due to changes in traffic management to reduce disruption during peak summer months.

The Department for Transport has held a number of recent discussions with the motor insurance industry, for example to discuss young driver safety and technology measures, and changes to the personal injury discount rate which affect on the cost of insurance.

The Queen’s Speech, on 21 June, confirmed that a Civil Liability Bill will be introduced to tackle the continuing high number and cost of whiplash claims and to help reduce motor insurance premiums.

The pricing of insurance products is a commercial matter for individual insurers in which the Government does not seek to intervene.