The customs intermediary sector has significantly increased their capacity to meet demand following the introduction of full customs controls from 1 January 2022.

HMRC is closely monitoring the capacity of the sector, and its ability to respond to demand, through regular engagement and surveys. HMRC continue to engage closely with the sector to understand how it is responding and keep their support measures under constant close review.

HMRC publishes an intermediary register to make traders aware of businesses offering customs services. The register shows whether the intermediary is taking on clients and the services they offer including out of hours support. As of 26 April 2022, there are 1622 intermediaries. 987 say they have capacity to take on new business.

It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.

It has not proved possible to respond to this question in the time available before Prorogation. Ministers will correspond directly with the Member.

It has not proved possible to respond to this question in the time available before Prorogation. I will correspond directly with the noble Baroness.

Supporting hospital flow and reducing delayed discharges requires a whole system approach across the National Health Service, adult social care, housing, the voluntary sector and others. Hospital discharge services are therefore supported by staff across a range of health and social care professions in England and in York.

We have committed at least £500 million to develop the social care workforce, including for training places and for initiatives to improve wellbeing. We are also promoting adult social care careers through national recruitment campaigns, such as ‘Made with Care’ which ran between November 2021 and 31 March 2022. A further campaign for 2022/23 is in development. We are also working with the Department of Work and Pensions to promote adult social care careers to jobseekers. Care workers have been made eligible for the Health and Care Visa and added to the Shortage Occupation List to allow social care employers to recruit eligible workers from overseas.

In winter 2021/22, we made £462.5 million available to local authorities to increase workforce capacity via the Workforce Recruitment and Retention Funds, including £1,410,240 allocated to York. We have regular discussions with stakeholders, including local government representatives, on a range of issues including the adult social care workforce.

Defra continues to work closely with industry and other Government departments to understand labour supply and demand, including both permanent and seasonal workforce requirements, and to ensure there is a long-term strategy for the food and farming workforce.

On 24 December 2021, the Government announced that the seasonal worker visa route will be extended to 2024 to allow overseas workers to come to the UK for up to six months to harvest both edible and ornamental crops. This will provide a greater degree of certainty to the sector after a series of annual pilots between 2019 and 2021. For 2022 and through to 2024, 30,000 visas will be available each year. This will be kept under review, with the potential to increase the annual visa numbers by 10,000 to 40,000 each year if necessary.

While acknowledging the sector’s reliance on foreign workers, the UK is committed to becoming a high-skilled, high-wage economy and the government has been clear that more must be done to attract UK workers through offering training, career options, wage increases and to invest in increased automation technology.

Defra’s Review of Automation in Horticulture will inform a range of policy decisions regarding automation and seasonal labour from 2022 onwards. Defra plans to publish the automation review and Government response in early summer, after the pre-election period for the 2022 local elections.

In addition, food and farming businesses can continue to rely on EU nationals living in the UK with settled or pre-settled status. Over 5.5 million EU citizens and their families have been granted status under the EU Settlement Scheme.

Defra is also working with industry and the Department for Work and Pensions to raise awareness of career opportunities within the food and farming sectors among UK workers.

In December 2021, there were 1,672 more full time equivalent doctors in general practice in England compared to December 2019. The Department is working with NHS England and NHS Improvement, Health Education England and the profession to increase the general practice workforce in England. This includes measures to increase recruitment, address the reasons why doctors leave the profession and encourage them to return to practice. We have committed to deliver 6,000 more doctors in general practice as soon as possible.

Defra continues to work closely with industry and other Government departments to understand labour supply and demand, including both permanent and seasonal workforce requirements, and to ensure there is a long-term strategy for the food and farming workforce, including for the pig sector. This includes a series of roundtable meetings hosted by Minister Prentis with stakeholders from across the pig sector supply chain.

Since January 2021 the Skilled Worker visa route has been open to all nationals who wish to come to the UK for the purpose of working in a skilled role – including those in butchery.

Last autumn the pig sector faced some specific challenges due to a combination of the COVID-19 pandemic, the loss of the Chinese export market for some processors, and access to labour issues. This included a shortage of skilled butchers which impacted the capacity of processors to kill and process pigs.  In recognition of this, the Government announced in November 2021 that additional, temporary visas would be available for pork butchers to work in the UK for up to 6 months in addition to the existing Skilled Worker visa route. While applications for these temporary visas are now closed, pork butchers can remain in the UK for six months from the date their visa was granted.

In February 2022, the Home Office announced a series of visa concessions for temporary workers of Ukrainian nationality. Ukrainian nationals in temporary pork butcher jobs will have their leave in the UK extended to 31 December 2022 and will also be allowed to apply to the skilled worker route.

In addition, food and farming businesses can continue to rely on EU nationals living in the UK with settled or pre-settled status. Over 5.7 million EU citizens and their families have been granted status under the EU Settlement Scheme. EU nationals who have settled status can continue to travel to the UK for work in 2022 and beyond.

The Government also encourages the meat processing sector to pursue improvements to training offers, career options and wages to ensure that the sector draws on the large domestic labour pool in the UK, as well as investing in new technology across the industry.

To support these efforts Defra is working with industry and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to raise awareness of career opportunities within the food and farming sectors among UK workers.

We are unable to provide the information requested on specific assessments as this relates to the development of Government policy. However, we continue with the National Health Service to assess the impact of the end of free universal testing on primary, community and acute healthcare settings. From 1 April 2022, our testing strategy is focussed on protecting the most vulnerable population groups and settings, continuing surveillance to identify variants of concern and maintaining the ability to respond to potential new variants. We will continue to provide some asymptomatic testing in NHS services during periods of higher prevalence, including for staff and patients.

As my previous answer from 26 November 2021 set out, Heavy Goods Vehicle (HGV) drivers are not an eligible occupation under the Skilled Worker route as they do not meet the required skill level and therefore cannot be placed on the Shortage Occupation List (SOL). Being on the SOL does not exempt an occupation from the requirements, such as the skills threshold, of the Skilled Worker route. The Government intends to commission the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to undertake another review of the SOL this year, during which time, the logistics sector will be able to provide evidence for consideration by the MAC.

The Department for Transport are leading measures to address shortages, including ramping up testing capacity, alongside encouraging employers to tackle longstanding issues in the sector through more investment in skills and training, along with better pay and working conditions (including facilities). These measures are a more effective solution to issues facing the sector, rather than immigration, especially given the current global shortage of drivers.

We are working with the British Dental Association to reform the NHS dental contract to make it more attractive to the profession. Health Education England set out a range of recommendations in their Advancing Dental Care Review, which will improve recruitment and retention of dentists and other professionals. Action is being taken to implement these through their Dental Education Reform Programme. We are also working to allow greater flexibility to expand on the registration options open to international dentistry applicants.

Mr Speaker, you have been very generous to the hon. Gentleman: you gave him another try, but that was another failure to ask a question. Again, the hon. Gentleman is not asking about the serious issues, which again shows that he will play petty party politics and that Labour has no plan for the challenges this country faces.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I would just say to the Secretary of State that he should be careful what he wishes for. I hope he will at least reply to the letter I sent him last Thursday—I will place a copy in the Library of the House. He has been stonewalling journalists’ questions, but since he says he wants to talk about the Government’s record, let me ask him about that instead. We went into the pandemic with NHS waiting lists already at 4.5 million. We went into the pandemic with NHS staff shortages of 100,000. We went into the pandemic with social care staffing vacancies of 112,000. So it is not just the case that the Tories did not fix the roof while the sun was shining; they dismantled the roof, removed the floorboards and now they have no plan to fix it. Where is the Secretary of State’s plan to fix the NHS crisis?

In February 2022, we published the ‘Delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlog of elective care’. The plan sets out how the Department will support the National Health Service to increase capacity and reduce disruption to patient care by supporting the workforce. The Department is committed to deliver 50,000 more nurses by the end of this Parliament to ensure a sustainable long-term supply for the NHS. In December 2021, the number of nurses had increased by over 27,000 compared to September 2019.

We have introduced a non-repayable training grant offering at least £5,000 per academic year for three years for nursing, midwifery and allied health professions. Over 30,000 students have accepted a place nursing and midwifery programmes in the 2021 recruitment cycle - an increase of 28% compared to 2019. We have also increased the number of medical school places by 25%. The NHS Retention Programme is also targeting interventions to encourage staff to stay in the NHS whilst support their health and wellbeing.

The Government is working with the veterinary profession, including the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, to help ensure that there will be an adequate number of vets across all sectors of the veterinary profession.

Defra, alongside the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and the British Veterinary Association, was successful in campaigning for the addition of the veterinary profession to the Shortage Occupation List by the Home Office in September 2019. This enabled employers to recruit overseas veterinary surgeons more easily. The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons continues to accept the vast majority of European veterinary degrees as well as maintaining mutual recognition agreements with many English-speaking countries that allow automatic registration for overseas vets.

Defra is also strongly considering proposals from the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons to increase the range of activities that can be delegated to allied professionals who work with animals to ease the pressure on the workload of the practising vet.

We are also looking forward to an increase in UK-trained vets thanks to several new veterinary schools opening across the UK. These include Surrey University, which saw its first cohort graduate in 2019, Harper Adams and Keele University, the University of Central Lancashire, Scottish Rural College and a collaboration between Aberystwyth University and the Royal Veterinary College. The increase in veterinary schools will lead to an increase in UK-trained vets graduating in the longer term.

In Coventry, NHS England is overseeing a programme to increase the workforce, including further development of the reservist programme; international recruitment for nurses and therapy roles; a partnership with the University of Coventry to expand the number of undergraduate places; primary care initiatives for general practitioners to support retention; and a system-wide needs analysis to support staff wellbeing.

In the West Midlands, NHS England is addressing vacancies in the region through health and wellbeing initiatives, with the emphasis on supporting staff to be able to attend work; reducing pressure on staffing and improving retention; improved opportunities for flexible working including retire and return; supporting the workforce with the addition of the reservists; and international recruitment initiatives in nursing and the allied health professions.

In England, eligible new and continuing nursing students at English universities receive a non-repayable grant of at least £5,000 for three years. In addition, extra grants of up to £3,000 per academic year are available to eligible students with child dependents or those studying specialist subjects. We have also increased the number of funded medical school places by 25% over three years to 2020. The first cohort of these students will enter foundation training from this year. This expansion also delivered five new medical schools in England.

The government works closely with local authorities to recognise and understand their workforce pressures, and to ensure that there are enough high-quality child and family social workers in the system.

The number of Full Time Equivalent (FTE) child and family social workers employed by local authorities in England is increasing every year. On 30 September 2021, there were 32,500 FTE child and family social workers employed by local authorities in England. This is an increase of 2.0% compared to 2020, and an increase of 14.1% compared to 2017. The average social worker at a local authority in England held 16.3 cases in 2021, the same as in 2020, and down from 17.8 in 2017. 16.7% of social worker posts were vacant, up from 16.1% in 2020. This represents a total of 6,520 vacancies. However, there was considerable variation between regions – the North East had the lowest vacancy rate (8.7%), and London had the highest (23.5%). It is important to note that the 4,995 social worker who left their roles in 2021 includes all social workers who have moved between local authorities but are still working in children’s social care.

While we recognise the picture local authorities are seeing on the ground may vary from place to place, we are working closely with local authorities and using central programmes and funding to respond to their needs.

We are supporting the recruitment and retention of social workers through our investment in fast-track initial social worker training programmes, and in professional development programmes to improve leadership. We are also seeing some innovative practices from local authorities that are driving down agency rates and stabilising their workforces.

Our COVID-19 Recovery Action Plan aims to stabilise and strengthen children’s social care as we transition out of the COVID-19 pandemic, so that we deliver well for children and young people and provide a strong foundation for longer-term reform, informed by the independent review of children’s social care.