The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is responsible for the regulation of the financial advice market and has looked closely at the advice provided to British Steel Pension Scheme (BSPS) members who transferred from the scheme.

Following this, the FCA has put in place a consumer redress scheme to ensure that the advice given to former BSPS members from the relevant period is reviewed and that redress is paid to those who lost out financially as a result of the poor advice they received.

HM Treasury does not hold internal reviews or audits conducted by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) concerning its redress scheme for former British Steel Pension Scheme (BSPS) members.

I was pleased to visit my hon. Friend’s constituency to meet steelworkers and British Steel management during my visits last month. I know that she is a passionate and dedicated champion for her community and for steelworkers there. I look forward to meeting her again next week ahead of the visit of the Secretary of State to her constituency, and to discussing these matters and others.

My hon. Friend will know how committed this Government are to the steel industry, but at the moment it is going through a transition. We care about having primary steel-making capacity in this country—that is something we want to do and to keep, but as she knows, even now we still import ore. I know she is concerned about British Steel and its future. I will be visiting her constituency in Scunthorpe and we will be able to discuss those matters further.

In December 2023, the department published 'Championing Kinship Care', which is the first ever national kinship care strategy. The department is investing £20 million of funding in the 2024/25 financial year for Championing Kinship Care to help move towards a children’s social care system with kinship at its heart.

Since the publication of Championing Kinship Care, the department has:

• Published its recruitment campaign for the first ever Kinship Ambassador
• Published updated local authority funding allocations for the 2024/25 financial year for Virtual School Heads, including the £3.8 million uplift to cover their extended duties to promote the educational outcomes of children in kinship care.
• Launched a package of training and support that will be delivered by Kinship. The service will provide both online and in-person training sessions for kinship carers and will cover topics such as contact with parents, how to register for a new school and support with caring for teenagers.

The department will provide an update on the financial allowance pathfinder programme in the coming months.

The Hedgerows Regulations 1997 set legal protections for hedgerows in England and Wales. These existing regulations prohibit the removal of most countryside hedgerows (or parts of them) without first seeking approval from the local planning authority.

In June 2023, the Government launched a consultation on how hedgerows should be further protected in England. The responses to the consultation supported bringing hedgerow management rules into regulation and this is what the Government will do as soon as parliamentary time allows. The regulations will require a 2-metre buffer strip, measured from the centre of the hedge, where no cultivation or application of pesticides or fertilisers must take place, and will ban the cutting of hedges between 1 March and 31 August. The regulations will support other Government actions and incentives, including over 90,000 km of hedgerows being managed through 16,000 agreements in the Government’s Countryside Stewardship and Sustainable Farming Incentive schemes.

Defra is also working with stakeholders and other Government departments to understand how to support the creation and maintenance of hedgerows in non-agricultural contexts, to maximise the benefits they provide.

Backed by over £10.5 billion in 2024/25, which is an increase in the high needs budget of 60% over five years, the department’s Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision (AP) Improvement Plan will ensure children and young people across England with SEND or in AP get high-quality, early support wherever they live in the country.

The department has a clear plan to ensure children and young people enjoy their childhood and achieve good outcomes. The department is delivering on this plan. The department has completed the following:

• In this academic year alone, the department has opened 15 new special schools and one AP free school, which creates over 1,500 new places for children and young people. The department has also approved a further 76 special free schools to create additional specialist school places for those with the greatest needs.

• In September 2023, the department launched a £70 million Change Programme made up of 32 local authorities to test and refine the department’s reforms. The programme is working with local authorities, integrated care boards, school representatives, parent group representatives and professionals to benefit every region in England.
• In November 2023, the department announced the £13 million ‘Partnerships for Inclusion of Neurodiversity in Schools’ programme to support up to 1680 primary schools to better meet the needs of neurodiverse children

• Since May 2022, over 5,000 online training modules have been completed and over 100,000 professionals have undertaken autism awareness training provided by the Autism Education Trust through the Universal training offer.
• In January 2024, the department announced a new initial teacher training and early career framework which includes new and updated content on SEND to ensure teachers have the skills and confidence to support all children.
• The department has registered over 5000 practitioners for early years Special Educational Needs Coordinator training to boost their understanding of SEND in the early years, early identification and collaborative working with parents, carers and other professionals.
• Through grant funding, the department has supported all local authorities in England to strengthen the quality of their Supported Internship offers to improve the transition into sustained, paid employment for interns. In the Spring Budget 2023, the department announced up to £3 million to pilot extending Supported Internships to young people with learning difficulties and disabilities but without an Education, Health and Care plan until March 2025

• In August 2023, the department confirmed that it is introducing a leadership level new National Professional Qualification for Special Educational Needs Coordinators, to replace the existing qualification, from Autumn 2024 and ensure special educational needs coordinators receive consistent high-quality, evidence-based training

• The department has provided a further £21 million to train 400 more education psychologists across the academic years 2024 and 2025

• The department has extended the AP Specialist Taskforce programme to March 2025 which has reached over 4000 children to date.
• The department has introduced a strengthened local authority inspection regime between Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission to drive better outcomes and standards in line with the department’s ambitious programme of reform, with 23 inspection reports published so far.

Recovery of routine diabetes care following the pandemic is a key priority for the NHS England Diabetes Programme. Transformation funding between 2020/21 and 2022/23 has supported recovery, as such that rates of routine care delivery are now almost back to the pre-pandemic level. Services in the National Health Service are asked to continue this upward trajectory, with a particular focus on ensuring that people from socio-economically deprived areas receive their annual reviews.

Humber and North Yorkshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) is responsible for commissioning diabetes clinical services for the Scunthorpe area and has an established Diabetes Clinical Network. This network operates across the entirety of the Humber and North Yorkshire geographical area.

The latest National Diabetes Audit 2023-24 Quarterly Report, January 2023 to September 2023 was published on 11 January 2024. The proportion of patients with type 1 diabetes completing all eight care processes at Humber and North Yorkshire ICB is 27.0%, above the England average of 25.3%. The proportion of patients with type 2 diabetes completing all eight care processes at Humber and North Yorkshire ICB is 37% above the England average of 30.5%.

My hon. Friend has a huge amount of knowledge of the steel sector and is a huge champion for Scunthorpe. She knows that we are working incredibly hard with the company in her constituency, and we are waiting for it to respond to the business plans going forward. We know how important virgin steelmaking is,

and we accept, because technology has moved on, that going forward 90% of all steel can be made in electric arc furnaces.

Following publication of our initial report, Major Conditions Strategy: Case for change and our strategic framework, in August 2023, we have continued to develop the strategy, informed by the call for evidence and ongoing engagement. Our intention is to publish the Major Conditions Strategy early this year.

I praise my hon. Friend’s leadership in championing her local community and also the steel industry in the UK. She is right to do so, because it is an incredibly important part not just of our local communities but of our economy and security. She is right to put this issue on the agenda.

We are committed to working with the steel sector to secure a decarbonised future, supporting local economic growth and our levelling-up agenda. That includes our commitment to major support with energy costs and also access to hundreds of millions of pounds of grants to support energy efficiency and decarbonisation. I obviously cannot comment on conversations with individual companies, but my hon. Friend can see from our track record on working with either Celsa or Tata Steel that we have been able to support our fantastic steel industry, and we will always continue to do so.

My hon. Friend is first and foremost an advocate for the steelworks and steelworkers in her constituency. Obviously that letter will be on its way, and I thank her so much for raising it.

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. She has been a long-running champion of the steel sector and its importance to her constituents. Of course, we want a smooth transition between blast furnace and electronic arc steel making technology. Steel remains incredibly important to the defence sector. Take the Type 26: almost 50% of that is British steel. That is 1,400 tonnes per ship. That underlines why it is so important that, in constituencies such as my hon. Friend’s, we continue to support the steel sector.

On 9 November, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) published an evaluation of the first year of the bloodborne virus (BBV) opt-out testing in emergency departments in local areas with extremely high HIV prevalence. Findings show that the programme has made a significant contribution to BBV testing in England with more than half the number of tests done in the programme compared to BBV tests in other settings.

We continue to assess available evidence alongside data on progress towards our ambitions to end new HIV transmissions, AIDS- and HIV-related deaths within England by 2030 to decide on further expansion of the programme.

My hon. Friend is a fantastic champion for her local steelworking community. I hope she is reassured by the action that this Government have already taken to support steelmaking in our country, reaching a landmark agreement with Tata Steel to safeguard thousands of jobs there, as well as during the pandemic.

I agree that it is important for our industrial base, and we will continue to have constructive conversations with all those companies to ensure that we can support them in their transition to a cleaner, greener steelmaking future.

There are no current plans to review or extend the prescription charge medical exemptions list to include cystic fibrosis. Almost 89% of prescription items are dispensed free of charge in England and there are arrangements in place to help those with the greatest need.

Eligibility depends on the patient’s age, whether they are in qualifying full-time education, whether they are pregnant or have recently given birth, or whether they are in receipt of certain benefits or a war pension. Those with cystic fibrosis or another long-term condition may therefore meet the eligibility criteria for prescription charge exemptions and be in receipt of free prescriptions.

To support those who do not qualify for an exemption of prescription charges, the cost of prescriptions can be capped by purchasing a prescription pre-payment certificate, which can be paid for in instalments. A holder of a 12-month certificate can get all the prescriptions they need for just over £2 per week.

Additionally, people on a low income who do not qualify for an exemption from prescription charges can also seek help under the NHS Low Income Service, which provides help with health costs on an income-related basis.

Provisional data from NHS England indicates that the opt-out testing programme has helped find more than 550 cases of undiagnosed or untreated human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and more than 1,900 cases of undiagnosed or untreated hepatitis during its first year. A 12-month public health evaluation report will be published by the UK Health Security Agency in October.

We will be assessing all this evidence alongside the data on progress towards our ambitions to end new HIV transmissions and AIDS- and HIV-related deaths within England by 2030 to decide whether we further expand the programme. We will be sharing evidence as it emerges to support other areas of the country to make the case for implementing the same approach locally.

Steel is vital to the UK, but we know that the industry needs to decarbonise for a sustainable future. The Paris agreement made it clear that the sector had to reduce its global emissions by 93% by 2050. The Government are actively engaging with the sector on

how best to achieve that, but decarbonisation pathways for specific sites will be commercial decisions for individual companies. Industrial sectors, including steel companies, can bid into Government funds worth hundreds of millions of pounds to help them go green. As I mentioned, we have done a huge amount to support energy intensive industries.

I am in constant conversations with specific companies to do with steel, including British Steel in my hon. Friend’s constituency, but of course those conversations are often commercially sensitive. I was delighted to speak at the event she hosted in Parliament to celebrate the launch of the Government’s updated steel procurement policy note, which will help to make opportunities more visible and maintain a level playing field for UK steel producers. In the financial year 2021-22, relevant public procurers bought around £365 million-worth of UK produced steel. Furthermore, the Government have provided around £730 million in energy costs relief to the sector since 2013.