The relevant legislation provides that all eligible members of the firefighters’ pension scheme will be given a choice to remedy the discrimination set out in the McCloud/Sargeant judgment and that information should be provided to eligible members by 1 April 2025.

Adjustments to individual members’ benefits are an administrative matter and the Firefighters’ pension scheme is locally administered by each of the separate Fire and Rescue Authorities in England. The Home Office does not have a role in the administrative processes and does not hold information on administrative processes in Fire and Rescue Authorities.

Modernising Support for Independent Living: The Health and Disability Green Paper looks at different options to reshape the current welfare system so that we can provide better targeted support to those who need it most. We are considering these options through our 12-week consultation which was published on Monday 29 April and will close on Monday 22 July at 11:59pm. Any possible impacts on people living with cancer and people living with the long-term side effects of cancer treatment will be considered as necessary.

There will be no immediate changes to PIP, or to health assessments. All scheduled PIP assessments and payments will proceed as normal, and claimants should continue to engage as usual and provide any necessary information or updates regarding their circumstances.

We encourage everyone to respond to the consultation which can be found here, so that we are able to hear from as many disabled people, people with health conditions, their representatives, and local stakeholders as possible on these important issues.

The Department is currently exploring opportunities for national campaigns to support positive outcomes on women’s health. Work is underway to scope the feasibility of running a national campaign to support breast screening uptake, and this will be informed by pilot activity due to run in London in 2024/25.

The Department is committed to improving uptake in the NHS Breast Screening Programme. NHS England has commissioned evaluative projects to look at ways to improve uptake, and to understand why women may not attend breast screening. These include: actively following up with women who have missed an appointment or not engaged with the service; looking at the reasons why women do not attend screenings, to address any barriers; and assessing the impact on screening uptake using different invitation methodologies with reference to factors such as age, previous screening history, including attendance at first invitation and subsequent invites, and deprivation. These projects are expected to report by April 2024.

In the development of the Major Conditions Strategy, we are considering how we improve outcomes for people in this country living with multiple conditions. Aligning work across several groups of conditions including cancer for this strategy, will allow us to focus on where there are similarities in approach and ensure care is better centred around the patient, maximising existing resources both within patient pathways and in integrating between pathways.

Improving early diagnosis of cancer, including breast cancer, is a priority for the Government. The National Health Service has an ambition to diagnose 75% of cancers at stage 1 or 2 by 2028, which will help tens of thousands of people live for longer. We know that breast cancer remains the most common cancer in England, with over 49,000 people being diagnosed each year. Thanks to advances in screening, treatment, and care, alongside NHS awareness campaigns, more women are surviving the disease than ever before.

The NHS Cancer Programme has also commissioned five new cancer clinical audits, including primary and metastatic breast cancers. These will provide timely evidence for cancer service providers of where patterns of care in England may vary, will increase the consistency of access to treatments, and help stimulate improvements in cancer treatment and outcomes for patients.

The Government has invested £10 million of funding for the breast screening programme, which provided 28 new breast screening units and nearly 60 upgrades, to be targeted at areas with the greatest challenges of uptake and coverage. NHS England has developed a national plan in collaboration with key stakeholders, to improve uptake within the breast screening programme.

In the East of England, NHS England will work with the Breast Screening Service and the Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care Board to undertake a gap analysis and prioritise actions, and to look at options to increase its resilience by working with other local providers as a network.

The Government remains fully committed to tackling all cancer types by investing in cutting-edge research. UK Research and Innovation invests around £200 million annually into cancer research, whilst the National Institute for Health and Care Research invested almost £122 million in 2022/23.

The Government’s Healthcare Cancer Mission is being jointly delivered by Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. Backed by £22.5 million, it supports the development of new immune-based cancer therapies targeted to a patient’s specific cancer and technologies that enable earlier, more effective cancer diagnosis to improve survival rates.

The Government is working hard to improve outcomes for all cancer patients through research, including those with less survivable cancers. In addition to hundreds of millions of cancer research funding annually, the Government demonstrated its commitment through the launch of the Healthcare Cancer Mission, bringing together Government, NHS, industry and charities to tackle cancer. The Mission aims to make the UK a leading testbed for oncology innovation by accelerating the development and commercialisation of a new generation of cancer diagnostics and therapeutics, allowing patients to be diagnosed earlier (key to better outcomes for UK patients) and offered therapies specifically targeting their cancer.

The Government is taking steps through NHS England to improve outcomes for cancer patients, including those cancers mentioned by the Less Survivable Cancer Taskforce, namely lung, liver, brain, oesophageal, pancreatic and stomach. Diagnostic checks are a key part of cancer pathways and the 150 community diagnostic centres (CDCs) opened by the Government will give earlier diagnostic tests, benefitting millions of patients including those who are referred with suspected less survivable cancers. National Health Service systems have been asked to prioritise CDC capacity towards their most challenged cancer pathways, where this is clinically appropriate, and these centres have delivered over six million additional tests for all elective activity since July 2021. The CDC programme is on track to meet its target to open up to 160 CDCs by March 2025, with many due to open ahead of schedule.

In November 2022, the NHS also announced an expansion of direct access to diagnostic scans across all general practices, to help cut waiting times and speeding up cancer diagnosis, or all-clear for patients. The NHS is now looking to widen the clinical pathways for which this is offered.

Making improvements across different cancer types is critical to helping achieve the NHS Long Term Plan ambition of diagnosing 75% of patients at an early stage by 2028 and reducing inequalities in cancer survival. NHS England has commissioned new cancer clinical audits covering six cancer types, some of which are less survivable: pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, kidney cancer and primary and metastatic breast cancer. All six audits will cover care delivered in England and Wales.

Cancer is being diagnosed at earlier stages, more often, with survival rates improving across almost all types of cancer with the National Health Service seeing and treating record numbers of cancer patients over the last two years.

The planned Major Conditions Strategy will look at the early diagnosis and treatment of cancer. The strategy will look at a wide range of interventions and enablers to improve outcomes and experience for a range of cancer patients, including those less survivable cancers. We have already acted upon some of the areas that the 2020 Less Survivable Cancer Taskforce report requested, for example the introduction of targeted lung health checks, trials for cytosponge, and the roll out of non-specific symptom pathways. The report is available at the following link:

https://lesssurvivablecancers.org.uk/our-asks/

Cancer is being diagnosed at earlier stages, more often, with survival rates improving across almost all types of cancer with the National Health Service seeing and treating record numbers of cancer patients over the last two years.

The planned Major Conditions Strategy will look at the early diagnosis and treatment of cancer. The strategy will look at a wide range of interventions and enablers to improve outcomes and experience for a range of cancer patients, including those less survivable cancers. We have already acted upon some of the areas that the 2020 Less Survivable Cancer Taskforce report requested, for example the introduction of targeted lung health checks, trials for cytosponge, and the roll out of non-specific symptom pathways. The report is available at the following link:

https://lesssurvivablecancers.org.uk/our-asks/

Cancer is being diagnosed at earlier stages, more often, with survival rates improving across almost all types of cancer with the National Health Service seeing and treating record numbers of cancer patients over the last two years.

The planned Major Conditions Strategy will look at the early diagnosis and treatment of cancer. The strategy will look at a wide range of interventions and enablers to improve outcomes and experience for a range of cancer patients, including those less survivable cancers. We have already acted upon some of the areas that the 2020 Less Survivable Cancer Taskforce report requested, for example the introduction of targeted lung health checks, trials for cytosponge, and the roll out of non-specific symptom pathways. The report is available at the following link:

https://lesssurvivablecancers.org.uk/our-asks/

We are working extensively across Government to ensure we are ready to rapidly respond to any threats to our democratic processes, through our Defending Democracy Taskforce and dedicated government teams. The threat to democracy from AI was discussed at the AI Safety Summit in November 2023, reinforcing the Government’s commitment to international collaboration on this issue.

The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology works closely with social media platforms to encourage them to put in place policies that are fit for purpose, consistently enforced, and respect freedom of expression. Implementation of the Online Safety Act will make a significant difference here.

NHS England provided guidance for integrated care boards (ICBs) that requires dental allocations to be ringfenced in 2023/24, with any unused resources re-directed to improve National Health Service dental access in the first instance and not spent on other services. In November 2023, NHS England confirmed that where ICBs had not spent all of their allocation on improving access to dentistry, they would be able to retain any underspend and use this to balance their bottom line and any other pressures. ICBs will decide how to use any forecast underspend in line with this guidance. We are currently considering arrangements for 2024/25.

There are no current estimates of how much dental ringfence NHS dental funding has been used to support costs associated with strike action. NHS England has issued additional funding to systems of £800 million so far in this financial year to directly cover the costs of strikes.

The Defending Democracy Taskforce seeks to protect the democratic integrity of the UK from the threats of foreign interference working across government and with operational partners, including Counter Terrorism Policing as a standing Taskforce member.

The National Police Chiefs’ Council has a national portfolio lead for policing of elections. This role is currently held by Assistant Commissioner Nik Adams of the City of London Police.

The National Police Operations Centre (NPoCC) are coordinating national planning for policing relating to the elections. This work is bringing together regional representatives from police forces to ensure efficient and effective national coordination for the preparation, planning and delivery of policing responses to elections in the UK.

The Home Office is working at pace to mitigate the risks and take advantage of the potential opportunities from Frontier AI, working closely with cross-cutting AI safety and risk teams in Whitehall. The department worked with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) to ensure the PM’s AI Safety Summit was a success, including running side events on fraud and preventing child sexual exploitation. We continue to actively engage technology companies and ensure AI related concerns are worked through in policy areas.

The Defending Democracy Taskforce, led by the Security Minister, is also engaging across government and with Parliament, the UK’s intelligence community, the devolved governments, local authorities, the private sector, and civil society on the full range of threats facing our democratic institutions. This includes close working with DSIT on the threats from AI enabled election interference and the development of mitigations. The Joint Election Security & Preparedness Unit (Joint Cabinet Office and Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities) is leading on mitigating election security risks.

The Electoral Commission does not have a role in regulating the use of artificial intelligence in campaigning nor does it have a role in regulating political debate. The AI Regulation White Paper, published in March 2023, set out our first steps towards establishing a regulatory framework for AI. Since then, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology have been setting up central risk assessment and monitoring activities and working with regulators to ensure they are responding to AI risks within their remits.

Digitally manipulated content can pose a severe threat to democratic processes, so we take this very seriously. We are working extensively across Government and in the Defending Democracy Taskforce to ensure we are ready to respond to any threats to our democratic processes. The Government keeps the regulatory framework under review and remains committed to ensuring elections are secure and fit for the modern age.

We are establishing a governance structure to work with the Office for Students and key stakeholders to develop a methodology for allocating dental undergraduate student expansion, focussing on areas that have dental workforce challenges and aligning the methodology principles to that being developed for medical expansion.

Work is already underway for each of the 30 measures in “The Plan for Drivers”, with many expected to be completed by summer 2024.

Among the actions on smoother journeys that we expect to take in the next couple of months are to publish refreshed guidance on making better use of bus lanes and smarter road closures, and to launch public consultations on fixing roads faster and encouraging efficient street works. In addition, the Live Labs 2 programme is in place and will continue through to May 2031.

Each of the 30 measures in “The Plan for Drivers” is being implemented on its own timescale according to what action is required, for example the launch of a public consultation, publication of revised guidance, or procurement of a supplier.