The Department is already taking steps to reduce cancer treatment waiting times across England. Reducing the time between an urgent general practitioner referral and the commencement of treatment for cancer for patients is a priority for this Government. The Department is working jointly with NHS England on implementing the ‘Delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlogs in elective care’. The Government plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to help drive up and protect elective activity, including cancer diagnosis and treatment activity.

In the 2023/24 Operational Planning Guidance, NHS England announced that it is providing over £390 million in cancer service development funding to Cancer Alliances in each of the next two years to support delivery of the strategy and the operational priorities for cancer, which includes increasing and prioritising diagnostic and treatment capacity for cancer.

Additionally, the Government recently published the ‘Major conditions strategy: case for change and our strategic framework’ on 14 August 2023, which sets out our approach to making the choices over the next five years that will deliver the most value in facing the health challenges of today and of the decades ahead, including cancer.

The Department does not hold information on Tuition Partners or Academic Mentors in the required format at constituency level.

School-led tutoring grant allocations by school and local authority for the academic year 2021 to 2022 have been published at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1071234/School_Led_Funding_Publication_File_flat_values_v1.ods

Payment information relating to School-Led Tutoring for the academic year 2021 to 2022 will be published by the Education and Skills Funding Agency once the reconciliation process has been completed for that period.

School-led tutoring grant allocations for the academic year 2022 to 2023 have been published at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/national-tutoring-programme-ntp-allocations-for-2022-to-2023-academic-year.

Between November 2020 and June 2022, over two million tuition courses were started. The Government has committed more than £1 billion to support tutoring over academic years 2020 to 2023/24, during which we aim to offer up to six million tutoring courses.

In September 2013 there were 23 practices registered in Blackburn, with 18 practices registered in September 2022.

Practices close for a variety of reasons, including practice mergers or retirement. A reduction in practice numbers does not mean a reduction in the quality of care. When a practice does close, patients are informed and advised to register at another local practice of their choice. Practices and commissioners must put in place appropriate measures to ensure that the affected patients have access to general practice services.

The information is not held in the format requested.

The Department has commissioned NHS England to develop a long-term workforce plan. The plan will consider the number of staff and the roles required and will set out the actions and reforms needed to improve workforce supply and retention, including in Blackburn.

We are working with NHS England, Health Education England and the profession to increase the general practice workforce in England, including in Blackburn. This includes measures to improve recruitment, address the reasons why doctors leave the profession and encourage them to return to practice.

The updated GP Contract Framework announced a number of new schemes, alongside continued support for existing recruitment and retention schemes for the general practice workforce. This includes the GP Retention Scheme, the GP Retention Fund, the National GP Induction and Refresher, the Locum Support Scheme, the New to Partnership Payment and the Supporting Mentors Scheme. General practitioners in Lancashire and South Cumbria also have access to the national GP Career Support Hub. It provides information, guidance and support on career development, learning, mentoring, appraisals, career options and flexibility, wellbeing, pay and pensions.

The information requested is not held centrally.

The Government is conscious of the impact of fuel prices on household finances across the country.

That is why we have kept fuel duty frozen. This is the twelfth consecutive freeze, saving the average UK car driver a cumulative £1,900, compared to the plans set out by the previous government in 2010.

I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on 19^th January to question number 104377.

The Home Office publishes information on the number hate crime offences recorded by the police by monitored strand, including racial hate crime, in England and Wales at the Police Force Area level. The latest data, including figures for Lancashire, are available here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hate-crime-england-and-wales-2019-to-2020

The hate crime collection was expanded on April 2021 to include information on the ethnicity of racially motivated offences. These data will be published in due course.

The Government is committed to levelling up digital connectivity across the country, including by delivering a minimum of 85% gigabit-capable broadband coverage by 2025.

We are proud to work closely with the telecoms sector in achieving this goal and Ministers regularly support relevant industry announcements, such as the launch of IX Wireless’ broadband network in June. Other recent examples include my visit on 7 July to Dorset with Excelerate Technology and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to an Openreach facility in May.

This event was handled by the departmental officials in the usual way.

Effective local management of outbreaks is the first line of protection against a second wave that might overwhelm the National Health Service.

In this case, Blackburn suffered the highest incidence rates of all districts in Lancashire for three consecutive weeks between 13 July and 2 August. Incidents rates per 100,000 population rose from 83.25 and peaked at 91.98 before falling to 74.53 by 2 August once local resources were augmented with national support.

When considering whether an area can come out of a localised lockdown, there will need to be a reduction in cases consistent with the surrounding areas and a significantly diminished risk of further growth. We are keeping these restrictions under review and they will be removed when they are no longer proportionate or necessary. These decisions are made on a case-by-case basis with involvement of the scientific community and local leaders.

Kate Hollern (Blackburn) (Lab):

Having used the coronavirus testing kit produced by Randox, which was awarded a £133 million contract by the Government, care homes in Blackburn were told that the kits were unsafe and re-tests should be carried out. As the Secretary of State knows, people in Blackburn have worked extremely hard to get the virus rates down. However, when care homes asked for replacement kits, they were informed that they had already received their quota and that no kits would be available until September. On the one hand the Government are

saying, “Don’t use the kits” and on the other hand they are saying, “We have no kits to replace them with.” When will the Government reassure care homes in Blackburn that they will receive test kits regularly and, more importantly at this stage, the rapid results of those tests?

In response to the last point, the turnaround time for test results is now the next day for almost every one. However, there has been a challenge, referred to just now and in a previous question, with the Randox kits. The test results from the Randox kits that were withdrawn were accurate. The challenge was that the Randox kits did not pass our very high and stringent standards; essentially they were not as clean as we would have wanted. I am informed by the clinicians that there is no evidence of any health threat from that, but of course we have to make sure that we protect people as much as possible. Hence, we had to withdraw the kits. As I said, we have a catch-up programme that is under way.

It is not possible to provide the number of individuals who arrived as part of the Windrush generation who may have resided in the Blackburn constituency and have been removed.

The Department has been carrying out a review of all cases of Caribbean Commonwealth nationality, born before 1 January 1973, who have been removed and/or detained by the Home Office since 2002 (when the Casework Information Database (CID) was available across the immigration system) and sought to identify any individuals where there was an indication in the record that the individual could have been in the UK before 1973.

The Home Secretary wrote to the Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee on 21st August to provide an update on this work.

A copy of this letter has been deposited in the House Library. This work is ongoing and the Home Secretary has committed to regularly updating the Home Affairs Select Committee on progress.

Buses play an essential role in connecting us to friends and family as well as to vital public services. Where there is not enough demand for a bus route to be commercially viable in its own right, all local authorities have powers to subsidise bus services which they consider socially necessary.

I fully appreciate that local authorities are making difficult choices as a result of ongoing financial pressures. Those authorities are best placed to decide how to provide supported bus services - reflecting local needs and within available budgets.

The Bus Services Act 2017 provides the tools local authorities need to improve local bus services. We are working with interested local authorities to determine which of the powers provided are best able to support bus networks in their areas.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) regularly publishes National Referral Mechanism data but does not collect data by specific location.

Data on the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) are available via the following link: http://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/publications/national-referral-mechanism-statistics

There has been a rise in the number of households in temporary accommodation for a variety of complex reasons. The number of households in temporary accommodation varies across the country as there are different issues in different areas, e.g. affordability pressure in London and the South East.

England has a strong homelessness safety net, providing protection to the most vulnerable in our society. Time spent in temporary accommodation means people are getting help and it ensures no child or family is without a roof over their head.

Successful homelessness prevention and relief has risen by 30 per cent between 2009/10 and 2016/17. However, the Government remains clear that one person without a home is one too many. We are committed to doing more to prevent people becoming homeless in the first place.

That’s why we have implemented the most ambitious legislative reform in decades, the Homelessness Reduction Act.

We have also committed £1.2 billion to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping including:

· £316 million of core funding for local authorities to prevent homelessness.

· £617 million in Flexible Homelessness Support Grant which local authorities can use strategically to prevent and tackle homelessness in their area;

· £72.7 million to support the implementation of the Homelessness Reduction Act;

· £20m Access to the Private Rented Sector Fund to increase access and sustainment of tenancies for those who are, or at risk of becoming homeless; and

· our £50 million to support 84 projects delivering an end-to-end approach to homelessness prevention.

MHCLG publishes regular statistics on temporary accommodation, rough sleeping, statutory homelessness and homelessness prevention and relief in England. These are published at a local authority level. The latest statistics can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/homelessness-statistics

There has been a rise in the number of households in temporary accommodation for a variety of complex reasons. The number of households in temporary accommodation varies across the country as there are different issues in different areas, e.g. affordability pressure in London and the South East.

England has a strong homelessness safety net, providing protection to the most vulnerable in our society. Time spent in temporary accommodation means people are getting help and it ensures no child or family is without a roof over their head.

Successful homelessness prevention and relief has risen by 30 per cent between 2009/10 and 2016/17. However, the Government remains clear that one person without a home is one too many. We are committed to doing more to prevent people becoming homeless in the first place.

That’s why we have implemented the most ambitious legislative reform in decades, the Homelessness Reduction Act.

We have also committed £1.2 billion to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping including:

· £316 million of core funding for local authorities to prevent homelessness.

· £617 million in Flexible Homelessness Support Grant which local authorities can use strategically to prevent and tackle homelessness in their area;

· £72.7 million to support the implementation of the Homelessness Reduction Act;

· £20m Access to the Private Rented Sector Fund to increase access and sustainment of tenancies for those who are, or at risk of becoming homeless; and

· our £50 million to support 84 projects delivering an end-to-end approach to homelessness prevention.

MHCLG publishes regular statistics on temporary accommodation, rough sleeping, statutory homelessness and homelessness prevention and relief in England. These are published at a local authority level. The latest statistics can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/homelessness-statistics

The available information on applications and outcomes (i.e. grants, refusals, withdrawn and lapsed cases) of entry clearance visas in the ‘Tier 2 & pre-PBS equivalent’ category are published quarterly in ‘Immigration Statistics’, Visas data tables volume 1, table vi_01_q, latest edition at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-statistics-year-ending-march-2018/list-of-tables#visas.

Neither a breakdown by profession, or applications and outcomes by region of employment, is available in the published entry clearance visas data.