The ‘Every child achieving and thriving’ White Paper establishes our plan to improve outcomes for all children across all constituencies. We recognise that poverty can have a significant impact on children's attainment and life chances, and tackling child poverty is central to the government's work to break down barriers to opportunity. When children born under this government finish secondary school, it is our ambition that the key stage 4 disadvantage gap will be halved.

The department’s approach is comprehensive and includes rebuilding early family support, improving teacher recruitment and retention so every child benefits from high-quality teaching, broadening the curriculum alongside access to high-quality enrichment, and launching two place-based missions to drive improvement in areas where outcomes remain stubbornly low.

The mean and median waiting time between a Personal Independence Payment (PIP) appeal being lodged and the Department submitting its response to HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS), for initial clearances and award review clearances in the calendar year 2025, was 5 weeks.

The Department does not hold data on when a tribunal hearing date is set. This information is in the domain of HMCTS.

We are increasing resources available for writing appeal responses by redeploying staff and making overtime available.

We are also looking to make appeal writing more efficient by improving the programme that decision makers use. The improved tool will integrate better with other DWP computer systems, which will make it faster and easier to use than the current process.

We will continue working to make the right decision as early as possible in the claim journey so people get the support they are entitled to without needing to appeal.

Since 15 May 2019 both members of a couple need to have reached State Pension age to be eligible for Pension Credit or pension-age Housing Benefit. Benefit support for couples where only one partner has reached State Pension age is provided through Universal Credit instead.

This change was made to ensure that the working age partner gets the right support and incentives to remain in contact with the labour market – and where appropriate moves into work – subject to their individual circumstances. No work-related conditionality applies to the pensioner partner.

This does not affect when the pension-age partner in a mixed-age couple can access their State Pension or eligibility for other benefits such as Attendance Allowance.

This Government has made supporting pensioners a priority, including by delivering a 4.8% increase to the State Pension this year. Pensioners on a low income may still qualify for help with their rent and Council Tax, and as of winter 2025/26, pensioners whose annual taxable income is at or below £35,000 will receive the Winter Fuel Payment. They may also benefit from free prescriptions and eye tests and free off-peak local bus travel. Further information on the help available can be found on: GOV.UK

We are committed to returning by March 2029 to the National Health Service constitutional standard that 92% of patients wait no longer than 18 weeks from referral to consultant-led treatment, across all specialties, including trauma and orthopaedics. In March 2026, we hit our first interim target of 65% performance against that standard.

In the last year, Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, the provider located in the Eastleigh constituency, has seen a 5.4% increase in the proportion of waits under 18 weeks and a 6.9% increase in trauma and orthopaedics, the specialism that covers joint replacement surgery.

The Department is taking a range of steps to reduce waiting times for surgery, including joint replacement surgery. There are currently 125 surgical hubs operational across England, and we are committed to expanding the number of hubs over the next three years to increase surgical capacity and deliver faster access to common procedures. In addition, the Getting it Right First Time (GIRFT) programme is supporting improvements by publishing detailed guidance for hip and knee replacements in June 2023 and leading a community musculoskeletal (MSK) programme to support improvements in the early stages of MSK pathways, so that only those who require surgery are referred into secondary care. Further information on the GIRFT programme is available at the following link:

https://gettingitrightfirsttime.co.uk/

The Home Office collects and publishes information on the number of vehicle offences recorded by the police in England and Wales. This information is published at Community Safety Partnership level, including Eastleigh.

The latest information, for the year ending December 2025, is available here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/police-recorded-crime-and-outcomes-open-data-tables#police-recorded-crime-open-data-community-safety-partnership-tables

The Government is cracking down on the brazen car thieves who use new technologies to commit their crimes.

In our Crime and Policing Act, we have brought forward two new offences to criminalise the possession, importation, making, adapting, supplying or offering to supply an electronic device (such as a signal jammer) for use in theft of a vehicle or theft of anything in a vehicle.

The Government provided funding to set up the National Vehicle Crime Reduction Partnership, a partnership of policing, industry and government aimed at combatting organised vehicle crime across the UK. The Government continues to support this work.

Since 2024, the Home Office has dedicated almost £1m (£970,000) to bolster the enforcement response to organised vehicle theft and export. This money, provided to the National Vehicle Crime Reduction Partnership (NVCRP), has supported enforcement work inland and at the ports to prevent and disrupt stolen vehicles and their parts being shipped abroad, including additional staff, police training, and specialist equipment.

The funding enabled Operation Alliances II, a national crackdown on organised vehicle crime, which brought together local and national policing, and key partners, including the National Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service (NaVCIS). In a coordinated week of action in October last year, over £3.3 million worth of stolen vehicles and over £13m worth of vehicle parts were recovered, and there were more than 365 arrests.

The Home Office is committing a further £300k this year toward tackling organised vehicle theft and export, to further strengthen these efforts and build on the progress already made.

School funding is increasing nationally by £1.7 billion in 2026/27, meaning that the core school budget will total £67 billion compared to £65.3 billion in 2025/26.

Southampton and Hampshire local authorities allocate school funding for the constituency of Eastleigh. Through the dedicated schools grant, Southampton is receiving £6,893 per pupil on average and Hampshire is receiving £6,354 per pupil on average in financial year 2026/27 (including premises and excluding growth). Total funding for mainstream schools is growing by £17 million in Hampshire in 2026/27, compared to 2025/26 (a 1.6% increase) and by £3.3 million in Southampton (a 1.5% increase).

We recognise the pressures caused by demographic changes in some areas. The lagged funding system, where schools are funded on the basis of their pupil numbers in the previous October census, helps to give schools more certainty over funding levels to aid their planning, and is particularly important in providing schools with falling pupil numbers, time to plan ahead with their budgets.

Data is available for emergency Finished Admission Episodes (FAEs) where there was a primary diagnosis of 'respiratory conditions’. The following table shows the number of FAEs where there was a primary diagnosis of 'respiratory conditions’ for Eastleigh and England, for activity in English National Health Service hospitals and English NHS commissioned activity in the independent sector, for 2024/25 and provisionally for 2025/26:

Source: Hospital Episode Statistics, NHS England

Available data on trends in respiratory conditions can be found on the Department’s Fingertips dataset. Data is not available by parliamentary constituency. Data is available at regional, county, unitary authority, and integrated care board level. Information for Eastleigh can be found at the following link:

https://fingertips.phe.org.uk/search/Respiratory#page/1/gid/1/pat/6/ati/501/are/E07000086/iid/40701/age/163/sex/4/cat/-1/ctp/-1/yrr/1/cid/4/tbm/1

The department has set a clear ambition for 70% of hubs to be in the 30% most disadvantaged areas. From April we will be rolling out hubs nationally meaning that they will be in every single local authority by 2028. We are setting a clear expectation that support to families and neighbourhoods under the greatest pressure should be prioritised. Councils know their communities best, and we will work closely with them to make sure this happens.

Provisional funding allocations were shared with Hampshire County Council for the programme during the 2026/29 financial years on 7 November 2025. Payments are subject to local authorities meeting the expectations of the programme.

“Freedom from Violence and Abuse: a cross-government strategy to build a safer society for women and girls” was published on 18th December 2025 and sets out the strategic direction and concrete actions to prevent violence and abuse, pursue perpetrators, and support victims, and to deliver our unprecedented commitment to halve VAWG in a decade. Commitments in the VAWG Strategy apply across England, including in the Eastleigh constituency.

The Strategy is backed by at least £1 billion funding across government over the spending review period. This is alongside much wider investment across the whole of government. Funding for VAWG related services is generally allocated at a national, regional, or local authority level rather than by parliamentary constituency. As such, the Home Office does not hold separate figures for Eastleigh constituency.

The headline metric we are using to measure progress against our ambition is through a combined estimate of the proportion of people aged 16 and over who have experienced any of domestic abuse, sexual assault, or stalking in the previous 12 months, based on the Crime Survey for England and Wales. We will track supporting headline metrics for female homicide, repeat domestic abuse, and the prevalence of sexual harassment, as well as a further set of sub-metrics to monitor progress across Government, which are detailed in the Strategy.

The special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) teacher training offer comprises an investment of over £200 million over the course of this Parliament. This significant investment, forms a central pillar of the government’s SEND reform plans, helping to secure a fairer system where effective support is available for every child with SEND from early years to the age of 25.

This training offer will be freely available to all leaders, teachers and teaching assistants working in schools, colleges, childminders and nurseries across England, including those in Eastleigh. Training packages will be developed with the needs of different educators and sectors in mind. Some training will be accessible at any time, while other elements may require registering with a provider. More details on how to access the different packages will be published on GOV.UK in due course.

Active Travel England (ATE) recognises that high‑quality active travel routes must be well-designed, well-lit and safe to support walking, wheeling and cycling.

On 10 December, the Department announced £626 million of multi-year capability funding to support active travel across England. As part of this allocation, Hampshire County Council, of which Eastleigh is a part, will receive £23,094,356 for the period 2026/27 to 2029/30. Local authorities may use this funding to plan and deliver well‑designed route layouts, appropriate and inclusive lighting, and safety improvements such as segregated cycle lanes.

ATE also provides technical support and guidance to ensure local authorities deliver high‑quality schemes. National guidance, including Local Transport Note 1/20: Cycle Infrastructure Design, Manual for Streets, and Inclusive Mobility, sets clear expectations for the design of safe and accessible cycling infrastructure.

I refer the hon. Member to the answer given to Question UIN 99477 on 19 December 2025.

The attached Excel Spreadsheet shows the (a) average and (b) longest waiting time in weeks at driving test centres (DTC) that serve the Eastleigh constituency, for the financial years 2015/16 to the financial year to date (YTD).

The 10-Year Health Plan sets out ambitious plans to boost mental health support across the country, including children and young people’s mental health services.

As prioritised in our Medium-Term Planning Framework, we are taking action to reduce the longest waits for specialist mental health support, tackling regional disparities, and expanding access, thereby making services more productive so children and young people spend less time waiting for the treatment they need.

We are also accelerating the rollout of Mental Health Support Teams in schools and colleges to reach full national coverage by 2029. As part of this, we are investing an additional £13 million to pilot enhanced training for staff so that they can offer more effective support to young people with complex needs, such as trauma, neurodivergence, and disordered eating. An additional 900,000 children and young people will have access by this spring, and this means that 60% of all pupils will have access to this early support at school, up from 44% in Spring 2024.

More widely, we are, rolling out Young Futures Hubs. The Government’s first 50 Young Futures Hubs will bring together services at a local level to support children and young people, helping to ensure that young people can access early advice and wellbeing intervention. We will work to ensure there is no wrong door for young people who need support with their mental health.

Through measures in the 10-Year Health Plan, we are equipping and supporting carers by making them more visible, empowering their voices in care planning, joining up services, and streamlining their caring tasks by introducing a new ‘MyCarer’ section to the NHS App.

NHS England is supporting the identification of young carers and has recently published guidance for general practitioners. NHS England is also utilising data to help support greater join-up between health, education, and social care.

Every community deserves visible, pro-active and accessible neighbourhood policing with officers tackling the issues that matter to them. That is why £200 million has been made available in 2025/26 to support the first steps towards delivering 13,000 more neighbourhood policing personnel by the end of this Parliament. Of the £200 million available, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary were allocated £5,187,776 with a projected growth of 65 FTE neighbourhood police officers in 2025/26.

Published management information shows as at 30 September 2025, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary have grown by 99 FTE neighbourhood policing officers since March 2025. It is important that forces continue to boost visible policing and ensure the workforce is shaped to meet modern crime demands.

The Government is committed to tackling the poor state of our roads which is why it has confirmed a record £7.3 billion investment into local highways maintenance over the next four years. This new, four-year funding settlement is in addition to the Government’s investment of £1.6 billion this year, a £500 million increase compared to last year.

The Eastleigh constituency’s local highway authority is Hampshire, who will be eligible to receive over £266 million in highways maintenance funding over the next four years.

Furthermore, the Department published a new traffic light rating system on 11 January. Under this system, all local highway authorities in England received a red, amber or green rating based on the condition of their roads, how much they spend to maintain their roads, and whether they do so using best practice. The Department has also published an interactive map which means residents can see how their authority is performing and allow the Government to target support to those who need extra help. Hampshire received an overall amber rating, with individual scorecards showing green for condition, amber for spend and amber for best practice.

All women born since 6 April 1950 have been affected by changes to State Pension age.

Estimates can be made using ONS 2021 Census Data on how many women born in the 1950s resided in each constituency in that year.

As of 30 November 2025, the median number of full time equivalent (FTE) doctors in general practice per 10,000 registered patients was 5.9 in the Eastleigh constituency. The England median was 5.6 FTE.

The Department has made no assessment of the adequacy of access to children and adolescent mental health services for children in the Eastleigh constituency.

The 10-Year Health Plan sets out ambitious plans to boost mental health support across the country, including children and young people’s mental health services in the Eastleigh constituency.

As prioritised in our Medium-Term Planning Framework, we are taking action to reduce the longest waits for specialist mental health support, tackling regional disparities, and expanding access, thereby making services more productive so children and young people spend less time waiting for the treatment they need.

We are also accelerating the rollout of Mental Health Support Teams in schools and colleges to reach full national coverage by 2029. As part of this, we are investing an additional £13 million to pilot enhanced training for staff so that they can offer more effective support to young people with complex needs, such as trauma, neurodivergence and disordered eating. With an additional 900,000 children and young people having access by this spring, 60% of all pupils will have access to this early support at school, up from 44% in spring 2024.

More widely, we are, rolling out Young Futures Hubs. The Government’s first 50 Young Futures Hubs will bring together services at a local level to support children and young people, helping to ensure that young people can access early advice and wellbeing intervention. We will work to ensure there is no wrong door for young people who need support with their mental health.