The department is committed to ensuring all young people across England can access a wide range of enrichment opportunities at school and college, as part of our mission to break down barriers to opportunity.

In the ‘Every Child Achieving and Thriving’ White Paper, we set out our ambition to introduce an enrichment entitlement for every pupil, underpinned by a core enrichment offer that every school and college should aim to provide.

This is supported by a new Enrichment Framework, published on Monday 15 June, setting out benchmarks, case studies and practical tools to help schools plan high-quality enrichment more strategically. The ‘Every Child Can’ programme, funded through the Dormant Assets Scheme, will deliver £132.5 million for new activities programmes delivered through schools, community programmes, weekend activities and holiday provision. It is structured around the same five categories as the Enrichment Framework.

We are also putting in place support for wider provision, including through PE and School Sport Partnerships, Music Hubs, and the £22.5 million Enrichment Expansion Programme, delivered with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, supporting up to 400 schools in the most deprived areas of England to meet these benchmarks.

We will be assessing options for Bradford-Manchester connections as part of the work done for the Northern Powerhouse Rail Programme on the Bradford station business case.

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Harpreet Uppal (Huddersfield) (Lab):

Huddersfield contemporary music festival is the UK’s largest international festival dedicated to new music, and the programme this year has more than 30 world and UK premieres. Will the Minister join me in paying tribute to this festival, which brings national and international musicians to Huddersfield every November, and will he set out what the Government are doing to ensure we invest in culture in towns like mine?

I highly commend the festival in Huddersfield. As an Edinburgh MP who is always championing festivals, the more music festivals and other arts festivals we have across the country, the better. I encourage everyone to go.

Local councils are usually best placed to tackle fly-tipping in their areas, and they have a range of enforcement powers to help them do so. These include fixed penalty notices of up to £1000, seizing and crushing of vehicles and prosecution action. We encourage councils to make good use of their enforcement powers and are taking steps to develop statutory fly-tipping enforcement guidance to support councils to consistently, appropriately and effectively exercise these existing powers. We have also announced a review of council powers to seize and crush vehicles of fly-tippers, to identify how we could help them make better use of this tool.

In our manifesto we committed to forcing fly-tippers to clean up the mess that they have created. We will provide further details on this commitment in due course.

In the meantime, Defra continue to chair the National Fly-Tipping Prevention Group through which we work with a wide range of stakeholders, such as local authorities and the National Farmers Union, to share good practice on preventing fly-tipping, including on private land. Various practical tools are available from their webpage which is available at: https://nftpg.com/.

We are committed to improving public transport and delivering a transport system that works better for people across the country, enables growth and provides access to opportunities.

To support this, we are providing significant investment to West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) including £2.1bn of Transport for City Regions (TCR) funding. This is in addition to the £830m allocated to WYCA through the City Region Sustainable Transport Settlements (CRSTS), some of which is expected to support the development of transport improvements in Huddersfield town centre, including enhancements to active travel routes and upgrades to Huddersfield Bus Station.

At the recent Spending Review, we provided further commitment to the Transpennine Route Upgrade (TRU) which will deliver improvements to rail journeys between Manchester and York, via Huddersfield and Leeds and will provide significant investment at Huddersfield station.

We have also brought forward the Bus Services (No.2) Bill, which will put the power over local bus services back in the hands of local leaders and is intended to ensure bus services reflect the needs of the communities that rely on them, including in Huddersfield.

In addition, we will be publishing an Integrated National Transport Strategy later this year, which will put people and the journeys they make at the heart of how we plan, build and operate transport.

Green skills are crucial to economic growth and the government’s net zero by 2050 target. Clean energy industries have been identified as a priority sector in the Industrial Strategy, alongside other sectors fundamental to clean energy like advanced manufacturing.

Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs) are employer-led plans setting out priorities to better meet local skills needs. LSIPs must consider the skills needed to meet net zero, climate adaptation, and wider environmental goals. The West Yorkshire LSIP identifies clean energy and green construction as priority sectors. West Yorkshire’s Local Growth Plan reinforces the green economy as a local priority, embedding sustainability as a core principle and setting out actions to achieve net zero.

The government will set out a comprehensive strategy for post-16 education and skills later this year, including steps to strengthen the skills pipeline in key sectors. The strategy will set out how the skills system will support the delivery of the Plan for Change.

As part of our plan to Get Britain Working, the government will launch a new Youth Guarantee for young people aged 18 to 21 in England to ensure that they are supported to access high quality training opportunities, an apprenticeship or help to find work.

This is alongside the launch of Skills England, which will support skills training opportunities for young people, and local skills improvement plans which bring employers, providers and local leaders together to collaboratively identify and address skills needs of local areas.

The government supports colleges to provide skills training, including through over £7.5 billion of 16 to 19 programme funding which will be invested during the 2024/25 academic year to ensure young people are developing the skills they need to succeed in work and in life.

The government is working with universities on access and participation and we will support the aspiration of every person who meets the requirements and wants to go to university, regardless of their background, where they live and their personal circumstances.

We are also widening the apprenticeships offer into a growth and skills offer which will include new foundation apprenticeships, giving more young people a foot in the door at the start of their working lives.

Local authorities have a range of enforcement powers to tackle fly-tipping and littering. These include fixed penalty notices of up to £1000 for fly-tipping and £500 for littering, and prosecution action which can lead to significant fine or even imprisonment and vehicle seizure. We encourage councils to make good use of these powers and we are taking steps to develop statutory fly-tipping enforcement guidance to support local authorities to consistently and effectively exercise these existing powers.

We have also announced a review of their powers to seize and crush vehicles of suspected fly-tippers to identify how we could help councils make better use of this tool.

We are also committed to forcing fly-tippers to clean up the mess that they have created as part of a crackdown on anti-social behaviour.

Additionally, we will move the regulation of waste carriers, brokers and dealers from light-touch registration into environmental permitting. This will enhance the Envrionment Agency’s ability to take action in this area and make it harder for rogue operators to operate. Penalties set out in the Environmental Protection Act 1990, such as prison sentences of up to 5 years, will also become applicable to breaches of the new regulations.

As part of our Plan for Change, the Safer Streets Mission is driving work across Government to divert young people away from crime.

To this end the Government has committed to the creation of a Young Futures Programme jointly led by the Home Office and Department for Education. Under this programme the Government will intervene earlier to ensure children and young people who are facing poorer outcomes and are vulnerable to being drawn into crime are identified and offered support in a more systematic way. The programme also aims to create more support and opportunities for them in their communities.

As we continue to design the Young Futures Programme, we want to ensure that it learns from and builds on the work of the Violence Reduction Units (VRUs) in this regard. In 2025/26 we are investing £47m via the Home Office in core grant funding to VRUs, including making over £4.3m available to the West Yorkshire VRU this year. This funding will support delivery of a range of early intervention and prevention programmes to divert young people away from crime.

In addition, the Serious Violence Duty requires a range of specified authorities, such as, the police, local government, youth offending teams, fire, health, and probation services, to work collaboratively, analyse the local problem, and put in place a strategy to prevent and reduce serious violence within their local communities. In 2025/26, the Government has allocated £14.4m to continue the implementation and delivery of this Duty across all 43 police force areas in England and Wales. This includes £162k for West Yorkshire.

The Government is taking steps to boost investment and improve connectivity in transport as part of its commitment to driving economic growth in all parts of the UK.

West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) has been allocated £830m through the City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement (CRSTS), a five-year £5.7bn government investment to improve the transport networks across eight city regions in England from 2022/23 to 2026/27. As part of this, funding is expected to support transport improvements in Huddersfield town centre, including enhancements to active travel routes on key approaches and upgrades to Huddersfield Bus Station.

While these schemes are in development, it a decision for WYCA whether they will progress to construction.

Future funding beyond 2025-26 will be reviewed in the spring multi-year spending review, aligning with the Integrated National Transport Strategy for long-term interests.

The Transpennine Route Upgrade (TRU) will deliver faster, greener and more reliable rail journeys, better connecting key northern cities including Manchester to York via Huddersfield and Leeds, transporting people to work, education and leisure opportunities whilst supporting economic growth. TRU will provide an additional two platforms at Huddersfield and extend existing ones to increase capacity, as well as installing a new footbridge and lifts to improve accessibility.

We know that too many children and young people, including those with special educational needs and disabilities, are not receiving the mental health care they need, and that waits for mental health services are too long across England, including in Huddersfield. We are determined to change that.

As part of our mission to build a National Health Service that is fit for the future, we will provide access to a specialist mental health professional in every school in England, introduce open access Young Futures hubs in communities, and recruit an additional 8,500 mental health workers to cut wait times and provide faster treatment.

The Government’s priority is to keep our streets safe and to crack down on the serious and violent crime that unfortunately plagues far too many communities right across the country. As well as committing to more police officers and police community support officers on our streets, we have taken swift action to tackle knife crime by creating new offences and penalties to deter the possession and sale of these barbaric weapons. Our flagship Crime and Policing Bill will go even further with the biggest package of measures on crime and policing for decades.

What steps she is taking to help ensure the effective prosecution of serious and violent crime in Huddersfield.

I know my hon. Friend has raised those important issues on the Floor of the House previously. I also know how hard she is working to ensure the safety of residents in her area.

Too many town centres and high streets are plagued by antisocial behaviour and shoplifting. Those crimes are too often dismissed as low-level, but communities have to deal with the consequences. This Government are taking action: we are putting an additional 13,000 police and PCSOs on our streets and introducing respect orders to ensure that disruptive antisocial behaviour is eradicated from our town centres. I have been visiting local CPS units around the country and have seen at first hand their hard work to ensure that crimes are successfully prosecuted and that perpetrators are put behind bars.

Making sure that town centres such as Huddersfield’s are safe and thriving is important to our residents, local businesses and the night-time economy. How is the Solicitor General ensuring that the CPS works effectively with local law enforcement to bring offenders to justice and make our residents feel safe in our towns?

Madam Deputy Speaker, you will not be surprised to hear that I completely reject the allegation of Government secrecy. Certainly, when it comes to Southport, those murders were some of the most harrowing in our country’s history and it was absolutely right that due process was followed to allow for the successful conviction. It was vital that justice was done in those cases.

The shadow Solicitor General will know that there are issues around contempt, which the Law Commission is looking at. The Law Commission has agreed to a request from the Home Secretary to speed up that review and it is vital that we get the results of that review as soon as possible.