For a Certificate of Exemption to remain valid, owners must arrange to have their XL Bully dog neutered and to provide evidence of this to Defra by set deadlines. These deadlines are 30 June 2024 if the dog was 12 months or older on 31 January 2024, 31 December 2024 if the dog was at least 7 months old, but less than 12 months old on 31 January 2024, and 30 June 2025 if the dog was younger than 7 months on 31 January 2024.

Owners who no longer think that their dog is an XL Bully will be able to ask Defra to withdraw their certificate of exemption. Defra will provide more information about how to do this soon.

Local authorities provide support to certain children and young people with special educational needs (SEN) through Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans. A local authority may choose, where statutory criteria are met, to make an ‘Education Otherwise than in School’ arrangement, whereby the child or young person with the EHC plan receives special educational support outside of a school or college.

The department are taking steps to improve the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system. There are measures in place for the department to support and challenge local authorities to improve their practice. Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission commenced a strengthened local inspection framework in January 2023. Where local authorities are failing, the department works with them, using a range of improvement programmes and SEND specialist advisers to address weaknesses. Inspections under this new framework will place greater emphasis on the outcomes that are being achieved for children and young people with SEND, including those who are autistic.

More generally, as part of the department’s support for autistic young people, the department worked closely with the Department of Health and Social Care to develop a refreshed cross-government Autism Strategy. This was published in July 2021 and includes children and young people. The strategy recognised the progress that has been made, as well as the challenges and priorities for reducing inequalities, and enabling autistic people of all ages to have the same opportunities as everyone else to lead healthy, happy and fulfilling lives. The national strategy sets out the department’s vision to make life fundamentally better for autistic people, their families and carers by 2026.

National Highways are responsible for managing and improving England’s motorways and major A roads, known as the strategic road network. National Highways use a range of measures to reduce the impact of noise on their roads including using low-noise surfacing for road surfaces, installing noise barriers where suitable, and delivering noise insulation packages. National Highways recognise that there are opportunities to implement more measures in the older parts of its network that were built to different standards and have set a target to mitigate noise in 7500 properties during the second road investment period.

The Government continues to take action to reduce the levels of excessive noise experienced by communities, delivering noise mitigation in Noise Important Areas near the strategic road network, and has funded leading research into noise cameras to detect and enforce excessively noisy road vehicles.

Information about appeal receipts in the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) and Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) is routinely published within Tribunals Statistics Quarterly in the main tables. The total number of receipts to the First-tier Tribunal is available in table FIA_1 and for the Upper Tribunal in UIA_1.

The proportion of appeals for the First-tier Tribunal and Upper Tribunal which were successful is also available as published data and can be found in tables FIA_3 and UIA_3 respectively.

The latest quarterly data includes figures to December 2023 and is available here: Tribunals statistics quarterly: October to December 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). Data for the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) receipts, disposals and outcome figures is available up to Q1, April to June 2021. Data from Q2 2021/22 onwards have not been included in this publication as data was migrated to a new IT system and the data is not yet available.

Financial information is published for the IAC on an annual basis in the HM Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) Annual Report, within the fees and charges section. Published information relates to the expenditure and fee income of HMCTS and will not cover financial impacts on other public bodies. Fees and costs cannot be reliably attributed to a particular cohort of appeals. The most recent available data is for Financial Year 2022/23 and is published here HMCTS annual reports and plans - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

The government agreed that the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) raised some important issues regarding historical adoption practices. Whilst a formal apology has not been issued, as the government did not actively support these practices, the government has publicly said sorry on behalf of society to all those affected by these practices during this period.

As the government response said at the time, successive governments have made significant changes to adoption legislation and practice to ensure that the practices reported are never repeated.

Furthermore, following the JCHR report, the department has already amended regulations to make it easier for adults to access adoption support. In addition, the department has written to local authorities, encouraging them to retain historical adoption records for 100 years instead of 75, to make access to records easier, and asking them to support access without undue delay to such records.

The requested information cannot be accurately extracted from our internal systems. To provide this information would require a manual trawl of successful appeals and to do so would incur disproportionate cost.

Where an appeal has been allowed in favour of the appellant, and is not subject to onward appeal, we take all reasonable steps to implement the allowed appeal in a timely manner.

All employers have a statutory obligation to pay Statutory Maternity Pay to eligible employees. Employers are reimbursed at least 92 percent of the Statutory Maternity Pay they pay. Small employers (those who pay £45,000 or less gross NICs in the previous tax year) receive 100 percent of the Statutory Maternity Pay paid plus an additional 3 percent, known as the Small Employers’ Compensation Rate. This is in recognition of the relatively greater impact maternity absence has on small businesses.

Employers may apply for advance funding from HMRC if they are unable to meet their SMP liability at the required time.

DWP officials regularly meet with industry representatives to discuss Statutory Maternity Pay.

All fraud investigations are conducted in line with current legislation including Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984.

All staff in the department undergo Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED) training. The training is provided to ensure everyone has the right level of skill and understanding to ensure equality of treatment for all customers.

From the 19 December 2023 to the 12 March 2024, the department carried out a full public consultation on the draft guidance for schools and colleges on gender questioning children. Any member of the public could respond and provide their views.

The quarterly and monthly Tax-Free Childcare accounts data, available on the GOV.UK, could serve as a useful reference:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/tax-free-childcare-statistics-december-2023

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/tax-free-childcare-quarterly-statistics

The Government’s £1 million Community Automated External Defibrillators (AED) fund will provide more than 1,000 new defibrillators for community spaces across England. As of 22 September 2022, community organisations can now apply for a grant to fund a life-saving defibrillator for their local area. Applications for funding will be submitted to Smarter Society and the London Hearts Charity, who will assess each application against a set criteria, ensuring that each AED is placed where they are needed most. They have designed engagement and application processes to appeal to a wide and diverse audience. Smarter Society and the London Hearts Charity have received 3507 applications from various local organisations, with 4448 AED’s applied for in total. No assessment by the Government of the adequacy of funding allocated to community defibrillator projects has been made.

The government publishes a range of information on all major projects on the Government Major Projects Portfolio online as part of the IPA’s annual report. This includes project narratives, whole-life costs and monetised benefits where available. Further information on major projects and published business cases for relevant projects and programmes can be found on Gov.uk.

The IPA's National Infrastructure and Construction Pipeline is a key publication outlining planned and projected investment in UK major infrastructure and construction over the next 10 years. The 2023 Pipeline will be published in due course.

Yes.

New Forestry Enforcement Measures and the Duty to Consult were introduced by the Environment Act 2021.

The New Forestry Enforcement Measures help better equip the Forestry Commission to combat unauthorised and illegal felling, with unlimited fines and more transparent enforcement processes. These changes commenced on 1 January 2023.

The Duty to Consult introduces a new duty on local authorities to consult the public on street tree felling that will take place in England, increasing the awareness and transparency of decision making on urban trees and creating a space for the public to contribute to these decisions. The guidance for the new Duty to Consult is being finalised and we aim to commence the measure soon.

The Government has carried out significant work towards audit and corporate governance reform legislation but has not set a date for publication of a draft Audit Reform Bill. The Government is committed to legislating when Parliamentary time allows.

The Government is supporting local authorities in England through its £381 million Local Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (LEVI) Fund.

The West of England Combined Authority (WECA) has been allocated £6,644,000 of capital funding and £688,000 of capability funding through the LEVI Fund, to transform the availability of local charging infrastructure across the area, including Bristol North West. Capital funding covers the costs associated with the installation of EV chargepoints and resource funding will secure dedicated in-house expertise to support WECA to plan, procure and tender the delivery of local chargepoints. In addition, Bristol City Council has previously been awarded £284,000 for the installation of 155 public chargepoints through the On-Street Residential Chargepoint Scheme.

VAT has been designed as a broad-based tax on consumption, and the twenty per cent standard rate applies to the majority of goods and services. While there are exceptions to the standard rate, these have always been strictly limited by both legal and fiscal considerations; one exception being certain supplies of education, which are generally exempt from VAT when certain conditions are met.

VAT is the UK’s third largest tax forecast to raise £161 billion in 2022/23, helping to fund key spending priorities such as important public services, including the NHS, education and defence. Nevertheless, the Government keeps all taxes under review.

Renewable energy, such as that generated from rooftop solar panels, will make a significant contribution to achieving net zero. In June 2022 an uplift to the energy efficiency standards for new buildings came into force and we will consult this year on the Future Homes Standard. The standards are performance based, meaning we do not mandate any particular technologies, but we expect that in order to comply with the uplift most developers will choose to install solar panels on new homes.

The first major global summit on AI safety, hosted by the UK, will bring together key countries, as well as leading technology companies and researchers, to agree on the safety measures needed to evaluate and monitor the most significant risks emerging from the newest developments in AI technologies.

The Department is committed to engaging with a wide range of stakeholders as it develops AI policy and has, throughout consultation on the AI Regulation White Paper, engaged with a wide range of stakeholders across industry, academia, regulators and civil society. The feedback received will be factored in the Department’s response to the consultation and inform the development of the regulatory framework.

We are adopting this same spirit with regards to our international policy and the Summit, for which preparations are still ongoing. We look forward to sharing more information in due course.