The Government recognises the importance of timely access for National Health Service patients to effective new medicines and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) aims wherever possible to issue technology appraisal recommendations on new medicines close to the time of licensing.

The Department and NICE regularly monitor the timeliness of NICE’s technology appraisals. In 2025/26 the median time between marketing authorisation and a NICE recommendation for all technology appraisals was 232 days, which is a reduction from 332 days in 2024/25.

We recognise that there is more to do to reduce the length of time between marketing authorisation and NICE guidance and the recently launched joint NICE and Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency pathway is expected to speed up patient access to effective new medicines by three to six months.

Information on healthcare spend with non-National Health Service bodies is provided in the Department’s annual report and accounts for 2024/25, which is available at the following link:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69412aa329501ea90654a4ba/dhsc-annual-report-and-accounts-2024-2025-web-accessible-corrected.pdf

The spend is broken down by independent sector, voluntary sector, local authorities, devolved administrations, and other group bodies.

The attached table provides the independent and voluntary sector totals by integrated care board and NHS England. The other categories are public bodies so out of scope of the requested information.

The Department does not hold the information requested.

The Department does not hold the information requested.

The Carbon Trust estimates the UK’s total wave resource to be around 230 TWh/year, with an exploitable resource of 40–50 TWh/year. However, wave energy is not yet commercially viable. The Government monitors progress closely and supports innovation through research funding programmes operated by UK Research and Innovation. As set out in the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan, emerging technologies may have a role to play in the longer term, subject to cost reduction, performance improvement and demonstrated scalability.

Mainstream free school projects were evaluated in line with consistent criteria focusing on assessing the need for places and value for money. This included considering whether projects would provide a distinctive local offer and whether they would risk negatively impacting other local schools or colleges.

As part of one of the largest city regions outside London, Oldham benefits from a large pool of potential learners. Well developed transport links will allow the school to attract learners from across a broad geographical area.

Conditions attached to the school will ensure both Eton and Star work with local schools and colleges to ensure the new school sits coherently within the existing local offer, with a focus on improving GCSE outcomes and progression rates into post-16 provision across the local area, as well as into top universities.

The responsibility for undertaking a Section 10 consultation prior to the school opening sits with the Academy Trust. The Secretary of State will take the findings into account when considering whether to enter into a funding agreement.

Mainstream free school projects were evaluated in line with consistent criteria focusing on assessing the need for places and value for money. This included considering whether projects would provide a distinctive local offer and whether they would risk negatively impacting other local schools or colleges.

As part of one of the largest city regions outside London, Oldham benefits from a large pool of potential learners. Well developed transport links will allow the school to attract learners from across a broad geographical area.

Conditions attached to the school will ensure both Eton and Star work with local schools and colleges to ensure the new school sits coherently within the existing local offer, with a focus on improving GCSE outcomes and progression rates into post-16 provision across the local area, as well as into top universities.

The responsibility for undertaking a Section 10 consultation prior to the school opening sits with the Academy Trust. The Secretary of State will take the findings into account when considering whether to enter into a funding agreement.

Last week I met Sir Charlie Mayfield, author of the “Keep Britain Working” report, to discuss progress. He reported that more than 100 employers are now onboard to act as vanguards, including British Airways, Sainsbury’s, Holland and Barrett, and a number of smaller employers. The aim is to develop a healthy life cycle of work throughout people’s careers. We are also setting up the health information and data unit that Sir Charlie recommended in his report.

The earned settlement model, proposed in ‘A Fairer Pathway to Settlement’, announced changes to the qualifying period for indefinite leave to remain. It is currently subject to a public consultation, running until 12 February 2026.

The consultation seeks views on whether there should be transitional arrangements for those already on a pathway to settlement. Details of the earned settlement model, including any transitional arrangements for those already in the UK, will be finalised following that consultation.

The final model will also be subject to economic and equality impact assessments, which we have committed to publish in due course.

Government recognises the valuable role that tramways and mass transit networks can play as part of a truly integrated transport system, in the right circumstances, in our cities.

Responsibility for mass transit systems (including tramways) is devolved in England, where each local authority owns and is responsible for the operations and financial sustainability of its own system.

The Department works closely with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on a range of strategic projects which include mass transit proposals, such as those being explored by the Cambridge Growth Company. This partnership helps ensure transport and housing priorities are considered together to support sustainable development.

Government has confirmed £15.6 billion in funding through Transport for City Regions (TCR) settlements for our largest city regions to deliver their local transport priorities, which may include mass transit.

We are not aware of any project in development that plans to install large numbers of solar panels on vertical surfaces. However, we are looking to increase deployment of all types of solar, including through applications such as plug-in solar which can be installed on the walls of buildings.

Plug-in solar can provide opportunities for households to adopt solar more cheaply. Currently, UK regulations do not allow plug-in solar to be used in the UK, but the government has commenced a safety study with the aim of unlocking opportunities for its deployment over the next few years.

Excess speed remains a major cause of death and serious injury on our roads. Anyone who breaks the speed limit should expect to face sanction.

Current National Police Chiefs’ Council National Guidance on Speeding Enforcement advocates proportionality in applying the law and discretion to take account of the individual circumstances of each speeding offence and take the action they consider appropriate.

Enforcement measures range from informal advice, the offer of a speed awareness course or fixed penalty, and where speeding results in a fatality to court prosecution.

The Education Act 1996 places a duty on local authorities to promote sustainable travel on journeys to and from places of education in their area. Sustainable travel in this context is that which improves the physical wellbeing of users, the environmental wellbeing of the area, or both.

On 12 December, Active Travel England announced £626 million of funding for local authorities from 2026/27 to 2029/30 to deliver walking, wheeling and cycling schemes. This will enable more children to walk and cycle to school. It is in addition to almost £300 million funding for active travel in 2024/25 and 2025/26 announced in February. This includes £30 million to provide Bikeability cycle training to children and £8.5 million for Cycling UK, Living Streets and Modeshift to deliver walking, wheeling and cycling initiatives in schools and communities. The Modeshift STARS Education scheme supports schools and local authorities to develop and monitor school travel plans.

My Department has no current plans to make such an assessment.

The National Planning Policy Framework makes clear that planning policies and decisions should contribute to and enhance the natural and local environment by preventing new and existing development from contributing to, being put at unacceptable risk from, or being adversely affected by, unacceptable levels of noise pollution.

Planning policies and decisions should avoid noise giving rise to significant adverse impacts on health and the quality of life.

It is up to individual local planning authorities to determine what contributions should be sought to assist in mitigating the impact of unacceptable development to make it acceptable in planning terms.

The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) makes clear that planning policies should be based on robust and up-to-date assessments of the need for open space and should make sufficient provision for and maintain and enhance networks of green infrastructure, which includes areas of vegetation.

Natural England’s Green Infrastructure Framework helps to define what good green infrastructure ‘looks like’ for local planners, developers, and communities. The Green Infrastructure Framework includes a standard on accessible greenspace which sets criteria on size, proximity and quality.

The government is currently consulting on changes to the NPPF, including a new requirement for local plans to set out standards for green infrastructure, drawing upon Natural England’s Green Infrastructure Standards. These include a standard on accessible greenspace which sets criteria on size, proximity, and quality. The consultation can be found on gov.uk here and will remain open for responses until 10 March 2026.

The Government knows how important reliable public transport services are in enabling people to stay connected and access education, work and vital services across the country. We also know that local bus services can be a lifeline in rural areas and can be the only means for communities to stay connected.

The Government is taking ambitious steps to improve local bus services across the country, including introducing the Bus Services Act 2025 which puts passenger needs, reliable services and local accountability at the heart of local bus services by putting the power back in the hands of local leaders right across England.

We also recently confirmed long-term investment of over £3 billion from 2026/27 to support local leaders and bus operators across the country to improve bus services for millions of passengers. This includes multi-year allocations for local authorities under the Local Authority Bus Grant (LABG) totalling nearly £700 million per year, ending the short-term approach to bus funding and giving councils the certainty they need to plan ahead to improve services for local communities. LABG allocations have been calculated using a fair and transparent approach that considers population size, levels of deprivation, the extent of existing bus services, and rurality.

Greater Manchester Combined Authority will be allocated £133.5 million under the LABG from 2026/27 to 2028/29. This is in addition to the £46.8 million they are already receiving under the LABG this financial year.

The Department for Transport has developed and published a Connectivity Tool to measure people’s ability to get where they want and need to go, using walking, cycling and public transport to reach jobs, shops, schools, healthcare and other essential services in any location in England and Wales. The Connectivity Tool combines transport and land use data to generate a national measure of connectivity and provides new insights to those developing new transport schemes or planning for growth to more easily understand how new transport infrastructure can impact an area’s connectivity.

As announced in the Child Poverty Strategy, published on 5 December 2025, the Government will also develop a transport poverty tool, which will aim to capture where poor transport connectivity and affordability limits people’s access to employment and essential services.

The Government inherited a justice system in crisis. Whether for a family experiencing family breakdown, small business owners trying to resolve contractual disputes or victims of crime, we inherited a system in crisis in every jurisdiction. We are beginning to turn that oil tanker around. We are sitting at maximum or close to maximum capacity in every single jurisdiction, while investing up to £450 million in our courts every year.