People whose capability for work is affected because they are disabled or have a health condition, including people who have encephalitis, may be eligible for New Style Employment and Support Allowance and/or Universal Credit, subject to satisfying their eligibility conditions. The Work Capability Assessment determines an individual’s capability for work. For people found to have limited capability for work, their Jobcentre work coach uses their discretion to set work-related activity, appropriate to the claimant's circumstances and capability, to help them prepare to start work when they are able. People who have limited capability for work and work-related activity are not required to carry out any work-related activity, but can do so if they wish.

People who have encephalitis may also be eligible for Personal Independence Payment, to help meet the extra costs of living faced by disabled people and people with health conditions.

Recent strike action on rail has highlighted the need for a fairer approach to providing train services during times of strike action. Minimum Service Levels legislation would, in future, help to ensure an appropriate level of train services would still operate during strike action.

The Department works with NHS England to regularly assesses the performance of National Health Service trusts against national performance standards. NHS England provides targeted support to hospitals facing the greatest delays in the handover of ambulance patients to identify short and longer-term interventions. NHS England also supports those trusts most at risk of not meeting the elective recovery ambitions set out in the ‘Delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlog of elective care’.

The Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (CPCF) commits £2.592 billion in each of the five financial years between 2019 and 2024 to community pharmacy. It introduces plans to develop new services and expand the role of community pharmacy in prevention, urgent care and medicines safety. Negotiations on what the sector will deliver through the CPCF in 2022/23 are ongoing.

Farming in England is going through the biggest change in a generation. These unprecedented times mean that it is all the more important that the Government's approach to working with the farming sector changes too. Defra is continuing to improve its policies and services, making them more effective, fairer, flexible, accessible and more workable for farmers. The Government has announced a range of measures in England in response to the turbulence of the current market.

In response to the global rising costs around the price of fertiliser, Defra released new guidance to help farmers in limiting their use of slurry and other farmyard manure at certain times of the year.

Defra also announced changes to the use of urea fertiliser - delaying a planned industry farm assurance scheme which was due to start this year by at least a year. This will help farmers to manage their costs, giving them more time to adapt.

Defra has set up a Fertiliser Taskforce to address the impact of global supply pressures on farming, seeking to improve market confidence, whilst providing famers with the information they need to make business decisions on fertiliser use.

Additionally, Defra announced a permanent change to the way we make payments under the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS). We know that the price of agricultural commodities has always been closely correlated to energy prices - meaning farmers carry an increased risk on their profit and loss account, creating increased pressure on short term cash flow. We will now make BPS payments in two instalments (one from the end of July, the other December). This will give farm businesses an advanced injection of cash - with the hope of enabling farmers to make business decisions with more confidence in these uncertain times. To provide further support we have also increased Countryside Stewardship rates by an average of 30%.

Farmers are now able to apply for funding under the Sustainable Farming Incentive. The initial offer pays farmers for taking care of their soil or assessing the condition of moorland. We have to set out plans to rollout payments for actions related to nutrient management, hedgerows and integrated pest management, and will confirm the full details of these standards before the end of the year.

The Government is committed to take action to mitigate climate change and to adapt to its impact. We are introducing three schemes that reward environmental benefits: the Sustainable Farming Incentive, Local Nature Recovery and Landscape Recovery. Together, these schemes are intended to provide a powerful vehicle for achieving the goals of the 25 Year Environment Plan and our commitment to net zero emissions by 2050, while supporting our rural economy. Through them, farmers and other land managers may enter into agreements to be paid for delivering public goods including adaptation to and mitigation of climate change.

The Government has also published the Net Zero Strategy which sets the UK on a clear path to net zero by 2050 and set out key commitments such as ensuring 75% of farmers in England will be engaged in low carbon practices by 2030, rising to 85% by 2035. More recently in the Food Strategy we have set out the funding available for innovation in farming and agriculture.

The UK announced an Agriculture Breakthrough goal at COP26 - "to make climate-resilient, sustainable agriculture the most attractive and widely adopted option for farmers everywhere by 2030" - and the intention to build country support for this in 2022. This is part of the Breakthrough Agenda which was launched at the COP26 World Leaders Summit. The Breakthrough Agenda is a commitment from countries to work together internationally this decade to accelerate the development and deployment of the clean technologies needed to meet our Paris climate goals, ensuring they are affordable and accessible for all.

The UK provides funding to the CGIAR, the world's leading agricultural science and innovation organisation, which delivers cutting edge technology and evidence-based solutions to tackle global challenges in the food system, saving and improving millions of lives. CGIAR research is projected to deliver a reduction of 0.6 gigatonnes CO2e each year by 2030. CGIAR rice innovations alone have scope to reduce global emissions by 0.5% - equivalent to 40% of total UK emissions.

The Government has also announced specific measures to support farmers with rising input costs including changes to statutory guidance to the "Farming Rules for Water"; increased grants funding to boost R&D; and bringing the Basic Payment Scheme forward so that 50% of its payments are made this summer to improve cash flow for farmers.

The Food Standards Agency has provided guidance to Trading Standards Officers and businesses setting out how flexibility in enforcement of labelling rules may be applied to alleviate supply challenges and maintain supply of foods into retail. Feedback has been that industry welcomes these actions, and the main ask going forward is for us to carefully review the supply situation before reverting to a 'full compliance' model of enforcement.

Defra is taking a number of actions to maintain food security and reduce pressures on prices. The Government launched a package of measures to reduce the impact of cost of living concerns, including: nine new GMO authorisations to provide alternative sources for maize, removing tariffs on US maize, bringing forward BPS payments for farmers and delaying measures that would have imposed costs on businesses.

Furthermore, G7 Leaders have pledged to provide increased humanitarian assistance with priority recipients should include countries facing acute food insecurity (for example Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen), and countries facing potential food riots (such as Egypt).

The UK’s ambitious Free Trade Agreement programme diversifies sources of supply, contributes to our food security and resilience and supplements our strong domestic production.

Local National Health Service trusts have responsibility for ensuring appropriate staffing levels and recruiting the number of health professionals required to meet local service need. We have committed to recruiting NHS staff and investing in the workforce. As of April 2022, there were more than 9,600 additional nurses and 4,000 doctors working in NHS trusts and clinical commissioning groups. We are currently on schedule to meet the commitment for a further 50,000 nurses. We have established a programme to improve retention and support return to practice, invest in and diversify the training pipeline and ethically recruit internationally.

Eligible new and continuing nursing students on pre-registration courses at English universities will also receive an additional grant of £5,000 for each year of their course. Further funding of up to £3,000 is available for costs such as childcare or to encourage recruitment in specific specialisms. The NHS has also established a People Recovery Task Force to provide assurance on the safety and wellbeing of staff. However, it is the responsibility of individual employers to ensure that requests for medical staff to work overnight are reasonable.

Through the ‘Delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlog of elective care’, we have allocated more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to address waiting times in elective services. This is in addition to the £2 billion Elective Recovery Fund and £700 million Targeted Investment Fund made available to systems in 2021/22.

In 2016, we launched the Targeted Enhanced Recruitment Scheme which provides a one-off financial incentive of £20,000 to attract doctors to train in locations where there have been challenges to recruitment, including many rural areas. In 2021, 550 places were available through the Scheme and following additional Government investment, there are 800 places available in 2022.

The general practice workforce also consists of other health professionals who can respond to the needs of patients, including in rural areas. We are diversifying the general practice workforce, including recruiting 26,000 more primary care staff, to ensure the appropriate range of skills is available in general practice to deliver high quality patient care.

Ofcom has a statutory duty to review the affordability of broadband services. In March 2022, Ofcom reported that 55,000 households had taken-up a social tariff, and 16% of eligible households were aware that the support existed.

In April, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport wrote to providers asking them to do more to promote their social tariffs and ensure low-income households are aware of the support available to them. On 27 June, all the UK’s major broadband and mobile operators agreed a set of new public commitments to support families through the global rising cost of living, which includes increasing efforts to promote their low-cost social tariff offers.

DCMS does not collect data on social tariff take-up, but we continue to work closely with the industry and Ofcom to monitor take-up levels.

Government has committed £2.5 billion since 2020 to support the transition to zero emission vehicles, with funding to offset their higher upfront cost, and to accelerate the rollout of chargepoint infrastructure.

Government has pledged at least £500 million to support local chargepoint provision. As part of this, the Local EV Infrastructure (LEVI) fund will provide approximately £400 million of capital and £50 million of resource funding to support local authorities to work with industry and transform the availability of charging for drivers without off-street parking.

The Government is also supporting local authorities through the On-Street Residential Chargepoint Scheme (ORCS) which has £20 million available this year. To date, Wiltshire County Council have not submitted an application to the ORCS, we would encourage them to take advantage of this funding.

Local authorities, such as Wiltshire County Council, will have a key role to play in the rolling out of chargepoints as they are best placed to consider local needs. In the UK’s EV Charging Infrastructure Strategy, published in March 2022, Government announced it will require all local transport authorities in England to develop their own chargepoint strategies, subject to consultation.

To support drivers across the UK to switch to cleaner vehicles, Plug-in Vehicle Grants will continue until at least financial year 2023/24 for taxis and motorcycles, and 2024/25 for vans, trucks and wheelchair accessible vehicles. We have also put in place generous tax incentives including: favourable benefit in kind tax rates out to 2025, all zero emission cars are exempt from vehicle excise duty (VED), and, zero emissions vans pay a nil rate of tax on the van benefit charge.

We are recruiting an additional 20,000 police officers in England and Wales by March 2023, the biggest recruitment drive in decades.

As at 31 March 2022, Wiltshire Police had a total headcount of 1,152 police officers. 261 new officers have been recruited in total in Wiltshire since November 2019, equating to 111 additional officers, after replacing officers who retire or leave the force.

We are also taking steps to address issues that we know affect rural communities, including Wiltshire. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act empowers and equips the police and courts with the powers they need to combat hare coursing. The Government is also providing funding for the National Wildlife Crime Unit.

No specific estimate has been made as average waiting times for operations is not collected at county level. The Department and NHS England meet regularly with National Health Service trusts to discuss waiting lists for planned treatment. This includes assessing current progress on addressing waiting times and sharing advice to deliver on the targets in the ‘Delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlog of elective care’.