We are continuing to work closely with the rail industry to develop the Government priorities outlined in the Prime Minister’s Network North announcement, which includes an unprecedented £1 billion investment to fund the electrification of the North Wales Main Line. In February, the Transport Secretary hosted a meeting with local leaders in North Wales to discuss how HS2 savings will be rerouted to improve rail links in Wales.

We are in the early stages of establishing the next steps for the North Wales electrification scheme, including the costs and programme for development and delivery. We will share further information when that work is complete.

For the 2023/24 financial year, the Disclosure and Barring Service’s (DBS) targets are to complete 85% of Basic checks within two days, 85% of Standard checks within three days, and 80% of Enhanced checks within 14 days.

DBS publishes its performance against these targets on a quarterly basis at DBS dataset 1: DBS checks, the DBS Update Service, and disputes - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). This includes the total monthly volumes of applications processed and the totals issued within target. The latest published information is up to December 2023.

In addition to this data, DBS’s performance for January and February 2024 is as follows:

• Basic checks – 435,350 checks processed of which 382,412 completed within the two-day target, exceeding the 85% target.
• Standard checks – 70,729 checks processed, of which 62,898 completed within the three-day target, exceeding the 85% target.
• Enhanced checks – 691,244 checks processed, of which 544,082 completed within the 14-day target, achieving 78.7% against the 80% target.

We are working closely with the rail industry to develop the Government priorities outlined in the Prime Minister’s Network North announcement, which includes an unprecedented £1 billion investment to fund the electrification of the North Wales Main Line. We are in the early stages of establishing the next steps for the North Wales electrification scheme, including the costs and programme for development and delivery. We will share further information when that work is complete.

According to the latest estimate, based on data from March 2022, uprating the state pension where we do not currently do so would cost about £0.9 billion a year if all UK state pensions in payment were increased to current UK levels.

The UK is committed to the primacy of the United Nations convention on the law of the sea, and to freedom of navigation and overflight. We oppose any action that raises tensions, or the risk of miscalculation, in the South China sea. The Foreign Secretary spoke to his Philippino counterpart in December, and the FCDO issued a statement on 11 December, condemning Chinese unsafe and escalatory actions against the Philippines.

The OECD’s PISA 2022 results showed that 15-year-old pupils in England performed above the OECD averages for all of reading, mathematics and science. While the pandemic has had an adverse impact on education across the world, and also affected the study, England was ranked 11^th in maths and 13^th in both reading and science – up from 27^th in maths, 25^th in reading and 16^th in science in 2009.

I regularly meet Ministers from the devolved Administrations through inter-ministerial fora to discuss a range of policy issues. SMEs across Wales have access to a range of UK Government services to help them to grow and thrive. The UK Government also recently announced that we will appoint new international trade advisers in Wales to provide tailored support for Welsh SME exporters to take advantage of new export opportunities.

NHS data shows that we have delivered early on our manifesto commitment to have an extra 50,000 NHS nurses, with the number of nurses working in our NHS increasing from around 301,000 in 2019 to 357,000 today. That has been achieved through boosting training and education routes, ethically recruiting internationally and taking actions to improve retention. Measures such as the health and care visa introduced in 2020 support international recruitment.

There are four key things the government has done to reduce inflation:

1. Remaining steadfast in our support for the Bank of England as it takes action to return inflation sustainably to the 2% target.
2. Keeping borrowing under control. Borrowing is lower this year and next than it was forecast to be in the Spring.
3. Introducing ambitious supply-side measures to support non-inflationary growth, including delivering full expensing.
4. Boosting labour supply. Labour market conditions are a key problem affecting UK businesses’ growth, as well as a significant driver of domestic inflation. Together, the packages at Autumn Statement and Spring Budget 2023 were the two largest increases to labour supply and potential GDP resulting from policy the OBR has ever scored.

The OBR confirms policies in the Autumn Statement reduce inflation next year and do not “have a material impact on the path of inflation” over the scorecard.

Inflation has more than halved, but it remains a challenge. The OBR forecasts inflation to return to the 2% target in the first half of 2025 and helping the Bank of England in its fight to do so remains a key focus.

The independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is responsible for producing forecasts for the UK economy, including making assessments of the impacts that Government policies have on inflation.

The full EFO can be seen here: Economic and fiscal outlook – November 2023 - Office for Budget Responsibility (obr.uk)

The Government are committed to supporting British food producers. We are investing £2.4 billion a year in England’s farming sector, and we will also look to support more growers through the replacement of the fruit and vegetables aid scheme for England in 2026. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs also sponsors small and medium-sized enterprise masterclasses to signpost and support those businesses.

Published data from NHS England shows that there were 99,067 total general and acute (G&A) beds available in October 2023, including 96,781 core beds and 2,285 escalation beds.

Our Delivery Plan for recovering urgent and emergency care services set the ambition to increase the core G&A bed base by 5,000 permanent staffed beds in 2023/24 compared to planned levels for 2022/23. This would increase the number of core beds to 99,500. As of October, the National Health Service has delivered 2,281 additional core beds. NHS England continues to work with local systems and trusts to deliver this ambition this winter.

G&A bed numbers are expected to peak in January 2024 in response to expected demand. A breakdown of these additional beds by constituency is not available centrally.

It is a long-established precedent that information about the discussions that have taken place in Cabinet, and its Committees, is not normally shared publicly.

Our Delivery Plan for recovering urgent and emergency care services set the ambition to increase the core general and acute bed base, above originally planned 2022/23 levels, by 5,000 sustainable, permanent beds in 2023/24. This takes the funded core bed base to over 99,000. NHS England in continuing to work with local systems and trusts to deliver this ambition.

Our Delivery Plan for recovering urgent and emergency care services set the ambition to increase the core general and acute bed base, above originally planned 2022/23 levels, by 5,000 sustainable, permanent beds in 2023/24. This takes the funded core bed base to over 99,000. NHS England in continuing to work with local systems and trusts to deliver this ambition.

In line with the practice of successive administrations, details of internal discussions are not normally disclosed.