Since the first Safeguarding on Rail Scheme accreditation for Great Western Railway (GWR) in 2021, no rail operator has lost their accreditation.

The Department for Work and Pensions spends around £30bn a year on housing support for renters in both the private and social rented sectors. Benefit rates and the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) are reviewed annually.

From April this year the Government is investing £1.2 billion increasing LHA rates to the 30th percentile of local market rents. This significant investment ensures 1.6 million private renters in receipt of Housing Benefit or Universal Credit gain on average, nearly £800 in additional help towards their rental costs in 2024/25.

LHA provides a reasonable level of housing support towards rental costs in the private rented sector. LHA rates are not intended to cover all rents in all areas.

The Department works closely with other government departments, stakeholders, jobcentres, and local authorities to understand the impact of its policies.

For those who face a shortfall in meeting their housing costs and need further support Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs) are available from local authorities. Since 2011 the Government has provided nearly £1.7 billion in DHP funding to local authorities.

It is not possible to provide the information requested without detailed examination of individual records for more than 220 courts, across two Prisoner Escort and Custody Services contract generations (Generation 3, 2011 – 2020, and Generation 4, 2020 – 2030), and this would incur disproportionate cost.

The Official Injury Claim (OIC) service is a free, easy-to-use online system owned and operated by the Motor Insurers’ Bureau (MIB) on behalf of the Ministry of Justice. OIC was built to be usable and accessible including to those with access needs or who prefer or require assistive or adaptive technologies.

On-screen guidance leads both represented and unrepresented claimants through the claims process, supported by an online help-hub and additional written guidance. There is also a dedicated telephone Portal Support Centre who can assist claimants who need to make a paper-based claim. The OIC also provides translation services in multiple foreign languages.

Ministry of Justice officials continue to work with MIB to increase awareness and improve the visibility of the OIC through identifying and implementing appropriate web optimisation. Regularly updated useful information on making a claim via the OIC is also available on GOV.UK.

The hon. Gentleman will, of course, know of our plans and our support for the private Member’s Bill on that subject. He and I used to serve together on the Education Committee back in the day; these are issues that have been long standing, including under previous Governments. From the schools White Paper, he will also know of the other things we have committed to do when legislative time allows.

Since the Government have increased the amount of money spent on the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, we have recruited judges across the jurisdiction to help in the civil courts, increased the number of days that fee-paid judges can do from 30 days to 80 days a year, introduced regional virtual pilots to support London and the south-east, and invested in mediation. All of this is ensuring that people have access to justice in a court system that is dealing with higher numbers of cases than ever before.

The a) mean and b) median length of time taken from (i) receipt at Crown Court to main hearing, (ii) main hearing to completion and (iii) receipt at Crown Court to completion for all offences can be found in the attached table. Timeliness data broken down by Crown Court are not available prior to 2014.

The latest published data is available to March 2023 and shows that timeliness estimates at the Crown Court continue to increase. This was a result of cases completing including trials impacted by the Criminal Bar Association action and in some cases, the suspension of jury trial during the pandemic.

The Ministy of Justice publishes timeliness estimates for various stages of the justice process in tables accompanying our Criminal Court statistics release here: Criminal court statistics quarterly: October to December 2022 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

We also provide further breakdowns in the form of a timeliness tool which offers the option to filter more granular stages of timeliness, including by offence and geographical area. This can be found here: (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1148226/timeliness_tool.xlsx).

The hon. Gentleman seems to have missed the £12 billion record investment in capital across the NHS, the investment in the NHS app, the investment in tech—

No, the technology programmes are national programmes that cover everyone, including North Tees. It is slightly odd to suggest that one place alone in the country would be exempt from a national programme; that is simply not the case. We are making record investment, including over £20 billion in the new hospital programme and 160 diagnostic centres and 43 new surgical hubs this year.

Data is provided by region and is split to show single/ multiple claims in the tables below for the last five years.

Data is a subset of the published statistics.

Statistical information in relation to the Employment Tribunal can be found in our published stats www.gov.uk/government/collections/tribunals-statistics.

We currently only have data published up to December 2022.

Last year, we invested nearly £3 million extra to increase the number of days Employment Tribunals can operate, so around 1,700 more cases could be heard by the end of March 2023. This is in addition to hiring 114 more judges and investing in remote hearings to ensure cases can get through the system more quickly.

The Government recognises the impact that delays in the family court can have on children and families, which is why improving timeliness in Public and Private Family Law cases remains a key priority. Steps we are taking include:

• Maximising sitting days and improving judicial recruitment and retention.

• Investing £324 million to increase capacity in the civil, family, and tribunal jurisdictions to continue tackling backlogs and improve timeliness.

• Increasing funding to Cafcass by £8.4 million this financial year.

• Bringing together key partners from across the family justice system via the Family Justice Board, with a shared approach to scrutinise performance and drive improvement.

• Supporting the President of the Family Division with a renewed focus on the Public Law Outline as a template for case management with the aim of bringing more cases within 26 weeks.

• Encouraging separating parents to resolve their issues outside of the court - we will outline further measures to support parents to resolve their issues quickly and amicably in due course.

• Investing £8.7 million to date in the family mediation voucher scheme. Over 13,500 families have accessed the scheme, with early indications suggesting 65% reach a full or partial agreement outside court, and a further 3% only proceed to court to secure a consent order to finalise their agreement.

We are determined to reduce delays and bring down waiting times in the family courts.

We are investing a significant amount of funding to achieve this, and we have made greater use of fee-paid judges by lifting the number of days they can sit.

We are also maximising judicial recruitment. This year’s recruitment programme is for up to 1,000 judges and tribunal members across all jurisdictions.

Last July, we introduced a Virtual Region pilot to enable deputy district judges from other regions to sit virtually in London and the South East, so we can hear as many cases as possible.

We remain committed to better supporting families to resolve their issues earlier and without coming to court, where it is safe and appropriate to do so, including through the mediation voucher scheme, which we launched in March 2021. To date, over 13,500 families have successfully used the scheme to access mediation and help resolve disputes outside of court.

Although prioritisation of cases is a judicial decision, we are working closely with the judiciary and operational partners to ensure that public law cases and the most urgent cases, such as those with significant safeguarding issues, can be prioritised as they come to court.

Family court data is published monthly by HMCTS and can be found through the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/hmcts-management-information. The latest data set was published 12 January 2023 covering the period from November 2021 to October 2022.

Family court data is published monthly by HMCTS and is available through the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/hmcts-management-information. The latest data set was published 12 January 2023 covering the period from November 2021 to October 2022.

39.7% of pupils with an education, health and care plan and 36.4% of pupils with special educational needs support were eligible for free school meals (FSM) in 2022. More information can be found here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/special-educational-needs-in-england/2021-22.

The Department spends over £1 billion annually delivering FSM to pupils in schools. Around 1.9 million disadvantaged pupils are eligible for FSM, as well as an additional 1.25 million infants who receive a free meal under the Universal Infant Free School Meal policy. Together, this provides support to over one third of all pupils in schools.

The Department is investing up to £30 million in the national school breakfast programme until the end of the 2024 summer term. This funding will support up to 2,500 schools in disadvantaged areas, meaning that thousands of children from low-income families will be offered free, nutritious breakfasts. The Department is also investing over £200 million a year in the Holiday Activities and Food programme, which provides free holiday club places with healthy meals and enriching activities to children from low-income families.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) published its Workforce Engagement Inspection Guide in 2018. A key objective of the Inspection Guide is to help inspectors to assess compliance with the Offshore Installations (Safety Representatives and Safety Committees) Regulations 1989, SI 971, during their inspections. The Guide was developed by HSE’s Workforce Engagement Specialist Inspector. Since January 2020 to date 41 inspections have been carried out using the Inspection guide.

The inspections assessed compliance against the inspection guide and of those inspections 4 were rated as being good; 29 were broadly compliant and 8 were deemed poor. Where non-compliance issues were found, duty holders were informed by letter of what they needed to do. HSE then monitored progress with them to ensure compliance.

In September we announced ‘Our Plan for Patients’, which outlines how we will increase access to National Health Service mental health and eating disorder services, including in Stockton North. Making it easier to access general practice through our ABCD priorities will expand this route as a gateway to mental health care.

Through the NHS Long Term Plan, we are investing an additional £2.3 billion a year by 2023/24 to expand these services for adults, children and young people in England, including in Stockton North.

We will invest approximately £1 billion in community mental health care for adults with severe mental illness, including eating disorders, by 2023/24 and an additional £53 million per year in children and young people's community eating disorder services to increase capacity in the 70 community eating disorder teams.

No specific assessment has been made. In September, we announced ‘Our plan for patients’, which outlines how we will meet oral health needs and increase access to dental care, including in Stockton North.

The plan includes improvements to ensure dentists are renumerated fairly for more complex work, allowing greater flexibility to reallocate resources and to utilise dentists with greater capacity to deliver National Health Service treatment, whilst enabling full use of the dental team. The plan also includes streamlining processes for overseas dentists and holding the local NHS to account for dentistry provision. In addition, Health Education England is also reforming dental education to improve the recruitment and retention of dental professionals.

No specific assessment has been made. However, NHS England asked dental practices to return to full delivery of contracted activity from July 2022, including in Stockton North. In September, we announced ‘Our plan for patients’, which outlines how we will meet oral health needs and increase access to dental care, including in Stockton North.

The plan includes improvements to ensure dentists are renumerated fairly for more complex work, allowing greater flexibility to reallocate resources and to utilise dentists with greater capacity to deliver National Health Service treatment, whilst enabling full use of the dental team. The plan also includes streamlining processes for overseas dentists and holding the local NHS to account for dentistry provision. In addition, Health Education England is also reforming dental education to improve the recruitment and retention of dental professionals.