The Ministerial and other Pensions and Salaries Act 1991 (MoPSA) includes provision for severance payments to ministers and certain office-holders.

The Chancellor announced in July that ahead of the Spending Review she would review eligibility for ministerial severance payments based on time in office, as set out in MoPSA. This review is ongoing.

The Government believes there is a strong case to change the system of health and disability benefits across Great Britain so that it better enables people to enter and remain in work, and to respond to the complex and fluctuating nature of the health conditions many people live with today.

We will be working to develop proposals for reform in the months ahead and will set them out for consultation and engagement in a Green Paper in spring 2025.

This Government is committed to putting the views and voices of disabled people at the heart of all that we do, so we will consult on these proposals with disabled people and representative organisations.

No assessment has been made. Benefits increased by 6.7% in April 2024, in line with inflation. The Basic and New State Pensions were also uprated by 8.5% in line with earnings, as part of the ‘triple lock.’ We have recently announced a Fair Repayment Rate on Universal Credit deductions will be introduced from April 2025, helping approximately 1.2 million of the poorest households benefit by an average of £420 a year. Much more needs to be done, but this is the first step towards delivering on the manifesto commitment to review Universal Credit. Further details about the review will be set out in due course.

DWP is committed to tackling fraud and error in the benefits system and to the recovery of debts, including those generated by Personal Independent Payments.

Working closely with counter fraud experts, the DWP has introduced measures to prevent fraud entering the system based on the types of cases and trends we have seen, for example:

- Strengthening the Identity and Verification Process to prevent fraudulent cases entering the system

- Introducing more rigorous checks for customers changing personal details, including bank accounts

- Delivering awareness sessions for Case Managers and Healthcare Professionals, reinforcing action to take when suspicious cases are identified, eg fake documents

DWP is delivering against key counter fraud activity, including investing in counter fraud professionals and building data analytical capabilities. The new Fraud, Error and Debt Bill will bring forward new measures to tackle fraud in the system. Details on the measures Government will be legislating will be presented to Parliament in due course.

More information on how the department tackles fraud and error across all benefit streams can be found here: DWP annual report and accounts 2023 to 2024 (HTML) - GOV.UK

Greater Anglia will be brought into public ownership, with its date for transfer scheduled for Autumn 2025. The business planning round for 2025/26 is currently underway and plans regarding service quality, ticket pricing, business model and timetables will be agreed in due course. The Department will continue to hold operators to account for their performance and ensure the best outcomes for passengers.

The Government published information about the reforms to agricultural property relief and business property relief at www.gov.uk/government/publications/agricultural-property-relief-and-business-property-relief-reforms.

It is expected that up to around 2,000 estates will be affected by the changes to APR and BPR in 2026-27, with around half of those being claims that involve AIM shares. Almost three-quarters of estates claiming agricultural property relief (or those claiming agricultural property relief and business property relief together) are expected to be unaffected by these reforms.

In accordance with standard practice, a tax information and impact note will be published alongside the draft legislation before the relevant Finance Bill.

The criteria for routing topics to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s (NICE) Highly Specialised Technologies (HST) programme for evaluation were developed through stakeholder and public consultation. The HST programme aims to strike a balance between the desirability of supporting access to treatments for ultra rare diseases, and the associated reduction in overall health gain across the National Health Service.

The eligible population number was based on an analysis undertaken of previous, current, and potential future HST topics, along with referencing to NHS England and NHS Improvement’s criteria for defining populations eligible for highly specialised services.

The NICE is currently reviewing the criteria and is presenting its proposal to its board on 11 December 2024 and, if the board approves, will proceed with a public consultation from 19 December 2024. The proposed revisions aim to enhance the predictability and transparency of the application of the HST routing criteria, while maintaining the intent of the HST vision.

The Government is committed to providing the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) the resources it needs. It is funded predominately by charging fees to industry for the services it delivers, with additional funding being provided by the Department.

Departmental funding to MHRA is set in advance through collaborative spending review processes which consider the agency’s needs in detail. The Agency also regularly consults on its fees to ensure all costs involved in delivery are recovered.

The Agency is taking significant steps to assess licensing applications within the shortest time possible. It is working to reduce timelines by bringing in additional resources and developing processes that will result in significantly improved response times, while protecting patient safety.

As an effective regulator, it is committed to the highest of standards of performance and delivering the right outcomes for patients and public health. These changes are already resulting in improvements.

Heart valve disease (HVD) affects over 1.5 million people over the age of 65 years old in the United Kingdom, and this number is expected to increase in line with general population growth and the increase in the number of older people. Continuous improvements have been made in the HVD pathway for service users, but there remains unwarranted variation and inequalities in gender.

A review of health inequalities for all specialised cardiac services, including aortic stenosis services, a type of HVD, is currently being undertaken. This will specifically consider the presentation of males versus females with aortic stenosis. In addition, work to improve HVD outcomes includes:

• NHS England working with providers to implement a single point of access pathway for severe aortic stenosis;
• the NHS Long Term Plan, published in 2019, includes a number of key ambitions to improve care and outcomes for those individuals with cardiovascular disease, such as HVD, including enhanced diagnostic support in the community, better personalised planning, and increasing access to cardiac rehabilitation;
• NHS England publishing a learning package for healthcare professionals on heart failure and HVD, which supports clinicians across primary care and community settings to better recognise the symptoms, diagnose, manage, and support patients with heart failure and HVD, as well as support on palliative and end of life care; and
• an NHS England commission of the Primary Care Cardiovascular Society to develop a new referral form to support the investigation of HVD to guide primary healthcare teams to confidently refer patients with suspected, or known, HVD for specialist assessment or echocardiography, or both, where appropriate.

My Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care will set out expectations for mental health funding, including the share of overall National Health Service expenditure in 2025/26, in due course, as required under section 3(2) of the Health and Care Act 2022.

A Written Ministerial Statement (WMS) was laid in both Houses of Parliament on 21 November to launch the consultation on the proposed modern slavery regulations for the National Health Service, and is available on the parliament.UK website, in an online only format. As stated in the WMS, the regulations and guidance have been published in draft form alongside the consultation and, subject to the outcome of the consultation, the Department intends to lay draft regulations before Parliament in due course.

The published guidance, which is available on the GOV.UK website in an online only format, refers to a risk assessment tool that NHS England is currently developing based on the six characteristics to help assess modern slavery risks, as set out in Public Procurement Policy Note 02/23 -Tackling Modern Slavery in Government Supply Chains, a copy of which is attached. These characteristics are: industry type; nature of the workforce; supplier location; context in which the supplier operates; commodity type; and business or supply chain model.

The Department would of course welcome ideas and suggestions on risk assessment tools and methodologies in responses to the consultation.

On 21 October, we launched a national conversation on the future of the National Health Service, inviting views from across the country on how to reform the NHS and make it fit for the future. This includes the Change NHS portal, which is open to everyone, and is available on the change.NHS.UK website. Public service interpreters can respond to the surveys on the website, including on the dedicated workforce section. We want a wide range of health and care staff to share their views, irrespective of whether they are NHS employees. We would welcome public service interpreters sharing their experience. We have been in touch with the National Register of Public Service Interpreters to ensure interpreters are aware of the engagement exercise.

Where local authorities decide to charge for the provision of care and support, they must follow the Care Act 2014 and the Care and Support (Charging and Assessment of Resources) Regulations 2014, and they must act under the Care and Support Statutory Guidance. The responsibility for interpreting and applying the law and the guidance rests with local authorities. The information requested is not held by the Government.

Where local authorities decide to charge for the provision of care and support, they must follow the Care Act 2014 and the Care and Support (Charging and Assessment of Resources) Regulations 2014, and they must act under the Care and Support Statutory Guidance. The responsibility for interpreting and applying the law and the guidance rests with local authorities. The information requested is not held by the Government.

Where local authorities decide to charge for the provision of care and support, they must follow the Care Act 2014 and the Care and Support (Charging and Assessment of Resources) Regulations 2014, and they must act under the Care and Support Statutory Guidance. The responsibility for interpreting and applying the law and the guidance rests with local authorities. The information requested is not held by the Government.

In September 2023, the Department funded National Institute for Health and Care Research launched a two-stage open competition to fund 13 new Health Protection Research Units (HPRUs). Each HPRU is a collaborative research partnership between the UK Health Security Agency and a university or group of universities. Overall, the HPRUs have been awarded £77 million of funding over five years for research to protect the public from health threats.

The following table sets out the applications received by region, and where the university is either the lead applicant or a collaborating partner on the HPRU application:

Decisions on whether licensed medicines, including antivirals for COVID-19, should be recommended for routine National Health Service funding are made independently by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), on the basis of the evidence of costs and benefits.

The NICE recommends the antiviral Paxlovid, a combination of nirmatrelvir plus ritonavir, as an option for treating COVID-19 in adults, only if they do not need supplemental oxygen for COVID-19, and they have any of the following:

• an increased risk for progression to severe COVID-19, as defined in the guidance;
• are aged 70 years old and over;
• a body mass index of 35 kilogram per square metre or more;
• diabetes; or
• heart failure.

A phased implementation of the NICE’s recommendations on Paxlovid has been agreed, to allow more time for the NHS to put in place the capacity and infrastructure needed for the full rollout to all eligible patients. Prescribers, including general practitioners, are currently able to prescribe Paxlovid to NHS patients at the highest risk of severe COVID-19, in line with the approach to rollout set out in the NICE’s guidance.

Since the introduction of the current criteria used for routing topics to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s (NICE) Highly Specialised Technologies (HST) programme, the NICE has identified one topic routed to the HST programme where flexibility was exercised in relation to the eligible patient population. This topic was pegzilarginase for treating arginase-1 deficiency, for which the estimated eligible patient population was 320.