Written questions by Cane.

Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the answer of 19 May 2026 to question 1352, if she will set out a timeline for including Battery Energy Storage Systems as an activity within the Environmental Permitting Regulations.

Awaiting answer.

What consideration he has given to the introduction of a price cap for heating oil.

Awaiting answer.

What steps her Department is taking to support rural police forces.

This Government is introducing the most radical and comprehensive policing reforms in nearly 200 years. We will modernise policing in this country – equipping it to tackle more sophisticated, online, and cross-border crimes (like wildlife crime and organised equipment theft), while also restoring neighbourhood policing.With the Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee every neighbourhood, rural or urban, now gets named and contactable officers dedicated to tackling crime and anti-social behaviour locally. Every rural area will also be covered by a Local Policing Area under a commander responsible for emergency response, local crime investigation and neighbourhood policing. They will be set targets to ensure they answer 90% of 999 calls within 10 seconds and attend 90% of the most serious incidents within 20 minutes in rural areas.Last financial year (FY25/26) we provided £800,000 of funding to the National Rural Crime Unit and the National Wildlife Crime Unit, and we will be providing the same level of funding in 26/27. These capabilities play key roles in helping police across the UK tackle organised theft and disrupt serious and organised crime groups, which can pose unique challenges for policing in large and isolated rural areas.The Government recognises that there can be challenges in responding to rural crime, which is why we worked closely with the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) to deliver the next iteration of their Rural and Wildlife Crime strategy and sets out operational and organisational policing priorities in respect of tackling those crimes that predominantly affect our rural communities.

Innovation and Technology, pursuant to the answer of 20 May 2026 to question 900062, when the Women in Tech taskforce will make its first recommendations on education and career pathways.

Awaiting answer.

What population size Neighbourhood Health Centres should serve in rural areas.

Awaiting answer.

Pursuant to the answer of 21 May 2026 to question 1353, if he will provide a timeline for the publication of Golden Hello scheme data.

Awaiting answer.

Pursuant to the answer of 20 May 2026 to question 1351, if she will set a timeline for updating the House on considerations of conversion rights between civil partnerships and marriages for opposite-sex couples.

Awaiting answer.

If his Department will consider suspending all trade between the UK and Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Awaiting answer.

What assessment his Department has made of making regulations under Section 28 of the National Health Service Reform and Health Care Professions Act 2002 to provide regulatory oversight of the General Medical Council and the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service.

Awaiting answer.

What steps her Department is taking to help reduce incidents of shoplifting in the Ely and East Cambridgeshire constituency.

Driving down retail crime remains a key priority as set out in the Plan for Change.The central aim of our police reforms is to protect and revitalise neighbourhood policing. We are lifting national responsibilities off local forces so they focus on tackling local issues, like fighting retail crime.We will deliver 13,000 additional neighbourhood policing personnel into roles across England and Wales by the end of this Parliament. By February 2026 we had delivered more than 3,100 additional police officers and PCSOs into neighbourhood roles. The first-year growth target was first exceeded in January 2026, two months ahead of schedule.Through our Crime and Policing Bill, this Government has introduced a new specific standalone offence of assaulting a retail worker to help tackle the epidemic of shop theft and violence towards shop workers that we have seen in recent years and protect the hardworking and dedicated staff that work in stores.This bespoke offence will send a clear signal to perpetrators that assaults on retail workers are unacceptable and won’t go unpunished. It will also ensure that assaults on retail workers are separately recorded so that we know the true scale of the problem, enabling the police to respond accordinglyAdditionally, we are removing the legislation which makes shop theft of and below £200 a summary-only offence, sending a clear message that any level of shop theft is illegal and will be taken seriouslyA small proportion of offenders drive a disproportionate level of crime: around 9% of offenders account for over half of all convictions nationally. More specifically, prolific offenders are responsible for c.70% of all theft offences. We are supporting police forces to better tackle this cohort and are now working on a plan to pilot strengthened approaches in select force areas.We are providing £7 million over a three‑year period covering 2025 to 2028, to tackle retail crime, including continuing to fund a specialist policing team – in partnership with the retail sector - to better understand the tactics used by organised retail crime gangs and identify more offenders.

Food and Rural Affairs, what consideration her Department has given to including Battery Energy Storage Sites within the Environmental Permitting Regulations.

We are committed to including Battery Energy Storage Solutions as an activity in the Environmental Permitting Regulations, subject to final policy review.

What assessment his Department has made of the effectiveness of the dental recruitment incentive scheme on reducing dental practice vacancies in the Ely and East Cambridgeshire Constituency.

The responsibility for commissioning primary care dentistry to meet the needs of the local population is delegated to the integrated care boards (ICBs) across England. For the Ely and East Cambridgeshire constituency, this is the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB.ICBs are continuing to recruit dentists through the Golden Hello scheme. The scheme offers a £20,000 recruitment incentive payment to dentists to work in those areas that need them most. The recruitment of dentists in underserved areas remains a priority and ICBs continue to be able to use the scheme in 2026/27, alongside locally led schemes.Golden Hello data will be published this year and will consist of data showing the regional distribution of the original allocation of posts and the number of posts recruited to at both a national and regional level.

What consideration her Department has given to the issuing of nationwide guidance on school uniform policy, to permit the removal of blazers, jumpers and ties when pupils are uncomfortably hot.

Awaiting answer.

What consideration her Department has given to permitting the conversion of opposite-sex civil partnerships to marriages.

In 2019, when civil partnerships were made available for opposite-sex couples in England and Wales, the Government ran a public consultation on the future of conversion rights between marriage and civil partnerships for both opposite-sex and same-sex couples in England and Wales:https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/civil-partnerships-next-steps-and-consultation-on-conversion#:~:text=We%20are%20seeking%20views%20on,be%20brought%20to%20an%20endThis Government is considering all options, and we will update the House in due course.

What steps he is taking to improve access to NHS dentistry in the Ely and East Cambridgeshire constituency.

The responsibility for commissioning primary care dentistry to meet the needs of the local population is delegated to the integrated care boards (ICBs) across England. For the Ely and East Cambridgeshire constituency, this is the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB.1.8 million additional courses of National Health Service dental treatment have been delivered in the seven months between April to October 2025 compared to the corresponding months prior to the general election, nearly half of which were delivered to children. We have reduced the underspend from £392 million in 2023/24 to just £36 million in 2024/25, maximising the treatments provided for taxpayers’ money and delivering on our aim that every penny for NHS dentistry is spent on NHS dentistry.From April 2026, we began introducing a package of reforms to address some of the pressing issues that dentists and dental teams have been experiencing. These reforms will prioritise those with the greatest need, shifting care away from clinically unnecessary check-ups.We are also committed to fundamentally reforming the dental contract, with a focus on matching resources to need, improving access, promoting prevention, and rewarding dentists fairly, while enabling the whole dental team to work to the top of their capability.

Whether she plans to account for the costs of transporting SEND students to school in rural areas when making future funding allocations.

Central government funding for home-to-school travel is provided through the Local Government Finance Settlement administered by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. The Settlement uses relative needs formulae to assess each local authority’s relative need to spend on specific services. From the 2026/27 financial year, we have introduced a new specific relative needs formula for home-to-school travel which estimates each authority’s relative need to spend based on pupil numbers and home-to-school distances. This ensures funding reflects real journeys to school including those for rural local authorities.

When his Department plans to respond to the Law Commission's recommendations on the reclamation and reuse of graves.

The Law Commission’s recommendations on burial were published on 18 March 2026 in its final report on the Burial and Cremation sub-project of a wider review of the legislative framework for burial, cremation and new funerary methods. Reports will also be published in due course in relation to New Funerary Methods and Rights and Obligations relating to Funerary Methods, Funerals and Remains.The Government will consider the Law Commission’s recommendations carefully and will respond in due course.

Innovation and Technology, pursuant to the answer of 24 March 2026 to question 121001, whether her Department has considered the use of independent, real-terms data when mapping mobile coverage.

Ofcom is responsible for reporting on the availability of telecommunications networks across the UK.Government has restated the importance of Ofcom continuing to improve its reporting of mobile coverage in the draft Statement of Strategic Priorities for telecommunications, the management of spectrum and postal services. This includes building on the launch of Map Your Mobile tool in June 2025, by exploring more use of measured and crowdsourced data to measure network performance.Any use of independent data to support the mapping of mobile coverage and performance of mobile networks needs to be done in a robust way; this is something Ofcom are currently exploring.

Pursuant to the answer of 26 March 2026 to question 121006, whether her Department will consider underlying geology within its review of the funding formula for the distribution of capital funding to local highways authorities.

The Department expects to consider underlying geology, as one of the many conditions that affect the wear and tear of local roads, as part of its review of the funding formula it uses to distribution highways maintenance funding to local highway authorities.

Innovation and Technology, whether her Department has assessed the suitability of incentives to build mobile network infrastructure to meet the needs of rural areas.

Jointly funded by the Government and the UK’s mobile network operators, the Shared Rural Network is utilising Government funding to incentivise mobile network operators to deliver commercial outdoor mobile coverage in rural areas, where there was previously limited or no 4G coverage at all. The programme has successfully delivered its main objective of 95% 4G geographic coverage from at least one operator by the end of 2025 and will continue to deliver coverage improvements until it closes in January 2027.Government is also committed to ensuring the policy and regulatory framework drives investment in widespread high-quality mobile connectivity across the UK, including working to identify and address barriers to deployment of mobile infrastructure where appropriate. To support this, we have recently launched the Mobile Market Review call for evidence, calling on stakeholders to provide detailed evidence on how developments across the sector impact investment in connectivity over the long-term and what more Government can do to support this. The call for evidence is open for responses until 5 May 2026.