Written questions by Robertson.

Pursuant to the Answer of 28 March 2025 to Question 40054 on Great British Energy: Logos, what the internal costs were for the redesign of the Great British Energy logo.

As per my answer to Questions 42936 and 42937 the staff involved in the creation of Great British Energy’s logo were not recruited specifically to design the logo. Therefore, a detailed breakdown of the time and costs involved is not readily available and could only be provided at disproportionate cost. I can however assure the hon Member that the Government is committed to ensuring that staff resources are used efficiently and effectively.

Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to his Department's guidance entitled Simpler recycling: workplace recycling in England, published on 29 November 2024, whether offices are now required to rinse or wash empty food containers and bottles to place in recyclable waste.

Yes, as of 31 March 2025 all workplaces with ten or more full-time equivalent employees, including offices, must separate out recycling (plastic, metal, glass, paper and card) and food waste for recycling. Recyclables should be rinsed to remove any food or other contaminants to ensure the materials can be recycled.

What estimate he has made of the proportion of additional funding for community pharmacies that will be required from 1 April 2025 to cover the increase in (a) employer National Insurance contributions, (b) business rates and (c) the National Minimum Wage in (i) 2024-25 and (ii) 2025-26.

We have taken the necessary decisions to fix the foundations in the public finances at the Autumn Budget, and this enabled the Spending Review settlement of a £22.6 billion increase in resource spending for the Department, from 2023/24 outturn to 2025/26.The Department considered the increase in the National Living Wage when consulting on the funding arrangements for community pharmacy. We have now agreed with Community Pharmacy England to increase the community pharmacy contractual framework to £3.073 billion from April 2025. This deal represents the largest uplift in funding of any part of the National Health Service, at over 19% across 2024/25 and 2025/26.

What type of mental health support will patients who are prescribed antidepressants be able to receive from community pharmacies.

The New Medicine Service (NMS) is an advanced service offered by community pharmacies, providing patients with advice to address any possible side effects, issues, or questions that patients who are prescribed a new medicine may have. The service focuses on treatments for long-term conditions, including asthma and hypertension.Early interventions of this type can improve medication adherence, patient outcomes, and can reduce pressure on the wider National Health Service. From October 2025, the NMS will expand to introduce depression as a further therapeutic area for which patients can receive support.

What steps his Department is taking to increase (a) survival rates from out-of-hospital cardiac arrests and (b) the availability of defibrillators in Isle of Wight East constituency.

To improve patients' survival rates following out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, the Government has committed to improving access to Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) in public spaces and reducing inequalities in access to these life saving devices. Following the depletion of the existing AED Fund, launched in September 2023, the Government approved a further £500,000 in August 2024 to fulfil existing applications to the fund.As part of the application process, the Department has selected Smarter Society as its independent partner to manage grant applications against requirements specified by the Department, to ensure that resources are allocated to where there is the greatest need, for instance remote communities with extended ambulance response times, places with high footfall and high population densities, hotspots for cardiac arrest including sporting venues and venues with vulnerable people, and deprived areas.When an AED is installed, these defibrillators are required to be registered on The Circuit, the national defibrillator and ambulance service database. Upon registration, contact details are provided for the nominated AED guardian/s who are local to the defibrillator’s location and conduct checks when required. One AED has been distributed through the fund to the Isle of Wight East postcode area.

Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 21 February 2025 to Question 26635 on Domestic Waste: Waste Disposal, whether (a) his Department and (b) WRAP has undertaken research on restricting residual waste volumes by capping the quantity of bin bags provided to local households for collection.

No, Defra has not undertaken research on this. WRAP, supported by Defra, and with input from local authorities, has developed good practice guidance on household and commercial waste collections designed to help local authorities deliver quality waste and recycling services to citizens in England. This will include guidance on residual waste collection and is intended to be published shortly.

Communities and Local Government, whether she has assessed compliance costs associated with local authority planning approvals.

Ensuring compliance with planning approvals is a matter for local planning authorities. As such, the Department has not made an assessment of the costs involved.

Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 4 March 2025 to Question 32568 on Litter: Fines, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of the Code of Practice on Litter and Refuse being non-statutory on levels of compliance with that guidance.

The Code of Practice on Litter and Refuse, as it relates to cleaning standards, is statutory guidance. The code was amended in 2019 to include advisory guidance on litter enforcement. We do not intend to make an assessment of levels of compliance with the enforcement guidance. The Government is however currently examining the benefits of making it statutory.

Innovation and Technology, whether his Department plans to commission external reviews of digital compliance regulations.

The Government's independent regulators regularly review regulations and provide their independent recommendations to the Secretary of State to ensure that these regulations are effective and support businesses within the sector.

Communities and Local Government, how often her Department assesses compliance costs associated with local government administration.

The Department regularly engages with authorities across the country to understand the administrative costs councils face, and to work with the sector to reduce these. The Local Government Finance Settlement for 2025-26 makes available over £69 billion for local government, which is a 6.8% cash terms increase in councils’ Core Spending Power on 2024-25. The majority of funding in the Settlement is unringfenced, recognising that local leaders are best placed to identify local priorities.

Innovation and Technology, how frequently his Department reviews compliance costs for the technology sector.

Sections 28–31 of the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 set the legislative requirements for the inclusion of statutory review provisions in secondary legislation, including that a report of the first review must be published within five years of the relevant legislation's commencement date and subsequent reports published at intervals not exceeding five years. In the absence of a review provision, the post-implementation review statutory guidance made under section 31 of the act states that policies should still be subject to proportionate monitoring, evaluation and non-statutory review, where appropriate.

What steps her Department takes to calculate compliance costs education-related regulations.

The department assesses education-related regulation compliance costs for businesses and households as per the Better Regulation Framework, which can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/better-regulation-framework. This typically involves a proportionate assessment of the costs following the steps outlined in the framework:Stakeholder consultation.Rationale for regulation.Options Assessment.Economic analysis of the expected compliance costs, including the Small and Micro Business Assessment.Development of a regulatory impact assessment (RIA), including the estimated direct costs to businesses and households. These RIAs are scrutinised by the Regulatory Policy Committee (RPC) as required and published alongside legislation when laid before Parliament. The RPC also publishes opinions of the department’s RIAs, all of which in the past ten years have been Green-rated as fit-for-purpose. These can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/rpc-opinions-for-department-for-education. Compliance costs of regulations to public sector services such as local authorities, schools and children’s services are estimated in a similar way. This can involve consultation with impacted stakeholders, analysis of expected administration and adaptation costs, evidence from similar regulations and modelling of potential impacts as appropriate.

Whether compliance obligations related to defence procurement will be assessed for potential reduction.

Through our acquisition reforms we are streamlining our processes and taking risk-based approaches to procurement. We will focus assurance activity where it is most needed, reducing bureaucracy to drive pace in delivery, while ensuring compliance with the Department’s legal obligations.

What her Department's policy is on whether compliance costs reported for financial regulations should be subject to periodic independent verification.

Following the announcement to cut the administrative costs of regulation on businesses by 25% by the end of this Parliament, the government is now taking forward a baselining exercise to understand how much regulation is costing and where it can be reformed to remove unnecessary burdens and achieve its policy objectives more efficiently. We are considering a range of methodologies to ensure our baselining is robust. The Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 requires the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) to undertake and publish a Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) when consulting on any proposal to make or amend rules, to analyse the likely expected costs and benefits arising from the changes. The FCA and PRA are also required to maintain CBA Panels which provide advice on the preparation of CBAs.

What estimate his Department has made of the cost to community pharmacies of the rise in (a) business rates and (b) the National Minimum Wage from 1 April 2025.

We have taken the necessary decisions to fix the foundations in the public finances at the Autumn Budget, and this enabled the Spending Review settlement of a £22.6 billion increase in resource spending for the Department from 2023/24 outturn to 2025/26.The Department has considered the increases in the National Living Wage when consulting on the funding arrangements for community pharmacy. We have now agreed with Community Pharmacy England to increase the community pharmacy contractual framework to £3.073 billion from April 2025. This deal represents the largest uplift in funding of any part of the National Health Service, at over 19% across 2024/25 and 2025/26.

Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 4 March 2025 to Question 32569 on Domestic Waste: Recycling and Waste Disposal, whether WRAP provided guidance on the Simpler Recycling reforms to residual waste collection.

WRAP, supported by Defra, and with input from local authorities, has developed good practice guidance on household and commercial waste collections designed to help local authorities deliver quality waste and recycling services to citizens in England. This will include guidance on residual waste collection and is intended to be published shortly.

Pursuant to the Answer of 4 March 2025 to Question 32576 on Fires: Air Pollution, whether the UK Health Security Agency and its predecessor has made an assessment of the impact of air pollution caused by backyard burning of domestic waste on public health.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), formerly Public Health England, has published systematic reviews of the epidemiological studies on the health impacts associated with outdoor and indoor exposure to solid fuel burning. This included biomass and coal, and respiratory diseases in children and adults. The evidence suggests that burning solid fuels indoors could contribute to the risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer in adults, while the evidence for other respiratory effects is less clear. The results regarding outdoor exposure and the health effects were too limited to draw firm conclusions.The evidence of links between exposure to air pollution and a wider range of health effects, such as adverse birth outcomes, diabetes, and increased dementia risk, also continues to build, with varying strengths of evidence. This was noted in the Chief Medical Officer’s Annual Report on air pollution 2022, which the UKHSA contributed to. This report is available at the following link:https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/chief-medical-officers-annual-report-2022-air-pollution

Food and Rural Affairs, whether his Department has funded any publications produced by WRAP in each of the last three years.

Yes, Defra has funded a number of publications produced by WRAP in each of the last three years including publications on food waste reduction, recycling and textiles.

Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 4 March 2025 to Question 32568 on Litter: Fines, if he will take steps to issue guidance to local authorities on establishing a mechanism to (a) appeal and (b) review fixed penalty notices.

There is no formal right of appeal against a fixed penalty notice. If an alleged offender does not accept their liability for the offence, there is no requirement on them to pay the fixed penalty. They may have to defend their case in court. We consider it good practice for councils to operate an informal dispute process to minimise the number of cases that reach court. Advisory enforcement guidance attached to the Code of Practice on Litter and Refuse provides enforcing authorities with advice on how to operate a process for informally disputing liability. The Government is currently considering the benefits of placing this guidance on a statutory footing.

Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 4 March 2025 to Question 32571 on WRAP: Finance, how much funding to WRAP has been budgeted for the 2025-26 financial year.

A WRAP grant provision of £5,952,500 for 2025-26 is planned, this is provisional subject to agreement of the 2025-26 programme proposal from WRAP.