Written questions by Jarvis.

Innovation and Technology, when she plans to implement the recommendations set out in policy paper entitled Replacing animals in science: A strategy to support the development, validation and uptake of alternative methods, published on 11 November 2025.

The Government’s new strategy sets out our long-term vision for a world where the use of animals in science is eliminated in all but exceptional circumstances, achieved by creating a research and innovation system that drives the development and validation of alternative methods to using animals in science. The strategy has 26 commitments which will be delivered or started during 2026 and 2027 to prioritise the development of non-animal testing methods. This includes creating a preclinical translational models' hub and publishing areas of research interest for alternative methods.

What steps she is taking to help ensure young people from all backgrounds can pursue a career in STEM.

Following the Curriculum and Assessment review, our new national curriculum and GCSEs will have improved coherence, specificity, sequencing, and will be grounded in the most important knowledge and disciplinary skills.We will take forward many subject-specific Review recommendations for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), including working with schools to support them in developing a triple science offer for all pupils, ahead of introducing a statutory entitlement. We will build on support for early years and year 7 maths teaching, including through Maths Hubs programmes.Through the Careers and Enterprise Company, the department funds high quality resources to embed STEM insights into the curriculum and match over 3,500 business volunteers, including 1,400 from STEM backgrounds, with schools and colleges to provide strategic support to develop their careers programme.These measures will ensure that every child leaves school having mastered the subjects they have been taught and is able to pursue a career in their chosen field.

Whether his Department has assessed the adequacy of access to CAMHS services for children in Eastleigh constituency.

The Department has made no assessment of the adequacy of access to children and adolescent mental health services for children in the Eastleigh constituency. The 10-Year Health Plan sets out ambitious plans to boost mental health support across the country, including children and young people’s mental health services in the Eastleigh constituency. As prioritised in our Medium-Term Planning Framework, we are taking action to reduce the longest waits for specialist mental health support, tackling regional disparities, and expanding access, thereby making services more productive so children and young people spend less time waiting for the treatment they need. We are also accelerating the rollout of Mental Health Support Teams in schools and colleges to reach full national coverage by 2029. As part of this, we are investing an additional £13 million to pilot enhanced training for staff so that they can offer more effective support to young people with complex needs, such as trauma, neurodivergence and disordered eating. With an additional 900,000 children and young people having access by this spring, 60% of all pupils will have access to this early support at school, up from 44% in spring 2024. More widely, we are, rolling out Young Futures Hubs. The Government’s first 50 Young Futures Hubs will bring together services at a local level to support children and young people, helping to ensure that young people can access early advice and wellbeing intervention. We will work to ensure there is no wrong door for young people who need support with their mental health.

What steps she is taking to support young carers in school in Eastleigh constituency.

Statutory guidance ‘Keeping children safe in education’ states that all school staff should be alert to the potential need for early help for young carers and requires designated safeguarding leads to be trained to understand and respond to their needs. These expectations apply to all schools ensuring young carers, including those in Eastleigh, are supported to thrive in education. The department is using school census data to shine a light on the educational disadvantage faced by young carers and published data on their attainment at key stages 2 and 4 for the first time last autumn. This increased visibility will ensure they receive tailored support and do not miss out on vital educational opportunities. Further, Ofsted’s new education inspection framework places a direct focus on their inclusion, safeguarding and personal development, with explicit reference to young carers. This will drive stronger practice, identification and support for young carers in Eastleigh and nationally.

What steps his Department is taking to help promote the growth of independent brewers in Eastleigh constituency.

The Government recognises that independent breweries are essential to the diversity and character of our pubs. We have conducted a review of the beer market to determine whether there are any structural barriers preventing small breweries, the findings from which are currently being considered by ministers. We’ve introduced a Hospitality Support Scheme to co-fund projects aligned with Department for Business & Trade and Hospitality Sector Council priorities, such as supporting initiatives like investing £440,000 to help rural pubs diversify as community hubs, delivered with Pub is The Hub to unlock over 40 stalled projects. We also maintain regular engagement with trade bodies such as Society of Independent Brewers, as well as colleagues across government, to ensure that policy decisions are informed by the latest evidence and genuinely support the sector’s long-term stability.

What steps he is taking to support pubs with operating costs in Eastleigh constituency.

My department works closely with hospitality businesses to assess impact of rising operating costs across energy, staffing, compliance and taxation. This includes regular engagement with the sector, including through the Hospitality Sector Council which provides a formal forum to co-create solutions to pressures facing the industry. We also maintain regular engagement with trade bodies such as UKHospitality and the British Beer and Pub Association, as well as colleagues across government, to ensure that policy decisions are informed by the latest evidence and genuinely support the sector’s long-term stability.

What assessment he has made of the potential impact of transport accessibility on attendance at antenatal appointments and the take-up of routine vaccinations for babies; and what steps he is taking to reduce access barriers for families in underserved areas.

The Government recognises that there are transport accessibility issues for families in underserved areas. That is why we are delivering on the vision for neighbourhood health set out in the 10-Year Health Plan to bring care closer to babies, children, and young people.NHS England is already taking steps to improve access barriers for families in underserved areas. This includes: - hyperlocal projects in areas of high deprivation and low uptake to improve access to routine childhood vaccinations for underserved communities, offering walk-in appointments and extended evening and weekend hours;- Equity and Equality Guidance which asks local services to establish community hubs in the areas with the greatest maternal and perinatal health needs, including areas where transport infrastructure impacts uptake of services; and- rolling out the enhanced Midwifery Continuity of Carer model to provide targeted support for women most likely to experience poor outcomes.

What steps his Department is taking to support Primary Care Networks to deliver improved access to community-based and preventative care.

Primary care networks (PCNs) build on existing primary care services and enable greater provision of proactive, personalised, coordinated, and more integrated health and social care for our communities. The introduction of PCNs helps to deliver economies of scale, boost capacity, and improve access. The PCN contract, the Network Contract DES, which determines the funding PCNs receive and the services they provide, is discussed with the General Practitioners Committee (GPC) of the British Medical Association as part of annual general practice contract consultation between the Department, NHS England, and the GPC. Community health services are an essential building block in developing a neighbourhood health service, working closely with primary care, social care, and other services. To support the shift to neighbourhood health, we have set a clear target for systems to work to reduce long waits for community health services. By 2028/29 at least 80% of community health services activity should take place within 18 weeks. In addition, systems have been asked to increase the capacity of community health service to meet growth in demand and to work to standardise provision of core services.

Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to coordinate data collection across (a) police forces and (b) other public bodies to monitor dog attacks on postal workers, and if she will hold discussions with Cabinet colleagues on a cross-government approach to protect postal workers from such attacks.

Defra is working with the police, local authorities and animal welfare groups to help prevent dog attacks. As part of this work, the Government reconvened the Responsible Dog Ownership taskforce to explore measures to promote responsible dog ownership across all breeds of dog. The taskforce is considering improvements in data collection and reporting. We look forward to receiving its findings and recommendations in due course.

What assessment she has made of the effectiveness in meeting the 8-week processing deadline for applications under the Ukraine Permission Extension Scheme.

UKVI are currently assessing Ukraine Permission Extension Scheme (UPE) visas within the published processing times. Information on visa processing times can be found at Visa processing times: applications inside the UK - GOV.UK

What assessment her Department has made of the effectiveness of measures taken to raise public awareness of changes to the Highway Code made in 2022, and whether increasing understanding of those changes will be reflected in the implementation of the Road Safety Strategy.

Following updates to the Highway Code in 2022, the department ran a THINK! campaign to raise awareness of the changes. This was followed by broader behaviour change campaigns in 2022 and 2023, to help embed the changes and encourage understanding and uptake of the guidance.The percentage of road users reporting to know either a little or a lot about the Highway Code changes increased from 36% in January 2022 to over 50% in August 2022 and 70% in September 2023, with 86% of road users having heard of the changes by that time.The Government's new road safety strategy identifies that more work is needed to continue embedding these changes.The THINK! campaign will continue to run three radio filler adverts encouraging compliance with the guidance to improve safety for those walking, cycling and horse riding. We will also continue to promote the changes via THINK! and Department for Transport social media channels, as well as through partner organisations.The Road Safety Strategy also sets out further actions to enable safer active travel including supporting councils to provide high-quality, easily accessible active travel schemes across England, and the development of its third Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy (CWIS 3).As our road environment and technologies evolve, providing education for all road users throughout their lifetime is vital to improving road safety.To support a Lifelong Learning approach in the UK, the government will publish for the first time national guidance on the development and delivery of road safety education, training and publicity.Alongside this, the government will publish a manual to support the implementation of a Lifelong Learning approach for road safety.

How her Department will monitor and evaluate the effects of the DVSA’s move to individualised booking of driving tests.

Measures were announced on 12 November that will restrict the booking and management of practical car driving tests to learner drivers, and limit test swaps and location changes. This decision follows a call for evidence and a public consultation that many in the driving instructor industry responded to. These measures take into account the views of those who responded to the consultation and are designed to make the test booking process fairer, providing all learners with equal access to the booking system and ensuring that everyone pays the prescribed fee. The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) will continually monitor the effectiveness of these measures.

What assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of Local Housing Allowance for residents in Eastleigh constituency.

Local Housing Allowance (LHA) determines the maximum levels of housing support for households claiming Housing Benefit or the housing element of Universal Credit and who rent in the private rented sector. LHA is not intended to cover all rents in all areas. In April 2024 LHA rates were increased to the 30th percentile of local market rents, (including in the Eastleigh area), costing £1.2bn across Great Britain (GB) in 2024/25 and £7bn over 5 years. LHA rates were reviewed at Autumn Budget and will remain at current levels in 2026/27. A range of factors were considered, such as rental levels across GB, the challenging fiscal context, and the impact of current levels of housing support For those renters who require additional support to meet a shortfall in rent costs, Discretionary Housing Payments are available from local authorities.

What steps he is taking to ensure that the Keep Britain Working Vanguard Taskforce will adequately factor in the challenges of living with fluctuating conditions.

We are bringing together a Vanguard Taskforce to steer the Keep Britain Working Vanguard Phase and are committed to listening to disabled people and those with long-term health conditions, these voices will be reflected in the outputs of the phase. This Taskforce will advise on the development of a Healthy Working Lifecycle Standard over the Vanguard Phase. The Standard will focus developing the best practices and approaches to drive better outcomes for all those managing health conditions or living with impairments, and as such the challenges of living with fluctuating conditions will be a key consideration.

What assessment she has made of the potential impact of proposed changes to Salary Sacrifice Pension arrangements from 2029 on employer National Insurance costs for charities.

A Tax Information and Impact Note (TIIN) was published alongside the introduction of the Bill containing the changes to pensions salary sacrifice. Everyone using salary sacrifice will still benefit from the tax advantages available up to the £2,000 cap, including employers who can make up to £320 employer NICs savings per employee. Most salary sacrifice contributions are well below the £2,000 cap. This applies for all employers, including employers in the charity sector. Employer pension contributions outside of salary sacrifice will continue to be NICs-free. The Government also provides support for charities via our wider tax regime. It is among the most generous anywhere in the world, with tax reliefs for charities and their donors worth just over £6 billion for the tax year to April 2024.

If he will make an assessment of potential merits of establishing a single National Dementia Care Pathway supported by minimum service standards in the forthcoming Dementia and Frailty Modern Service Framework.

To develop the content for the modern service framework for dementia and frailty, we intend to engage with a range of partners over the coming months to enable us to build a framework which is both ambitious and practical, to ensure we can improve system performance for people with dementia both now and in the future.We have already published the D100: Assessment Tool Pathway programme, which brings together multiple resources into a single, consolidated tool to help simplify best practice for system leaders and help create communities and services where the best possible care and support is available to those with dementia. The D100: Pathway Assessment Tool is available at the following link:https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/improving-care/nccmh/service-design-and-development/dementia-100-pathway-assessment-toolBy helping places and systems identify where improvement needs to be targeted, the tool continues the work of the Dementia Care Pathway, covering all elements of the Well Pathway from Prevention through to Dying Well. Further information is available at the following link:https://www.england.nhs.uk/mentalhealth/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2016/03/dementia-well-pathway.pdf

What steps he is taking to help improve the recruitment and retention of staff in women’s health services in Hampshire.

Decisions about recruitment are a matter for individual National Health Service employers, who manage this at a local level to ensure they have the staff they need to deliver safe and effective care.The 10 Year Workforce Plan will ensure the NHS has the right people in the right places, with the right skills to care for patients, when they need it.As set out in the 10-Year Health Plan, the Government is committed to making the NHS the best place to work, by supporting and retaining our hardworking and dedicated healthcare professionals.To support this ambition, the Government plans to introduce a new set of standards for modern employment in April 2026. The new standards will reaffirm our commitment to improving retention by tackling the issues that matter to staff including promoting flexible working, improving staff health and wellbeing, and dealing with violence, racism, and sexual harassment in the NHS workplace. They will provide a framework for leaders across the NHS to build a supportive culture that embeds retention.

What steps she is taking to support families of disadvantaged pupils with the cost of school trips.

It is for schools to decide whether to offer school trips to their pupils. Schools receive pupil premium funding to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils, which may be used to support extracurricular activities, including school trips.Schools must comply with the law on charging for school activities, which prohibits charging for education provided during school hours. This means they may not make compulsory charges for a trip which takes place during school hours but they may ask parents for voluntary contributions towards the cost of the trip.

What discussions she has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the potential merits of increasing the 3- and 4-year-old childcare funded hours rate.

The department will provide over £9.5 billion for the early years entitlements in 2026/27. This will fund a full year of the expanded entitlements and an above inflation increase to funding rates. This increase ensures funding for the entitlements reflects forecasts of average earnings and inflation next year, and the national living wage announced at the Autumn Budget. On average, nationally, we are increasing the 3- and 4-year-old hourly funding rate by 4.95%. Since the introduction of the Early Years National Funding Formula in 2017, the national average funding rate to local authorities for 2-year-olds has been higher than that for 3-4-year-olds. We know, from listening to the sector and from our own regular research, that the cost of delivery is highest for younger children due to tighter staffing ratios and, consequently, higher staff costs, as staffing makes up the most significant proportion of provider costs. Our funding rates are set to reflect this.

Whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of publishing national dementia outcomes for neighbourhood health services and requiring integrated care boards to demonstrate timely access to specialist, community-based dementia support.

NHS England already collect and publish data about people with dementia at each general practice in England, to enable National Health Service general practitioners (GPs) and commissioners to make informed choices about how to plan their dementia services around patients’ needs.The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities Dementia Intelligence Network has also developed a tool for local systems, which includes an assessment of population characteristics such as rurality and socio-economic deprivation. This enables systems to investigate local variation in diagnosis and take informed action to enhance their diagnosis rates. The tool is available via the NHS Futures Collaboration platform.This Government is empowering local leaders with the autonomy they need to provide the best services to their local community, including those with dementia. That is why we have published the D100: Assessment Tool Pathway programme, which brings together multiple resources into a single, consolidated tool. This will help simplify best practice for system leaders and help create communities and services where the best possible care and support is available to those with dementia. The D100: Pathway Assessment Tool is available at the following link:https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/improving-care/nccmh/service-design-and-development/dementia-100-pathway-assessment-toolWe are making progress on building a National Care Service based on higher quality of care, greater choice and control, and joined-up neighbourhood services, with around £4.6 billion of additional funding available for adult social care by 2028/29 compared to 2025/26.We are strengthening join-up between health and social care services, so that people experience more integrated and person-centred care, by developing neighbourhood health services and reforming the Better Care Fund. This will be fortified by improved national data and digital infrastructure to ensure health and care staff can access real-time information to improve the safety and quality of care.