Asked by: Paul Kohler (Liberal Democrat - Wimbledon)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many full-time equivalent police officers there were in England and Wales in each of the last five years.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office collects and publishes data on the size of the police workforce in England and Wales, on a bi-annual basis, as at 31 March and 30 September each year in the ‘Police Workforce, England and Wales’ statistical bulletin, available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/police-workforce-england-and-wales.
The latest information on the number of police officers, as at 30 September 2025, is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-workforce-england-and-wales-30-september-2025.
Table 4 of the data tables accompanying the release includes information on the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) police officers as at 31 March and 30 September each year from 2007 to 2025.
Asked by: Baroness Spielman (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Hanson of Flint on 22 January (HL13397), whether they will now answer the question put.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
In light of the Baroness Spielman’s further Parliamentary question, the department has reviewed the response and is now able to offer further detail, subject to the constraints of commercial confidentiality during the live procurement process.
The Home Office has conducted comprehensive market engagement to assess the risks and opportunities of remote English language testing, recognising that all delivery models whether paper-based, in-person, or remote carry fraud risks. The new service shall be subject to a rigorous implementation regime of operational, security and technical testing for up 15 months. Once live, the new service shall include robust safeguards including two-stage identity verification, active session monitoring, tamperproof systems, comprehensive audit regimes, mystery shopping, and annual independent audits. Fraud will be monitored through these mechanisms as part of the overall provisions of the Government Model Services Contract that has been tailored and enhanced for these services.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she will integrate Special Grant funding into the core settlement provided to Bedfordshire Police.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The 2026-27 Final Police Funding Settlement confirmed £49.6m for Special Grant in the coming financial year. Funding for Bedfordshire Police will be up to £175.8m, an increase of up to £7.5m from 2025-26. Special Grant awards will be confirmed in due course.
The government has set out an ambitious programme of police reform in the Police Reform White Paper, and has committed to reform of the police funding model.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she will provide an update on the status of Special Grant funding to Bedfordshire Police.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The 2026-27 Final Police Funding Settlement confirmed £49.6m for Special Grant in the coming financial year. Funding for Bedfordshire Police will be up to £175.8m, an increase of up to £7.5m from 2025-26. Special Grant awards will be confirmed in due course.
The government has set out an ambitious programme of police reform in the Police Reform White Paper, and has committed to reform of the police funding model.
Asked by: Mims Davies (Conservative - East Grinstead and Uckfield)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many asylum seekers have absconded from the Copthorne Hotel Gatwick Airport to date.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
This Government inherited a broken asylum system, with tens of thousands stuck in a backlog and claims not being processed, wasting millions in taxpayer money. We will empty asylum hotels as soon as possible, and by the end of this Parliament. That is a complex process that must be delivered through a controlled, managed and orderly plan of work.
For the safety, security, and wellbeing of those we accommodate, we do not publicly comment on individual hotels which may or may not be utilised by the Home Office, nor do we provide details of those we accommodate at any site.
The latest published Immigration Statistics detail the number of supported asylum seekers accommodated in each local authority area. These statistics can be found at Immigration system statistics data tables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Asked by: Mims Davies (Conservative - East Grinstead and Uckfield)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, when will the Copthorne Hotel Gatwick Airport cease to provide asylum accommodation.
Answered by Alex Norris - Minister of State (Home Office)
This Government inherited a broken asylum system, with tens of thousands stuck in a backlog and claims not being processed, wasting millions in taxpayer money. We will empty asylum hotels as soon as possible, and by the end of this Parliament. That is a complex process that must be delivered through a controlled, managed and orderly plan of work.
For the safety, security, and wellbeing of those we accommodate, we do not publicly comment on individual hotels which may or may not be utilised by the Home Office, nor do we provide details of those we accommodate at any site.
The latest published Immigration Statistics detail the number of supported asylum seekers accommodated in each local authority area. These statistics can be found at Immigration system statistics data tables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to ensure that Bedfordshire Police have sufficient resource to hit officer number targets.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Government’s Safer Streets Mission sets a clear expectation for policing to deliver safer communities and improved public confidence. An effective, well-supported police service is central to achieving this.
For 2025/26, £376.8 million has been made available to forces to support achievement of officer number targets. This funding was distributed as follows:
For 2025/26, Bedfordshire Police have been allocated a total of up to £3,155,659 through the officer maintenance ringfenced grant, and £1,580,578 through the top-up grant, to maintain a total headcount of 1,466 officers.
Published statistics show the force achieved this target at the mid-year point. As at 30 September 2025, Bedfordshire Police had a total of 1,467 police officers (headcount).
For 2025/26, a total of up to £1,803,234 was also made available to Bedfordshire Police through the neighbourhood policing grant to grow by 38 FTE Neighbourhood Policing officers (30 FTE police officers and 8 FTE PCSOs).
As at 30 September, Bedfordshire Police had grown their neighbourhood policing function by 13 FTE.
Asked by: Peter Bedford (Conservative - Mid Leicestershire)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to ensure that organisations that hold licenses to use animals in science provide those animals with access to food and water; and if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of increasing the sanction given to people who fail to provide access to food and water.
Answered by Dan Jarvis - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
All licensed establishments must fully uphold the required standards for animal welfare as set out in the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 (ASPA) and the Code of Practice for the Housing and Care of Animals Bred, Supplied or Used for Scientific Purposes. This includes clear duties on ensuring animals have access to food and water.
The Animals in Science Regulation Unit (ASRU) audits establishments to assure compliance with these requirements and takes any potential non-compliance very seriously.
Where incidents relating to access to food or water have occurred, ASRU has investigated them in line with its published Compliance Policy Framework, which sets out how potential non-compliance is identified, investigated, and addressed (www.gov.uk/guidance/animal-testing-and-research-compliance-with-aspa).
All cases are thoroughly investigated and ASRU applies the most suitable remedy based on the severity of the incident. A broad range of sanctions are available, and outcomes are published in ASRU’s Annual Report to support learning and ensure transparency. Through consistent delivery of the compliance policy the Regulator aims to drive up standards of welfare.
Asked by: Neil Hudson (Conservative - Epping Forest)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to ensure that police forces receive adequate resources to tackle crime effectively.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The 2026–27 final police funding settlement provides up to £21.0 billion for the policing system in England and Wales. This is an increase of up to £1.3 billion compared with the 2025–26 settlement, representing a 6.7% cash increase and a 4.4% real terms increase.
Police forces will have up to £18.4 billion in 2026-27. This is an increase in funding to forces by up to £796 million, equating to a 4.5% cash increase and 2.3% real terms increase.
The Chancellor set out at the Spending Review that there will be a real terms increase in funding over the next three years. Despite the importance of living within the fiscal constraints, this government is prioritising funding for policing.
£200 million was made available in 2025-26 to support the delivery of 3,000 more neighbourhood policing personnel this year. We are on track to deliver that 3,000 by the end of March - and remain determined to reach 13,000 additional neighbourhood officers by the end of the Parliament.
The 2026-27 settlement ringfences £363 million of total funding to incentivise forces to grow neighbourhood policing teams, which includes an additional £50 million following feedback from the provisional settlement.
Asked by: Victoria Collins (Liberal Democrat - Harpenden and Berkhamsted)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what timeline her Department has for introducing regulations that ensure generative AI cannot be misused to create extreme sexual abuse material involving children.
Answered by Jess Phillips - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
The Government recognises the serious and evolving threat posed by AI being misused to create child sexual abuse material. We know offenders will seek to exploit emerging technologies for their own sexual gratification.
AI-generated child sexual abuse is not a victimless crime. The material often includes depictions of real children, escalating the risk of contact abuse. The volume and realism of this material can make it increasingly challenging for safeguarding partners to identify and protect children. Offenders can also use these images to groom and blackmail children.
That is why this Government has introduced a measure within the Crime and Policing Bill to criminalise AI models that have been developed to create child sexual abuse material. These optimised models produce hyper-realistic indecent images that often contains the likeness of real children. This offence will carry a sentence of up to five years. To further ensure that generative AI models are not misused to create extreme child sexual abuse material, this Government has also sought to update the existing law criminalising ‘paedophile manuals’ to cover AI as well. Manuals which provide guidance on how to use AI to create child sexual abuse material will be punishable by up to three years in prison.
The Crime and Policing Bill is currently at the Lords Committee stage. Subject to parliamentary approval, the Crime and Policing Bill – and thus these two crucial measures to criminalise AI-generated child sexual abuse material – is expected to secure Royal Assent by the Spring of 2026.