Asked by: Baroness Gale (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to provide targeted financial support for people with long-term conditions such as Parkinson’s disease during the cost of living crisis.
Answered by Viscount Younger of Leckie - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Government understands the pressures people are facing with the cost of living, including people with Parkinson’s disease. Over recent years, the government has demonstrated its commitment to supporting the most vulnerable with one of the largest support packages in Europe. The total support over 2022- 2025 to help households and individuals with higher bills amounts to £108 billion – an average of £3,800 per UK household.
We provided a Disability Cost of Living Payment of £150 in June/July 2023 to people in receipt of certain disability benefits such as Personal Independence Payment (PIP) or Disability Living Allowance (DLA). This is in addition to the £150 payment paid in September 2022.
We estimate that nearly 60 per cent of individuals who received an extra costs disability benefit would have received the means-tested benefit Cost of Living Payments, worth up to £900. Over 85 per cent would have received either or both of the means-tested and the £300 Pensioner Cost of Living Payment.
We also increased extra costs disability benefits by 10.1 per cent from April 2023 and by 6.7% from April 2024 in line with the Consumer Price Index.
Asked by: Baroness Gale (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure the Household Support Fund meets the needs of people with Parkinson’s disease.
Answered by Viscount Younger of Leckie - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Household Support Fund (HSF) is a scheme run by Upper Tier Local Authorities in England to provide support to those most in need towards the cost of essentials. Local Authorities have the discretion to design their own local schemes within the parameters of the guidance and grant determination set out for them by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
The Household Support Fund is an intentionally flexible scheme, designed to enable Local Authorities to respond to local need. Local Authorities have the ties and knowledge to best determine how this support should be provided to their local communities.
We encourage Local Authorities to consider a wide range of households who are potentially in need of support, including families with children, pensioners, unpaid carers, care leavers and disabled people. Local Authorities have the flexibility to deliver the scheme through a variety of routes, including offering vouchers to households, directly providing food, or issuing grants to third parties. It is for each local council to decide how, where and when they distribute their funding and to ensure that it is accessible to those who need it.
Asked by: Baroness Gale (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what is their assessment of the impact of the NHS long-term workforce plan upon the number of specialists such as Parkinson’s nurses in the NHS.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
In June 2023, we published the Long Term Workforce Plan which sets out the steps the National Health Service and its partners need to take to deliver an NHS workforce that meets the changing needs of the population over the next 15 years.
The Plan commits to double the number of medical places, taking the total number of places to 15,000 by 2031/32 and including a commensurate increase in specialty training places that meets the demands of the NHS in the future. It also commits to increasing adult nursing places by 92%, taking the number of total places up to nearly 38,000 by 2031/32.
There are a record number of nurses working in the NHS and we have reached our target of 50,000 additional nurses, meaning we have delivered on our commitment six months early. In January 2024 there are over 363,000 nurses working across the NHS, representing over 62,000 more than in September 2019.
Asked by: Baroness Gale (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to mark White Ribbon Day on 25 November.
Answered by Lord Sharpe of Epsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)
We are considering our activity to mark the day. Last year, there was a programme of cross-Governmental activity around the International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) and the 16 days of activism that followed. This included Ministers across Government conducting visits, attending events, making speeches, debating these important issues in Parliament and a series of announcement on action to tackle VAWG.
Tackling VAWG is a Government priority. We have made significant progress since we published the Tackling VAWG Strategy in July 2021 and the complementary Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan in March 2022.
In July, we launched the fifth round of the Safer Streets Fund which provides an additional £43 million in funding to projects focused on protecting women in their communities across England and Wales. We also announced the launch of a new national operating model for the investigation and prosecution of rape, which all forces and CPS Areas in England and Wales are implementing to ensure investigations of rape are suspect-focused and considerate to the needs of victims.
To improve the police response to tackling these crimes, we have supported the introduction of a new full-time National Policing Lead for VAWG, DCC Maggie Blyth, and have added VAWG to the Strategic Policing Requirement, meaning it is now set out as a national threat for forces to respond to alongside other threats such as terrorism, serious and organised crime and child sexual abuse.
Asked by: Baroness Gale (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what measures the NHS workforce plan will include to support a sustainable NHS mental health workforce in England.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
To support the workforce as a whole we have commissioned NHS England to develop a Long Term Workforce Plan, which will include independently verified forecasts for the number of healthcare professionals required in future years. The Plan is for the whole of the National Health Service workforce, including mental health; however, it will not provide detailed workforce assessments for individual services or staff groups.
The mental health workforce has grown. Latest data shows that as of December 2022 there has been an increase of over 8,900, 6.9%, full-time equivalent staff compared to December 2021. This includes only those people who work directly on mental health, across NHS trusts and integrated care boards in England.
Asked by: Baroness Gale (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government when they expect a report from the Office for National Statistics on the number of victims of domestic abuse of those over the age of 74.
Answered by Baroness Neville-Rolfe - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.
A response to the Noble Peer’s Parliamentary Question of 29 March is attached in the answer. It should be noted that these estimates are not National Statistics and caution should be taken when using this, data due to the impact of the reduced data collection period and lower response rates on the quality of the estimates.
The Rt Hon. Baroness Gale
House of Lords
London
SW1A 0PW
31 March 2023
Dear Lady Gale,
As National Statistician and Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority, I am responding to your Parliamentary Question asking when to expect a report from the Office for National Statistics on the number of victims of domestic abuse of those over the age of 74 (HL6995).
Data collection for the face-to-face Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) resumed on 4 October 2021, with the upper age limit for the self-completion modules on domestic abuse, sexual assault and stalking removed. Data based on six months of CSEW interviews between October 2021 and March 2022 were used in our domestic abuse articles for the year ending March 2022 [1].
The CSEW estimated that 2.1% of adults aged 75 years and over experienced domestic abuse in the year ending March 2022. These data, as well as prevalence rates for other personal characteristics can be found in Table 6 of our Domestic abuse prevalence and victim characteristics tables [2]. Estimates for numbers of victims are only produced for our headline domestic abuse measures. It should be noted that these estimates are not National Statistics and caution should be taken when using these data due to the impact of the reduced data collection period and lower response rates on the quality of the estimates.
We plan to release domestic abuse data for those aged 75 years and over for the year ending March 2023 in late November 2023 and will share this with you once published.
Yours sincerely,
Professor Sir Ian Diamond
[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/bulletins/domesticabuseinen glandandwalesoverview/latest
[2] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/datasets/domesticabuseprev alenceandvictimcharacteristicsappendixtables
Asked by: Baroness Gale (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park on 27 April 2022 (HL7869), when they expect to receive the Animal Welfare Committee’s updated opinion on the welfare of farmed fish at the time of killing.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
We expect to receive the Animal Welfare Committee’s updated opinion on the welfare of farmed fish at the time of killing by the end of March this year.
Asked by: Baroness Gale (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that NHS staff providing care to people with Parkinson's are given training on the importance of time-critical medication.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
National Health Service employers are responsible for ensuring that staff are trained and competent to carry out the duties for which they are employed, including those providing care to those with Parkinson’s disease.
Asked by: Baroness Gale (Labour - Life peer)
Question
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the commitment in their policy paper Gender equality at every stage: a roadmap for change, published in July 2019, to provide an annual progress report to Parliament, where the reports they have already made can be found; and when they plan to publish their next report.
Answered by Baroness Stedman-Scott
In December 2020 the Minister for Women and Equalities set out a new approach to tackling inequality, including in relation to gender. This involves moving beyond the previous roadmap and narrow focus of protected characteristics; and reflects the new expanded remit of the Equality Hub.
Since then, the Hub has been concentrating on improving the quality of evidence and data about disparities and the types of barriers different people face. This evidence is enabling us to support the development of policy across government to make the UK a fairer place to live and work.
Asked by: Baroness Gale (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have, if any, to introduce mandatory pre-stun slaughter for farmed fish in line with the protection afforded to terrestrial farmed animals.
Answered by Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park
Regulation 1099/2009 on the protection of animals at the time of killing requires that farmed fish are spared avoidable pain, distress or suffering during their killing and related operations.
Following publication of the Post Implementation Review of the Welfare of Animals at the Time of Killing (England) Regulations 2015 in January 2021, and as part of the Action Plan on Animal Welfare, we are currently considering a number of improvements that could be made to the welfare of farmed fish at the time of killing.
We have also asked the Animal Welfare Committee (AWC) to update its 2014 Opinion on the welfare of farmed fish at the time of killing and look forward to receiving AWC’s updated advice later this year.