Asked by: Lord Bishop of Manchester (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of (1) the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, and (2) the Public Order Act 2023, on the right to peaceful protest.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Government published a report in December 2024 on how police forces had used their protest powers under the Police, Crime and Sentencing Act 2022 from June 2022 to March 2024. In that period,10 police forces used the amended Public Order Act powers on 473 protests with 95 percent by the Met and 277 arrests for breaches.
Expedited post-legislative scrutiny of the Public Order Act 2023 will begin in May 2025, assessing its enforcement and impact, including arrest numbers.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of Manchester (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the implications of the police raid on a Quaker meeting house on 27 March for religious and democratic freedoms.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
The use of police powers are a matter for the police, who are operationally independent of Government. The Metropolitan Police have issued a statement about the incident in question, which reads as follows:
“Youth Demand have stated an intention to 'shut down' London over the month of April using tactics including 'swarming' and road blocks. While we absolutely recognise the importance of the right to protest, we have a responsibility to intervene to prevent activity that crosses the line from protest into serious disruption and other criminality. On Thursday, 27 March officers raided a Youth Demand planning meeting at an address in Westminster where those in attendance were plotting their April action. Six people were arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to cause a public nuisance. Five of those arrested on Thursday have been released on bail and one will face no further action. A further five arrests for the same offence were made on Friday, 28 March. Four of the arrests were at addresses in London and one in Exeter. All five of those arrested on Friday have been released on bail.”
Asked by: Lord Bishop of Manchester (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have, if any, to increase the minimum income threshold for applications for a (1) spousal, and (2) family, visa.
Answered by Lord Hanson of Flint - Minister of State (Home Office)
To help ensure we reach the right balance and have a solid evidence base for any change, the Home Secretary has announced her intention to commission the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to review the financial requirements in the Family Immigration Rules. The government will consider their recommendations before making any changes.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of Manchester (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they plan to publish the data, routinely collected since February 2022, on care leavers claiming Universal Credit.
Answered by Baroness Sherlock - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
We have no plans to publish data on care leavers claiming Universal Credit.
DWP started routinely collecting data on care leavers claiming UC in February 2022. All new claimants are now given the option of reporting their care leaver status, and work coaches can record existing claimants’ care leaver status if they are they are told about this.
This data is being monitored for data quality and does not meet the quality assurance standards for official statistics: the data coverage is still very limited and the claimants we have data on are not representative of the UC caseload. Therefore, no figures are available for publication.
The Department will continue to carefully review the data in the usual way.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of Manchester (Bishops - Bishops)
Question
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to introduce legislation which would ban the practice of conversion therapy.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
The Government is taking account of the recently published final report from the independent Cass Review.
As the Cass Review has shown, challenges of legislating in this area are considerable, and there is significant risk of oversimplifying complex and nuanced issues. We cannot risk unintended consequences for parents, teachers, religious leaders or for clinicians providing crucial and legitimate support to young people experiencing gender distress.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of Manchester (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they will provide a timetable for updating the HM Prisons and Probation Service Strategy for Care-Experienced People; and whether this will include a specific focus on race.
Answered by Lord Bellamy
We are updating our strategy for people with care experience in the criminal justice system, to ensure we are using care-experienced people’s time in the criminal justice system to support them to lead crime-free lives.
This will include a focus on race and its role in shaping the experiences and outcomes of those with care experience in the criminal justice system, and will link to wider departmental efforts to address racial disproportionality in the criminal justice system.
We are aiming to publish this strategy in autumn 2024.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of Manchester (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they will publish an updated progress report on implementation of recommendations in David Lammy MP’s Review into the treatment of, and outcomes for, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic individuals in the Criminal Justice System, published in September 2017.
Answered by Lord Bellamy
This Spring, the Government will update Parliament regarding the work of the Inclusive Britain strategy, as it did in April last year. As we work towards this, we are also considering what further updates may be provided from the Ministry of Justice regarding our work to tackle racial disparities in the Criminal Justice System, including the work we committed to in response to the Lammy Review.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of Manchester (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they will provide a timetable for updating the Statutory Guidance on Promoting the Health and Wellbeing of Looked After Children.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
The government gave a commitment to update the statutory guidance ‘Promoting the health and wellbeing of looked-after children’, and to extend it to care leavers up to age 25, in the ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’ strategy for the reform of children’s social care. The update forms part of the wider mission in the strategy “to reduce the disparities in long-term mental and physical health outcomes and improve wellbeing for care-experienced people”. This commitment was reaffirmed in September 2023.
Work is underway to understand how the current guidance is working in practice and where changes are necessary. Timeframes will depend on the scope of changes needed. The Department for Education and Department for Health and Social Care will keep relevant stakeholders in the health and children’s social care sectors updated as the work progresses.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of Manchester (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to increase investment in early intervention and prevention as part of children’s social care reform.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
The government has invested billions in local services. This year alone, the total social care grant for local government is over £2 billion. In the ‘Stable Homes Built on Love’ Strategy, the department outlined its plans to build on the strengths of current early help and Child in Need services, through the creation of Family Help.
The department is investing £200 million in Children’s Social Care reforms, including £45 million for the Families First for Children Pathfinder programme, which will test how multi-disciplinary family help teams can improve the support that children and families receive. The pathfinder will inform the next stage of the department’s reform programme which will look to deliver transformation more widely.
The department also announced over £1 billion of funding for programmes to improve early help services, including delivering Family Hubs.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of Manchester (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the report by Josh MacAlister The independent review of children’s social care, published on 23 May 2022; and what progress they have made in improving council-run homes in the children’s social care system given the findings of that report.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Shadow Minister (Education)
In February 2023 the department published its consultation and implementation strategy, ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’. This sets out the department’s plans for a system-wide transformation of children’s social care, and details how the department will help families overcome challenges, keep children safe, and make sure children in care have stable loving homes, long-term loving relationships, and opportunities for a good life.
To support local authorities to meet their statutory duty to ensure there is sufficient provision for children in their care, the department has announced £259 million capital funding to maintain capacity and expand provision in both secure and open children’s homes that provide high-quality, safe homes for some of the most vulnerable children and young people across England. The department has allocated a portion of the £259 million capital funding to open children’s homes enabling a total of 69 projects to be delivered, which will create an additional 350 beds across this sector.
The department has also committed to developing a core overarching set of Standards of Care for fostering, children’s homes, and supported accommodation. This will help simplify the regulatory landscape, raise quality, and ensure there are consistent safeguards across different types of settings.
The department will develop a programme to support improvements in the quality of leadership and management in children’s homes, including exploring proposals for a leadership programme to attract and train new talent.
In addition, the department is investing £10 million to develop Regional Care Co-operatives (RCCs) to plan, commission and deliver children’s social care placements. Through operating on a larger scale and developing specialist capabilities, the RCCs will be able to develop a wider range of places to meet children’s needs better.
The department is also making good progress on addressing challenges relating to the retention and recruitment of social workers, which is key to supporting the delivery of the wider children’s social care reforms. This includes introducing an Early Career Framework to better support newly qualified social workers to meet the challenges of child and family social work, increasing the number of social worker apprenticeships, and supporting local authorities with their retention and workload challenges. Alongside ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’, the department also published a consultation on a set of rules for local authority engagement of agency child and family social workers. The response to this consultation was published on 25 October 2023 and sets out a set of national rules intended to increase workforce quality and sustainability. The department will consult on statutory guidance on the technical detail in Spring 2024. These reforms are in addition to the department’s £50 million annual investment in recruiting, training and developing the workforce.