Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether all police forces in England, including the Metropolitan Police, work with independent schools in implementing Operation Encompass, through which schools and police work together in safeguarding children at risk from domestic abuse.

Answered by Lord Sharpe of Epsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)

Operation Encompass is currently active in all 43 police forces across England and Wales. Implemented on a voluntary basis by police forces, the scheme works by directly connecting the police with schools. When officers have attended a domestic abuse incident, police share the information with a school’s trained Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) before the start of the next school day, so that appropriate support can be given at the earliest possible opportunity.

Aligned with police forces’ operational independence, each police force operates the scheme differently, in terms of the notification pathway and which institutions receive notifications. Importantly, the scheme does not discriminate on what type of schools these notifications should be sent to.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the remarks of Lord Sharpe of Epsom on 11 March (HL Deb col 1806) when, and in what form, he will “report back” to the House about inquiries that are to be made by Home Office officials.

Answered by Lord Sharpe of Epsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Home Office)

I will return to the House in due course after receiving advice from officials on the considerations of whether the type of review of Operation Conifer the noble Lord calls for is necessary, possible and/or viable.

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether they have issued guidance to public institutions and universities concerning security arrangements for the protection of historic portraits of past statesmen.

Answered by Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)

The vandalism against the portrait of A.J. Balfour at Trinity College, Cambridge, last month is rightly being investigated as a criminal act by Cambridgeshire Police. The shoddy sense of history by those who perpetrated and promoted it is also a reminder of the importance of historic portraits in improving our awareness and understanding of the past.

The famous declaration made by Balfour as Foreign Secretary in November 1917 made clear that ‘nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country’. At the time Balfour issued it, the man who had painted his portrait three years earlier, Philip de László, was (despite having become a British citizen, with the former Prime Minister as one of his sponsors) interned, having been arrested on suspicion of treason on account of letters he had written to family members in Austria. As the historian Giles MacDonogh has noted, it appears ‘the fact that de László was born of Jewish parents had some bearing on the case’; his interrogation by Special Branch dwelt on his Jewish ancestry, and an unsympathetic biography included in the recommendation from MI5 to the Home Secretary that he be interned noted that de László was the ‘son of a Jew tailor’. In May 1919, his case was raised in a debate in Your Lordships’ House; the following month, it was brought before the Certificates of Naturalisation (Revocation) Committee, which took just fifteen minutes to throw it out and exonerate him.

It is thanks to portraits like this that such fascinating insights into our past can be gleaned.

I have spoken to the Vice-Master of Trinity College following the attack, and hope that this magnificent portrait can be swiftly repaired and shared with students and visitors to the college for many years to come.

Found: European Experts Group (a group that prepares briefing papers on European Affairs) Lord

Found: Lord Jay of Ewelme (The Chair); Lord Dodds of Duncairn; Lord Empey; Baroness Goudie; Lord Hain; Lord