Ben Obese-Jecty

Around 10,000 organisations are required to report their gender pay gap data annually and we continue to see high levels of on time compliance. All of the data reported by organisations can be found at https://gender-pay-gap.service.gov.uk/

Following the reporting deadlines the Equality and Human Rights Commission is responsible for enforcing the requirement. They will contact organisations believed to be required to report to ascertain whether they were in scope of the requirement, and prompt them to report if so.

The government is committed to strengthening equal pay and ending pay discrimination. Alongside other measures, we will establish an Equal Pay Regulatory and Enforcement Unit with the involvement of trade unions.

This month we launched a call for evidence on a number of areas of equality policy, including equal pay enforcement. We are holding this call for evidence while policy is at a formative stage in order to enable businesses, trade unions, civil society and others to share their knowledge, experiences, and perspectives at this early point.

Officials in the Office for Equality and Opportunity will continue to engage with a wide range of stakeholders, including trade unions, as policy develops.

The government is committed to strengthening equal pay and ending pay discrimination. Alongside other measures, we will establish an Equal Pay Regulatory and Enforcement Unit with the involvement of trade unions.

This month we launched a call for evidence on a number of areas of equality policy, including equal pay enforcement. We are holding this call for evidence while policy is at a formative stage in order to enable businesses, trade unions, civil society and others to share their knowledge, experiences, and perspectives at this early point.

Officials in the Office for Equality and Opportunity will continue to engage with a wide range of stakeholders, including trade unions, as policy develops.

The government is committed to strengthening equal pay and ending pay discrimination. Alongside other measures, we will establish an Equal Pay Regulatory and Enforcement Unit with the involvement of trade unions.

This month we launched a call for evidence on a number of areas of equality policy, including equal pay enforcement. We are holding this call for evidence while policy is at a formative stage in order to enable businesses, trade unions, civil society and others to share their knowledge, experiences, and perspectives at this early point.

Officials in the Office for Equality and Opportunity will continue to engage with a wide range of stakeholders, including trade unions, as policy develops.

As set out in the King’s Speech in July, the government is committed to making the right to equal pay effective for ethnic minority and disabled people. This measure will be part of the upcoming Equality (Race and Disability) Bill.

This month we launched a call for evidence on a number of areas of equality policy, including on this commitment. We will consider the views from the call for evidence to understand the challenges and find the appropriate solutions in developing this policy, making sure that the legislation works for all.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has conducted a full manual review of the 11 case files with a monitoring flag for child abuse. It could not ascertain whether the defendants and victims were from Guinea-Bissau or Portugal from the information provided by the police.

The CPS were unable to undertake a full manual review of the remaining cases with a monitoring flag for modern slavery as to obtain this information would incur a disproportionate cost.

This Government is committed to tackling the scourge of child trafficking. Children who are exploited by gangs for criminal purposes will now receive greater protection under the Government’s flagship Crime and Policing Bill, with the introduction of a new offence of child criminal exploitation. The Bill represents the biggest package of measures on crime and policing for decades, with new measures to cut crime and make our streets safer.

From January 2010 to September 2024, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) prosecuted 56 cases flagged for modern slavery in the Cambridge Police Force Area.

Data is recorded by defendant, rather than victim, and therefore modern slavery flagged cases may involve adult or child victims. Of these 56 cases, 11 cases also had a case monitoring flag applied for child abuse, which covers several different offences, including child trafficking.

The CPS is working closely with law enforcement via the Modern Slavery Criminal Justice Action Group – a joint working group led by CPS National Lead for Human Trafficking and the National Police Chiefs’ Council Lead for Modern Slavery and Organised Immigration Crime – to identify areas of improvement to promote early advice and increase referrals and prosecutions of modern slavery cases.

The full list of new arm’s-length bodies proposed by this government can be found in Baroness Anderson’s response to HL6032.

The approvals process for new arm’s-length bodies (ALBs), including non-departmental public bodies, is outlined in the Public Bodies Handbook - Part 2. This is a jointly led process between the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury.

The government is additionally conducting a review of all ALBs, including proposals for new ones, to assess them against four principles: (1) Ministers should have direct policy control over decisions that affect the public, (2) duplication across the state should be minimised, (3) stakeholder engagement is not sufficient rationale for an ALB, and (4) some advice should be independently delivered. This is part of the plan to streamline the state by closing, merging or repatriating public bodies into departments unless their separate existence can be justified.

The Cabinet Office publishes an annual arms length body landscape analysis, which includes non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs) around a year in arrears. The most recently published landscape analysis was published on 17 December 2024 and is available here. The list of every ALB that exists as of March 2025 is due to be published in 2026.

It has been the practice of successive Administrations not to comment on the security arrangements of protected individuals.

These are the devices reported by staff of the Cabinet Office as lost since July 5th 2024. Some of these devices may have been found since their initial reporting.

193 mobile phones and 29 laptops were reported lost in financial year 2024/25 including up to 14th April 2025. There were no other electronic devices reported lost.

The Government works to ensure Post Office Limited maintains a minimum number of branches and a geographical spread of branches in line with published access criteria. My Department has assessed the Post Office network meets Government-set access criteria at a national level. The Post Office publishes its annual network report which sets out their performance publicly each year and it can be found here.

We're disappointed by the decision to impose global tariffs of 25% on auto imports and know this will be extremely concerning for our automotive sector. We will always support our automotive industry, and in the first instance we will continue to pursue a deal that works for both us and the US. We will also use our Industrial Strategy to strengthen UK automotive competitiveness and have backed the auto sector with £2 billion to support the transition of domestic manufacturing and £300 million announced in the Budget to drive uptake of electric vehicles.

This government is clear that we will always do everything necessary to defend the UK's national interest. This is why the government has launched a request for input from businesses to help shape our response to US tariffs.

There are no official statistics on trends in the level of cash only barber shops. Cash continues to be used by many people and is a legitimate means of paying for goods and services.

Businesses that primarily accept cash must ensure they meet their legal obligations, and the Government is working with the hair industry to ensure good tax compliance.

HMRC will investigate evidence suggesting businesses have misclassified individuals for tax purposes. Money laundering through cash-based high street businesses is also a known issue, and Government collaborates closely with law enforcement to monitor criminal behaviour.

For national insurance contributions, increasing the employment Allowance to £10,500 will mean that 865,000 employers will pay no NICs at all and more than half of employers see no change or gain overall from this package, including many businesses in the hair and beauty industries.

On minimum wage, approximately 40,000 workers in the hair and beauty sector, representing around half of the sector's workforce, are expected to benefit from a direct pay rise due to the increases in the National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage in April 2025.

The Government is also creating a fairer business rates system, which will further benefit the hair salon industry.

Fire service coverage is considered during the examination and determination of any Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project. It is for the applicant to demonstrate satisfactorily that this issue has been addressed, which will include the view of the relevant fire service, Local Authority, and health and safety experts.

Fire service coverage is considered during the examination and determination of any Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project. It is for the applicant to demonstrate satisfactorily that this issue has been addressed, which will include the view of the relevant fire service, Local Authority, and health and safety experts.

The Department has allocated over £2.9 billion in grant funding through the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme over the financial years 2020/21 to 2025/26. Further grants are currently being allocated for the financial years 2025/26 to 2027/28 from the budget of more than £1 billion for public sector decarbonisation announced in Autumn Budget 2024.

Phase 4 of the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme was launched in September 2024 and closed to applications in November 2024. Applications are currently being processed by Salix Finance, the non-departmental public body that administers the scheme on behalf of the Department. The full list of grant recipients and funding awarded will be published in due course at the following site: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/public-sector-decarbonisation-scheme.

The budget for the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme was £449 million in 2023/24, £427 million in 2024/25, and is £401 million for 2025/26.