Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what contingency plans are in place to ensure the continuity of food supply chains in the event of a natural disaster or armed conflict.

Answered by Daniel Zeichner - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

Defra assesses the potential impacts of natural disasters and conflicts along with other risks to the food supply chain, as outlined in the National Risk Register (NRR). Defra works with Cabinet Office, as leads for the NRR, and the wider resilience and Critical National Infrastructure community across the Government to ensure impacts to food supply are considered in risk assessments and contingency planning.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department is taking to improve collaboration between businesses and law enforcement agencies.

Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Home Office)

The Home Office works closely with businesses across a wide range of shared interests and priorities, from prevention of fraud and cybercrime to tackling the sale of dangerous knives. A particular focus of this cooperation over the past year has been shop theft.

Town centres play a key role in the success of local economies. However, some town centres have become a shadow of their former selves with anti-social behaviour (ASB) and crime being both a cause and effect of their decline. As set out in our Plan for Change, this Government is focusing on town centres, including how the police and businesses can work together to make them safer for our communities.

Our Retail Crime Forum ensures we bring together and regularly engage with retailers and policing, promoting collaboration between the retail sector, security providers and law enforcement.

Pegasus is a unique private-public partnership and an excellent example of business and policing working together. Through Pegasus, retailers have agreed to fund a specialist analysis team within Opal, the national police intelligence unit for serious organised acquisitive crime. We will provide £5 million over the next three years to continue to fund the team.

The National Business Crime Centre recently hosted a Safer Action Business Days (SaBA) national week of action. SaBA Days is a joint approach by police, business, private security, Business Crime Reduction Partnerships and Business Improvement Districts working in partnership to focus resources into designated location to create a significant impact to reduce crime.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of the level of knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust among school-age students in England.

Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)

The Holocaust is the only historic event which is compulsory within the current national curriculum for history at key stage 3. The government has made a commitment that the Holocaust will remain a compulsory topic in the reformed national curriculum, which will also be required teaching in academy schools when it is implemented.

The government supports the teaching of Holocaust education in schools and colleges by funding teachers’ professional development in this subject through University College London’s Centre for Holocaust Education and the Holocaust Educational Trust’s ‘Lessons from Auschwitz’ project, which gives students aged 16 to 18 the opportunity to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau.

In addition, a further £2 million funding for Holocaust remembrance and education was committed at the Autumn Budget 2024. This will be used to support the ambition set by my right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister for all students to have the opportunity to hear a recorded survivor testimony. The department is currently exploring how it can support schools to fulfil this ambition.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent discussions she has had with local authorities on the provision of independent travel training for young people with SEND.

Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)

The department publishes statutory guidance to assist local authorities in meeting their home to school travel duties. The guidance says that wherever possible, local authorities should offer independent travel training to children with special educational needs or disabilities who are eligible for free travel to school and who they think will be able to complete the programme. This guidance can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/home-to-school-travel-and-transport-guidance.

Departmental officials engage regularly with local authorities and host bi-monthly online meetings, to which all local authority school travel officers are invited, to share good practice and seek advice from one another and the department.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of the (a) availability and (b) eligibility requirements for NHS hernia operations.

Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

No specific assessment has been made of the adequacy of the availability of hernia operations. Integrated care boards are responsible for commissioning services, considering the needs of their local population and national guidance, such as that from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

There are several types of hernia and therefore decisions about the eligibility to treat will be based on guidelines and clinical judgement appropriate to the individual circumstances.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help improve access to therapy services for children in care.

Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

Children in care and care leavers are significantly more likely to have poor mental health. The department’s latest data shows that two thirds of children become looked after due to abuse or neglect and we know that care experienced adults are at 4 to 5 times greater risk of suicide attempt than their peers. Providing effective support is crucial given the significant trauma that many of these children and young people have experienced and its lasting impact.

To support looked after children, looked after children attract pupil premium plus funding of £2,570 per year. This is managed by the local authority’s virtual school head and can be used to facilitate a wide range of educational support including additional mentoring, tuition, and therapeutic services.

Given our significant concerns for the health and wellbeing of children in care and care leavers, the department is working alongside the Department of Health and Social Care to review and update current statutory guidance on promoting the health and wellbeing of looked-after children. This guidance sets expectations on local authorities, Directors of Public Health, commissioners of health services for children, NHS England and others, for the promotion of physical, emotional and mental health.

Regulations require an assessment of physical, emotional and mental health needs for every child when they enter care and a plan to be developed to address their needs.

As part of the department’s statutory guidance review, we will consider what changes are needed to further ensure that children in care and care leavers receive the support they need for their physical and mental health and wellbeing, including access to any needed treatment or therapy.

In addition to the statutory guidance review, the department is also undertaking a programme of work specific to children with complex needs. Children with complex needs and multiple needs are some of our most vulnerable children in the care system. The outcomes for these children can often be very poor, with neither children’s social care nor health services alone capable of meeting their needs, and services not working effectively together for these children.

Since July 2023, the department and NHS England have jointly led a Task and Finish Group to consider how to improve the way system partners work together to support and improve outcomes for children and young people who are deprived of their liberty and who are in the most complex situations.

Drawing on the best evidence, including the voice of children, input from professionals and commissioned research, the department will, in collaboration with NHS England, test a new, community-based approach to pathways and provision which provides treatment and care, bringing in professionals from children’s social care, health, justice and education. This will enable the system to deliver specialist care and accommodation for children who have complex needs.

We have also recently commissioned independent research on how the system works, its current impacts and how we could do things differently to achieve better outcomes for children and young people. We plan to publish this research in summer 2025. We will draw on these reports to support the development and testing of evidence-based models of safe, therapeutic care that delivers integrated, consistent, and collaborative practices for these children and young people.

Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of introducing stricter regulations on UK-licenced satellite operators to ensure the safe deorbiting of satellites at the end of their operational life.

Answered by Chris Bryant - Minister of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)

The Government is taking forward a wide package of space regulatory reforms to drive growth and innovation, which includes working to ensure a safe, secure and sustainable space environment. As part of this work, the UK Space Agency is undertaking research into the impact of options such as reducing post-mission disposal timelines. The timelines are currently set at 25 years in the UK. Additionally, they have commissioned studies on atmospheric ablation to understand the impact of deorbiting spacecraft on the Earth’s atmosphere. The Government will consider the outcomes of this research to determine if regulatory actions are appropriate and necessary.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment her Department has made of trends in the levels of teacher recruitment and retention.

Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)

I refer my hon. Friend, the Member for Bristol North East, to the answer of 13 March 2025 to Question 35471.

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many and what proportion of local authorities in England offer independent travel training for young people with SEND.

Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)

The department’s statutory guidance for local authorities states that wherever possible, local authorities should offer independent travel training to children with special educational needs or disabilities who are eligible for free travel to school and who they think will be able to complete the programme. This guidance can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/home-to-school-travel-and-transport-guidance.

The department does not hold the information requested. We are, however, working with local authorities to gather more data on home to school travel arrangements, including via a recent voluntary data collection.

Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to ensure the BBC World Service is able to continue broadcasting to audiences in regions impacted by censorship and media regulations.

Answered by Hamish Falconer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)

The BBC are operationally and editorially independent and decide the most effective and efficient way to deliver the BBC World Service.

At a time where media freedom is under threat across the world, the World Service provides impartial accurate news to a global audience of 320 million.

It reaches audiences living in authoritarian and conflict-affected states, where accurate information is most restricted. 75 per cent of its audience are based in countries with low or no media freedom.

Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what discussions his Department has had with the BBC on the long-term sustainability of the BBC World Service’s operations.

Answered by Hamish Falconer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)

Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Ministers engage routinely with the BBC on a range of issues relating to the BBC World Service, including funding.

The Government is committed to determining a long-term sustainable funding model for the World Service. This will be done through Charter Review.

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to (a) protect and (b) maintain water supply infrastructure from hostile actors.

Answered by Emma Hardy - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)

Defra is the Lead Government Department (LGD) in England with responsibility for the Water Sector, including as a Critical National Infrastructure sector. The equivalent bodies in the Devolved Governments are responsible for water, including Critical National Infrastructure in their respective nations.

Defra’s work to deter, detect and counter threats from hostile actors includes developing, maintaining and implementing legislation, including the Security and Emergency Measures Direction (SEMD) 2022 and the Network Information Systems (NIS) regulations (2018) (UK). The SEMD sets out legal responsibilities for the Water Sector in England on matters such as security and emergency planning.

Defra also works with other government departments and water companies to understand risks from hostile actors and develop mitigations. Water companies are Category Two Responders under the Civil Contingencies Act (2004) and as such have legal duties to assess, plan and advise on risks. They work with partner organisations through Local Resilience Forums to prepare, respond and recover from emergencies.

Found: Watch the meeting Members present: Debbie Abrahams (Chair); Johanna Baxter; Damien Egan; Gill German

Found: Watch the meeting Members present: Debbie Abrahams (Chair); Johanna Baxter; Damien Egan; Gill German

Found: Watch the meeting Members present: Debbie Abrahams (Chair); Johanna Baxter; Damien Egan; Gill German

Found: meeting Members present: Debbie Abrahams (Chair); Johanna Baxter; Mr Peter Bedford; Steve Darling; Damien Egan

Found: meeting Members present: Debbie Abrahams (Chair); Johanna Baxter; Mr Peter Bedford; Steve Darling; Damien Egan

The Work and Pensions Committee is undertaking a short inquiry into the impact of the Government’s proposals to reform the disability and health related benefits system, as set out in the Pathways to Work Green Paper.