Asked by: Jim Dickson (Labour - Dartford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department has taken to ensure that children and young people are able to contribute their views to the consultation on updating the School Food Standards.
Answered by Olivia Bailey - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Education) (Equalities)
We know that children and young people’s own experiences are key to shaping effective school food standards. To support this, we have been engaging with children and young people to understand what they eat at school, what they enjoy, and what they would like to see improved. We are working with youth organisations, such as the Food Foundation’s Young Food Ambassadors, to ensure that the consultation responses they submit capture the views of children and young people, helping us build a rounded picture of what matters to children in their day-to-day school life.
Asked by: Jim Dickson (Labour - Dartford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the timetable is for the publication of a government consultation regarding the health reporting requirements and targets for large businesses under the healthy food standard policy announced as part of the 10-year health plan for England.
Answered by Sharon Hodgson - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
As set out in the 10-Year Health Plan, we will take decisive action on the obesity crisis, easing the strain on our National Health Service and creating the healthiest generation of children ever. The plan committed to introducing mandatory healthier food sales reporting for all large companies in the sector by the end of this Parliament. The plan also committed to introducing new targets to increase the healthiness of sales.
We intend to launch a full public consultation soon to gather a wide range of views on our proposals.
Specific implementation dates will be determined following consultation, and the intention is that the policy will be finalised and legislation laid so that reporting comes into force before the end of this Parliament, no later than 2029.
Asked by: Jim Dickson (Labour - Dartford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when his Department plans to announce a timeline for the implementation of the healthy food standard policy announced as part of the 10-year health plan for England.
Answered by Sharon Hodgson - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
As set out in the 10-Year Health Plan, we will take decisive action on the obesity crisis, easing the strain on our National Health Service and creating the healthiest generation of children ever. The plan committed to introducing mandatory healthier food sales reporting for all large companies in the sector by the end of this Parliament. The plan also committed to introducing new targets to increase the healthiness of sales.
We intend to launch a full public consultation soon to gather a wide range of views on our proposals.
Specific implementation dates will be determined following consultation, and the intention is that the policy will be finalised and legislation laid so that reporting comes into force before the end of this Parliament, no later than 2029.
Asked by: Jim Dickson (Labour - Dartford)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what funding his Department plans to provide to support the improvement of playground facilities in England.
Answered by Nesil Caliskan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
To support the improvement of playgrounds, the Government is providing the £18 million playgrounds fund. This fund is a targeted programme to improve children’s access to safe, inclusive, high‑quality local play spaces in communities where it has fallen furthest behind. £18 million over two years will support local authorities to buy new or refurbish up to 200 playgrounds across England, prioritising areas with high child deprivation and poor access to safe, local play space.
While the playgrounds fund is a dedicated pot, other sources of funding could be used for this purpose. This includes local authorities being able to draw from the most recent local government financial settlement, which is our most significant step yet to make English local government more sustainable. The government is making good on long overdue promises to fundamentally update the way we fund local authorities. We are delivering fairer funding, targeting money where it is needed most through the first multi-year Settlement in a decade.
The Government’s Pride in Place Programme will also provide up to £5.8 billion over ten years to support 284 neighbourhoods identified as most in need. Each neighbourhood under the programme will be given up to £20 million of flexible funding and support. In each place, the local neighbourhood board will work with the community to decide how this funding is spent, which could include investment in local regeneration projects such as parks and playgrounds where these reflect local priorities.
Asked by: Jim Dickson (Labour - Dartford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when his Department plans to respond to the letter from Target Ovarian Cancer and 33 hon. Members of 18 November 2025.
Answered by Sharon Hodgson - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We have received and since responded to the Hon. Member’s correspondence.
Asked by: Jim Dickson (Labour - Dartford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to support the delivery of cardiovascular prevention services within neighbourhood health settings.
Answered by Sharon Hodgson - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
To accelerate progress on the Government’s ambition to reduce premature mortality from heart disease and stroke by 25% in the next ten years, we will publish a new Cardiovascular Disease Modern Service Framework (CVD MSF) this spring. This will support consistent, high quality, and equitable prevention, diagnosis, and care across the cardiovascular pathway, including in neighbourhood health settings where care is planned and delivered around shared local populations.
Alongside the CVD MSF, as announced in the 10-Year Health Plan, Prevention Accelerators will focus on high-impact cardiovascular disease and diabetes interventions, and their impact on population health and demand for National Health Services, including elective and general practice appointments.
Beyond these initiatives, the Government and NHS England have also invested heavily in hypertension case-finding for those over 40 years old in community pharmacies. As part of the service, pharmacies have delivered nearly 4.2 million blood pressure and ambulatory blood pressure monitoring checks since October 2021.
Asked by: Jim Dickson (Labour - Dartford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to help ensure consistent standards for lipid testing and reporting across England.
Answered by Sharon Hodgson - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) clinical guideline on cardiovascular disease: risk assessment and reduction, including lipid modification provides evidence-based guidance for healthcare professionals on lipid measurement. Healthcare professionals are expected to take NICE guidelines fully into account in the care and treatment of individual patients.
To tackle unwarranted variation and support consistent, high-quality care across the cardiovascular pathway, the Government will publish a new Cardiovascular Disease Modern Service Framework (CVD MSF) later this year.
As part of this, the CVD MSF will identify the best-evidenced interventions and set clear standards on how they should be used, alongside a clear strategy to support and oversee uptake by clinicians and providers. This approach will help ensure greater consistency in the detection, assessment, and management of cardiovascular risk factors, such as cholesterol.
Asked by: Jim Dickson (Labour - Dartford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure that people experiencing suicidality or who have attempted suicide receive sustained, trauma-informed and long-term support beyond crisis intervention, including through better integration of NHS services with community-led organisations such as Body & Soul, particularly for people from marginalised communities.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed
The Government is committed to ensuring that people experiencing suicidal thoughts or who have attempted suicide receive compassionate, personalised, and sustained support.
The Suicide Prevention Strategy for England 2023 to 2028 outlines our cross‑sector approach to improving support for people who experience suicidality, including tailored support for priority groups and improved integration between services. Voluntary, community, and social enterprise (VCSE) organisations are vital in providing community‑based trauma‑informed support alongside clinical services.
The 10-Year Health Plan supports this approach through a shift towards community‑based prevention and services. This includes closer collaboration between the National Health Service, local authorities, and VCSE partners to improve access to integrated, long‑term support.
Last year, NHS England published Staying Safe from Suicide: Best Practice Guidance for Safety Assessment, Formulation and Management, which promotes a more holistic, person-centred approach to suicide prevention with accompanying e-learning. The NHS medium-term planning framework requires integrated care boards to ensure practitioners undertake training and deliver care in line with this guidance from 2026/27.
Asked by: Jim Dickson (Labour - Dartford)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of tobacco companies on (a) AI summaries on topics of commercial interest, including the size of the illicit tobacco market, and (b) the accuracy of those summaries.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology has made no assessment of the impact of tobacco companies on the outputs of AI models or their accuracy.
Asked by: Jim Dickson (Labour - Dartford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to research from The University of Manchester entitled The right to play: making play a policy and practice priority, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that all schools have access to green spaces.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
Play is an essential part of children’s physical, social and cognitive development, as recognised in the early years foundation stage statutory framework. All education settings, from early years to further education, can register with the National Education Nature Park which provides free and quality assured resources, guidance and support to enable them to turn their grounds from grey to green.
The Education Estates Strategy also recently set out how the new design specifications and Renewal and Retrofit Programme will increase access to nature and create better outdoor places with more variety, so that pupils can undertake both quiet and energetic activities.
The value of access to nature and outdoor learning is also being recognised and promoted through enrichment, with our upcoming Enrichment Framework including 'Nature, outdoors and adventure' as one of five categories that schools should seek to cover in a broad and well-rounded enrichment offer.