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Written Question
Delivery Services: Driving
Thursday 28th March 2024

Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether he has had recent discussions with the Home Office on tackling the matter of delivery drivers who are in the UK illegally.

Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

DfT ministers and officials engage with the Home Office on this matter. The Department sits on the cross-government ministerial Taskforce on Immigration Enforcement, which ensures that every available power across government is utilised to support law enforcement activity to identify and reduce illegal migrants in the UK, and ensures only those eligible can work, receive benefits or access public services. The Department and its agencies continue to support the Home Office on the wider issue of illegal working in the UK.


Written Question
Foster Care: Lincolnshire
Thursday 28th March 2024

Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help increase the number of foster care placements in (a) South Holland district and (b) Lincolnshire.

Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

Lincolnshire County Council is participating in the £45 million Families First for Children Pathfinder, which came out of the department’s children’s social care implementation strategy Stable Homes, Built on Love. The pathfinder aims to rebalance children’s social care away from costly crisis intervention to more meaningful and effective early support.

As part of the pathfinder, the department is working with a select number of local areas to test significant changes to how local areas help children and young people. This includes increasing support at the earlier end of the system, with the aim of keeping children with birth parents or wider family where safe to do so. This will help to reduce the number of children looked after and therefore drive down demand for foster care or other placements.

There is support available from the department where children are unable to stay with their birth families and foster care placements are sought. Lincolnshire County Council are being supported by the Fosterlink support service. Fosterlink provides support for local authorities to improve the way they recruit foster carers by reviewing current processes to identify areas for service and practice improvements, as well as creating a national network in which to share best practice.

More broadly, the department is investing over £36 million this parliament to deliver a fostering recruitment and retention programme, so foster care is available for more children who need it. This will boost approvals of foster carers, as well as taking steps to retain the foster carers we have.

Greater financial support for foster carers will help improve the experiences of all children in care. For the second year running, the department is uplifting the National Minimum Allowance (NMA) above the rate of inflation. For 2024/2025, the NMA will increase by 6.88%. This is on top of a 12.43% NMA increase in 2023/24.

In addition, the department estimates that changes to tax and benefit allowances will give the average foster carer an additional £450 per year as well as simplifying the process for self-assessment returns for most foster carers.

The department will also build on this investment since 2014 of over £8 million to help embed the Mockingbird programme, an innovative model of peer support for foster parents and the children in their care where children benefit from an extended family environment.


Written Question
Offenders: Asylum
Wednesday 27th March 2024

Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)

Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 19 March 2024 to Question 17782 on Asylum, how many asylum seekers were charged with a criminal offence since entering the UK in each year since 2015.

Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)

I refer the right honourable Member to the answer given by the Home Office to Question 17782, published on 19 March 2024 and subsequently corrected on 21 March 2024. Data on charges is held by the police and published by the Home Office.


Written Question
Kidneys: Transplant Surgery
Wednesday 27th March 2024

Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to help reduce waiting times for children in need of kidney transplants.

Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

We are working with NHS Blood and Transplant to help reduce waiting times for children in need of kidney transplants. This includes implementing initiatives to improve the use of living donor kidney transplantation in paediatric centres, engaging with transplant centres to review patients who are too unwell to receive a transplant, and reducing long waiters, which are patients who wait more than 104 days for a transplant.

Nation-wide campaigns have been developed to increase paediatric registrations on the organ donor register, for example Ralph’s campaign, and the school’s education programme has been refreshed for younger children. A paediatric perfusion programme is also being developed to increase the use of kidneys from donors after circulatory death for paediatric patients.


Written Question
Foster Care: Lincolnshire
Wednesday 27th March 2024

Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help increase the number of foster care placements in (a) South Holland and the Deepings constituency and (b) Lincolnshire.

Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

Lincolnshire County Council is participating in the £45 million Families First for Children Pathfinder, which came out of the department’s children’s social care implementation strategy Stable Homes, Built on Love. The pathfinder aims to rebalance children’s social care away from costly crisis intervention to more meaningful and effective early support.

As part of the pathfinder, the department is working with a select number of local areas to test significant changes to how local areas help children and young people. This includes increasing support at the earlier end of the system, with the aim of keeping children with birth parents or wider family where safe to do so. This will help to reduce the number of children looked after and therefore drive down demand for foster care or other placements.

There is support available from the department where children are unable to stay with their birth families and foster care placements are sought. Lincolnshire County Council are being supported by the Fosterlink support service. Fosterlink provides support for local authorities to improve the way they recruit foster carers by reviewing current processes to identify areas for service and practice improvements, as well as creating a national network in which to share best practice.

More broadly, the department is investing over £36 million this parliament to deliver a fostering recruitment and retention programme, so foster care is available for more children who need it. This will boost approvals of foster carers, as well as taking steps to retain the foster carers we have.

Greater financial support for foster carers will help improve the experiences of all children in care. For the second year running, the department is uplifting the National Minimum Allowance (NMA) above the rate of inflation. For 2024/2025, the NMA will increase by 6.88%. This is on top of a 12.43% NMA increase in 2023/24.

In addition, the department estimates that changes to tax and benefit allowances will give the average foster carer an additional £450 per year as well as simplifying the process for self-assessment returns for most foster carers.

The department will also build on this investment since 2014 of over £8 million to help embed the Mockingbird programme, an innovative model of peer support for foster parents and the children in their care where children benefit from an extended family environment.


Written Question
Pre-school Education and Primary Education: Down's Syndrome
Wednesday 27th March 2024

Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to support (a) early years learning and (b) primary education for children with Down's Syndrome.

Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)

The department is committed to improving the life outcomes and opportunities for children with Down syndrome, including through follow-up to the Down Syndrome Act 2022. From 2025, the department will begin collecting data on the numbers of children and young people with Down syndrome in schools and colleges. This will help inform the planning locally of long term services.

The special educational needs and disability (SEND) system in education settings provides support for all children with SEND. The system focuses on removing barriers to education and putting the right support in place to meet need, regardless of the specific condition a child may have. The department set out its mission for more children and young people with SEND to have their needs met effectively in mainstream settings in the SEND and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan in March 2023. The SEND and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/send-and-alternative-provision-improvement-plan.

In the Improvement Plan, the department confirmed that frontline professionals, such as teachers and early years practitioners, would be equipped with the skills and expertise to make best use of provision and to identify needs early, accurately and consistently. The department is developing a suite of practitioner standards to help early years staff, teachers and teaching assistants to identify and support the needs of children and young people they work with, prioritising areas such as speech and language development. The department is funding up to 7,000 early years staff to gain an accredited Level 3 early years special educational needs co-ordinator qualification.

Additionally, the department is investing £2.6 billion in new specialist places to increase the number of places for those children who need specialist support in mainstream and special schools, and alternative provision. These developments will help children with Down syndrome in early years settings and primary schools reach their full potential.

Specifically on early years learning, the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) sets the standards and requirements that all early years providers must follow, including learning and development requirements. The EYFS includes specific requirements for supporting children with SEND, including those with Down syndrome. All early years providers must have arrangements in place to support children with SEND and all providers who are funded by the local authority to deliver early education places must have regard to the SEND Code of Practice.


Written Question
Sleeping Rough: Foreign Nationals
Wednesday 27th March 2024

Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)

Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if he will make an estimate of the number and proportion of people sleeping rough that are not British nationals.

Answered by Felicity Buchan - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)

The annual rough sleeping snapshot provides information about the estimated number of people sleeping rough on a single night between 1 October and 30 November each year. This is data from local authorities and includes some basic demographic details including nationality. Details can be found at: Rough sleeping snapshot in England: autumn 2023 - GOV.UK.


Written Question
Asylum: Age Assurance
Wednesday 27th March 2024

Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many and what proportion of young asylum seekers have been identified as being over the age of 18 following (a) age verification and (b) identity checks in each of the last five years.

Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)

The Home Office publishes data on asylum in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. Data on asylum applications by age is published in table Asy_D01 of the ‘Asylum applications, decisions and resettlement detailed datasets’. The latest data relates to 2023.

Data on age disputes is published in table Asy_D05 of the ‘Age disputes detailed dataset’. The latest data relates to the year ending September 2023.

Information on how to use these datasets can be found in the ‘Notes’ page of each workbook. Additionally, the Home Office publishes a high-level overview of the data in the ‘summary tables’. The ‘contents’ sheet contains an overview of all available data on asylum applications by age and age disputes.

Please note that an age dispute could, for example, be resolved following: a Merton compliant age assessment; receipt of credible and clear documentary evidence of age; a judicial finding on age; following a determination by two Home Office officers that the person’s physical appearance and demeanour very strongly suggests they are significantly over the age of 18; or, where the reasons for raising an age dispute no longer apply.


Written Question
Civil Servants: Incentives
Wednesday 27th March 2024

Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)

Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many civil servants have been paid bonuses in each of the last five years.

Answered by John Glen - Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office

As part of the Government’s commitment to transparency, departments have published aggregated annual information on their bonus spend on their own websites since 2011. This promotes scrutiny of how taxpayers’ money is spent. The latest data, which covers the 2021/22 performance year, was published on Government Departments’ websites on 31 March 2023. This data includes information on total bonus spend, the number of civil servants receiving bonuses, and the size of payments.


Written Question
Childbirth
Tuesday 26th March 2024

Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many premature babies were born at between 22 and 24 weeks of gestation in the last five years.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

The following table shows the number of all live births and those with gestational age of 22 weeks, 23 weeks and 24 weeks in England and Wales between 2017 and 2021, the most recent five-year period for which data is available:

Year

All live births

Live births with gestational age between 22 and 24 weeks, inclusive

2017

678,728

972

2018

656,723

894

2019

639, 987

890

2020

613,231

784

2021

624,162

796

Source: Office for National Statistics Birth Characteristics

Note: Still births are not included as they are only measured from gestational age of 24 weeks onwards.