Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent discussions he has had with UK fishers on (a) challenges and (b) support required.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Defra Ministers meet with representatives of the fishing industry regularly to discuss a wide variety of issues including to understand their perspectives on challenges and support they need.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much their Department has spent on (a) advertising and (b) marketing in each of the last three years.
Answered by Angela Eagle - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The table below details Defra’s advertising and marketing costs for the 22/23, 23/24 and 24/25 financial years. Defra publishes details on spend on a monthly basis on GOV.UK as part of routine government transparency arrangements.
| 22/23 | 23/24 | 24/25 |
Advertising | £274,456.69 | £827,530.88 | £26,426.58 |
Marketing spend (other) | £192,984.23 | £484,027.95 | £18,322.07 |
The current Government came into power within the 2024/25 financial year and completed a review of all 131 public campaigns with spend of over £100k.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made about the readiness of the NHS to tackle co-ordinated cyber attacks.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
In the past year, we have invested £37.6 million across health and social care, building on the £338 million invested since 2017. Through our ambitious Cyber Improvement Programme, we are tackling the changing cyber risk head-on, expanding protection and services to better protect the health and care system.
NHS England’s Cyber Operations team provides 24/7 monitoring and expert support to National Health Service organisations who have been impacted by cyber-attacks. This includes specialist, on the ground, certified incident response services free of charge to NHS organisations who have been severely impacted by cyber incidents as well as technical and operational support to contain, investigate, and remediate incidents. Furthermore, we have developed guidance for leaders involved in cyber incidents to ensure there is a clear policy and process for how to respond across all elements of incidents.
We have a process in place to identify lessons and implement improvements following cyber incidents. Following the Synnovis cyber-attack in 2024, the Department and NHS England have made improvements to critical communications processes, added additional measures to improve resilience in the supply chain, and have set out clearer roles and responsibilities in incident management.
In 2023, a Health and Care Cyber Security Strategy was launched. Pillar 5 of the strategy focuses on exemplary response and recovery, as set out in the strategy health and care organisations should run annual cyber exercises to ensure there is a well-practiced and rapid response when incidents do occur.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps she is taking to (a) identify and (b) detain Islamic extremists.
Answered by Dan Jarvis - Minister of State (Cabinet Office)
This Government takes extremism seriously. We are committed to ensuring we have the required tools and powers to counter the activities of extremists. This includes challenging extremist narratives by taking a more muscular approach to identifying and watchlisting extremists, and ensuring dangerous overseas hate preachers and extremists are unable to enter the UK to spread their divisive rhetoric.
Islamist extremism continues to be one of the biggest threats we face and is at the heart of our approach to countering extremism and terrorism. We focus on the individuals, groups and environments, online and offline, which foster and enable hatred, and those who reject the fundamental values of our society and whose purpose is to divide and to terrify communities. These extremists must be challenged, and where their activities fall foul of our laws on hate speech, on public order, or on terrorism they will rightly be investigated and prosecuted.
The UK has one of the most robust counter-terrorism frameworks in the world which is deliberately widely drawn to capture the ever-diversifying nature of the terrorist threat that we face. This includes a wide range of terrorist offences and specialised powers for the police and Security Service to investigate and disrupt terrorist activity, support prosecution, and manage terrorist offenders, where activity meets appropriate thresholds. It is a matter for the operationally independent Police, Crown Prosecution Service and courts to decide if a crime has been committed.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps the UK is taking to combat international drug trafficking networks.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
Drugs have a devastating impact on the health of individuals and communities.
The Home Office and UK Law Enforcement, particularly Border Force and the National Crime Agency, delivers a significant amount of operational activity to detect and seize illicit drugs being trafficked to the UK and to secure our border. Our strategy focuses on working closely with law enforcement partners upstream to stop drug trafficking at source and across the supply chain, targeting the gangs responsible, and bringing them to justice.
In the year ending March 2025, Border Force seized over 150 tonnes of illegal drugs from overseas; the highest amount on record and a 40% increase on the amount seized in the year ending March 2024.
Serious criminals are constantly developing their approaches to traffic drugs into the UK in response to our efforts at the border and we recognise that we must continue to adapt our approach.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how much their Department has spent on (a) advertising and (b) marketing in each of the last three years.
Answered by Seema Malhotra - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The requested information is not centrally collated by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost. All spending is subject to standard value for money assessments.