Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent steps her Department has taken to support police officers in tackling knife crime amongst young adults.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
Preventing children and young people from becoming involved in knife crime while supporting the police to tackle offending where it occurs, is central to our mission to halve knife crime in a decade and to make our streets safer. Protecting Lives, Building Hope: A Plan to Halve Knife Crime details the full range of measures that Government is taking to tackle the root causes of knife crime among young people and to strengthen enforcement.
In February 2026, the Home Office and Ministry of Justice announced new action to tackle child knife possession. The new guidance, which came into force on 1 April 2026, ensures that Police and Youth Justice Services work together so that every child caught carrying a knife is given a mandatory targeted plan to address the root causes of their offending and help prevent further offending.
We are also supporting early intervention and prevention by investing over £66 million in the Serious Violence Reduction Programme and the Serious Violence Duty this financial year. This funding will help continue the work of Violence Reduction Units, which bring together local partners to understand and tackle the drivers of serious violence in their areas, and will support the Young Futures Panel pilots, which identify young people at risk of being drawn into crime and provide early, targeted and diversionary support.
Our new Knife Crime Concentrations Fund will also invest £26.25 million this year to strengthen enforcement and prevention in the areas most affected by knife crime. Building on last year's hyperlocal knife crime pilots, we are expanding this approach across 27 police force areas, which together account for around 90% of knife crime in England and Wales. This funding will support police forces and local partners to work together to identify and tackle the specific factors driving knife crime in the locations most affected, enabling targeted and evidence-led interventions.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent steps she is taking to prevent knife crime amongst young people.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
Preventing children and young people from becoming involved in knife crime while supporting the police to tackle offending where it occurs, is central to our mission to halve knife crime in a decade and to make our streets safer. Protecting Lives, Building Hope: A Plan to Halve Knife Crime details the full range of measures that Government is taking to tackle the root causes of knife crime among young people and to strengthen enforcement.
In February 2026, the Home Office and Ministry of Justice announced new action to tackle child knife possession. The new guidance, which came into force on 1 April 2026, ensures that Police and Youth Justice Services work together so that every child caught carrying a knife is given a mandatory targeted plan to address the root causes of their offending and help prevent further offending.
We are also supporting early intervention and prevention by investing over £66 million in the Serious Violence Reduction Programme and the Serious Violence Duty this financial year. This funding will help continue the work of Violence Reduction Units, which bring together local partners to understand and tackle the drivers of serious violence in their areas, and will support the Young Futures Panel pilots, which identify young people at risk of being drawn into crime and provide early, targeted and diversionary support.
Our new Knife Crime Concentrations Fund will also invest £26.25 million this year to strengthen enforcement and prevention in the areas most affected by knife crime. Building on last year's hyperlocal knife crime pilots, we are expanding this approach across 27 police force areas, which together account for around 90% of knife crime in England and Wales. This funding will support police forces and local partners to work together to identify and tackle the specific factors driving knife crime in the locations most affected, enabling targeted and evidence-led interventions.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to improve educational outcomes for children in deindustrialised areas.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
‘Every child achieving and thriving’ establishes the department’s plan to deliver improved outcomes for all children, regardless of their background or where they live. Our ambition is for all children to achieve higher standards and for the disadvantage gap to be halved.
We will recruit 6,500 additional expert teachers, expand access to high-quality enrichment opportunities, and Regional Improvement for Standards and Excellence teams are helping all schools navigate a pathway to improvement. We are also launching two place-focused missions to drive improvement in areas where outcomes remain stubbornly low.
The department is transforming technical education from age 14, placing technical and academic pathways on an equal footing and ensuring every young person has access to high-quality routes into skilled employment and further study. We will work with Mayoral Strategic Authorities to design locally tailored vocational pathways for students from age 14 in every region.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to ensure SEND students in mainstream schools receive adequate additional support in their subjects.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The department is delivering a new, world-leading school curriculum that raises standards for all children and embeds inclusion for all pupils, including those who are disadvantaged, have special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), or need additional stretch.
To support the development of a more inclusive mainstream system, we are investing £500 million per financial year over the next three years through an Inclusive Mainstream Fund (IMF) to support schools, colleges and early years settings with upfront funding to help them move towards becoming more inclusive by design.
We have published guidance for school leaders on how to develop an Inclusion Strategy and use their IMF allocations alongside core budgets to more effectively invest in inclusive approaches and activities that address barriers to learning and participation.
Additionally, we are giving teachers better tools to identify and support needs early, while ensuring specialist settings meet the needs of pupils with the most complex needs. To support this, on 16 January the government announced a new training package, backed by £200 million of new funding, so that all teachers, educators, teaching assistants, support staff and leaders across early years, schools and post-16 settings can be trained to support pupils with SEND.
The department is also investing around £1.8 billion over three years in a new Experts at Hand offer, providing mainstream settings with access to specialist expertise from health and education professionals to strengthen staff capability, improve support for pupils with SEND in the classroom, and enable earlier intervention where needs arise.
We will support schools to respond to pupils’ learning and development needs with evidence‑informed resources, helping make mainstream education more inclusive and improving outcomes. This aligns with our commitment to deliver a high‑quality, ambitious curriculum for every child, including those with SEND.
Asked by: Lee Anderson (Reform UK - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade, what criteria his Department has for deciding on locations for data centres.
Answered by Kanishka Narayan - Minister of State (Cabinet Office) (Jointly with the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Technology)
The Government does not determine locations for individual data centres. Decisions on where to locate data centres are made by developers, taking account of factors such as access to power, connectivity, land availability, environmental considerations, and local planning policy. The Government’s AI Growth Zones (AIGZ) programme supports projects in areas with the energy, land and infrastructure needed to support future AI and data centre investment, while ensuring impacts on local communities and the environment are appropriately considered.