Asked by: Lola McEvoy (Labour - Darlington)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what discussions he has had with police authorities to ensure a single point of contact in the police for families affected by (a) serious trauma and (b) violent crime.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Home Office)
Police Family Liaison Officers provide support and information, in a sensitive and compassionate manner, securing confidence and trust of families of victims of crime (primarily homicide), road fatality, mass disaster or other critical incident, ensuring family members are given timely information in accordance with the needs of the investigation.
Asked by: Lola McEvoy (Labour - Darlington)
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 support social care workers to use their career experience to support their qualifications as NHS workers.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Higher education institutions (HEIs) have institutional autonomy to set their own admissions criteria to healthcare profession qualifying courses. Some HEIs accredit prior experiential learning (APEL), including from working in social care, which helps reduce the time it takes to achieve a qualification in a healthcare profession working in the National Health Service. This will vary by HEI and course.
NHS England is leading a programme of work to standardise the approach to APEL across the country and maximise the opportunity from shortened programmes to deliver more professionals more quickly.
Asked by: Lola McEvoy (Labour - Darlington)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps he is taking with the Cabinet colleagues to help support Armed Forces Veterans into publicly sector jobs.
Answered by Al Carns - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence) (Minister for Veterans)
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence represents veterans at Cabinet. Both he and I are working across Government and with Civil Society to strengthen the support we offer to our veterans and Armed Forces Community. This includes ensuring that the Civil Service benefits from the wide range of skills and talents the veteran community has to offer.
The ‘Great Place to Work for Veterans’ (GPTW) scheme is designed to encourage more veterans to join the Civil Service when they leave the armed forces. It is an opt-in recruitment scheme which allows those eligible, who meet the minimum standard required for a role, to progress to the next stage of the application process.
‘Going Forward into Employment’ (GFiE) is a Life Chances scheme, which provides eligible veterans, spouses, and partners with opportunities within the Civil Service in a variety of roles, most of which are for entry level and up to first line management grades. GFiE recognises that some veterans face unique barriers to employment and aims to address this by making the Civil Service application process as straightforward as possible.
Other public sector initiatives include ‘Step into Health’, which supports NHS employers in the recruitment and retention of talent from the Armed Forces community and seeks to promote the value that veterans can bring to the NHS.
A range of cross-government employment support is also available to veterans and their families after their time in service. This includes the MOD-hosted Career Transition Partnership which is the initial point of resettlement provision for veterans leaving military service, with directly provided support available for two years before and two years after leaving service.
The Government is expanding UK-wide career support for the armed forces community, ensuring support for all veterans, regardless of when they left service. The careers advice service Op ASCEND offer will include a broader range of job support for veterans, helping more into employment and boosting growth under this Government’s Plan for Change. This service will work with industry bodies to make sure businesses are set up to make the most of the talents veterans have to offer, showing how the Government is renewing the contract with those who serve and have served.
Asked by: Lola McEvoy (Labour - Darlington)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether she has made a recent assessment of the potential impact of the level of Statutory Sick Pay on trends in the number of people claiming Universal Credit.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department has not made an assessment of the impact of the level of Statutory Sick Pay on trends in the number of people claiming Universal Credit.
The Department has undertaken a Regulatory Impact Assessment and an Equality Impact Assessment of the Statutory Sick Pay changes to remove the Lower Earnings Limit and remove the 3-day waiting period. Both impact assessments can be found here:
https://data.parliament.uk/DepositedPapers/Files/DEP2024-0716/Statutory_Sick_Pay_EA.pdf